Puskwaskau River Puskwaskau River The Puskwaskau River is a short river in Northern Alberta, Canada. It is a tributary of the Smoky River flowing westwards in the Peace River Country. Its waters flow through the Smoky River, Peace River, Slave River, Great Slave Lake and Mackenzie River into the Arctic Ocean. The name of the river originates from the Cree word for "short grass". The Puskwaskau Formation, a stratigraphical unit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, was named for the river. The river originates from the Puskwaskau Lake in the Sturgeon Heights, at an elevation of , north-west from Valleyview. It flows
Oil sands sands and merge at Lake Athabasca to form the Slave River, which flows into the MacKenzie River, one of the largest rivers in the world. All of the water from these rivers flow into the Arctic Ocean. The Peace River oil sands probably contain over 30 billion cubic metres (200 billion barrels) of oil-in-place. The thickness of the deposit ranges from and it is buried about deep. Whereas the Athabasca oil sands lie close enough to the surface that the bitumen can be excavated in open-pit mines, the smaller Peace River deposits are too deep, and must be exploited using