Columbia River
The Columbia drains an area of about . Its drainage basin covers nearly all of Idaho, large portions of British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington, ultimately all of Montana west of the Continental Divide, and small portions of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada; the total area is similar to the size of France. Roughly of the river's length and 85 percent of its drainage basin are in the US. The Columbia is the twelfth-longest river and has the sixth-largest drainage basin in the United States. In Canada, where the Columbia flows for and drains , the river ranks 23rd in length, and the Canadian part of its basin ranks 13th in size among Canadian basins. 
The Columbia shares its name with nearby places, such as British Columbia, as well as with landforms and bodies of water.
Technological and industrial history of 21st-century Canada
Geological formations of shale gas are being explored as a new source of energy. A technique known as horizontal drilling is used to create a horizontal bore hole, through a formation. Water under high pressure is then pumped into the bore hole where it fractures the shale and allows the gas to escape the rock and seep up the bore hole. There are a number of shale gas fields in Canada including the Shallow Colorado basin in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the Bakken, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the Antrim in Southern Ontario and the Utica in south east Quebec. The technique is not without problems for the fracturing can affect aquifers causing contamination and deviation. To date efforts at production in Canada have been limited to exploratory wells.