DATE IMPORTED:September 23, 2014A work boot walks on the oil covered floor at the Suncor processing plant at their tar sands operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta, September 17, 2014. In 1967 Suncor helped pioneer the commercial development of Canada&#03
IN PHOTO: A work boot walks on the oil covered floor at the Suncor processing plant at their tar sands operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta, September 17, 2014. In 1967 Suncor helped pioneer the commercial development of Canada's oil sands, one of the largest petroleum resource basins in the world. Picture taken September 17, 2014. Reuters/Todd Korol

Alberta, Canada's richest province, could well be headed into a recession as prices of crude oil continue to spiral down with no hopes of lifting up in the very near term. Alberta is the heart of Canada's oil sands industry and the single largest source of U.S. oil imports. If Alberta does hit recession this year, Canada is in for bad times, as this will threaten the government's expected surplus.

The Conference Board of Canada, in its latest report, said the province will see unemployment rates surge as energy companies slash jobs and reduce capital spending to keep afloat in the midst of the plummeting prices of crude oil. The province has a population of four million people.

From a high $105 in June 2014, the price of a barrel of oil has plummeted to under $45 today. In recent days, a number of Canadian energy companies have announced major changes in their workforce number as well as supposed spending plans for 2015. Among them were Suncor Energy Inc and Shell Canada.

"Going forward, the province is certain to suffer, especially on the employment front, from the drop in oil prices -- and it is likely to slip into recession," Daniel Fields, an economist at the not-for-profit research organization, said in the document. The drop in oil prices effectively cuts the revenue stream of the energy firms' in half. "That will have important repercussions and it will trickle down through all parts of the economy," Pedro Antunes, deputy chief economist at the Conference Board, said.

But Antunes said he is most worried about the influx of future investments in the province. When Alberta fell into a similar recession during the 2009 financial crisis, investments fell by $18 billion, job cuts reached 30,000 and housing starts dropped by 75 percent. "We should start to see some of the ramifications of this fairly quickly," he said. In mid-December 2014, the CIBC Economics said Alberta will only grow 1.7 percent overall in 2015 compared to an expected 4.1 percent in 2014.

Canadian banks, meanwhile, are bracing for the worst after Timothy Lane, deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, on Tuesday said the dropping prices of crude oil could fall further and stay low for a "significant period." Economists predict oil could go lower than $50 per barrel in the coming months. Low oil prices may translate to more cash in the hands of the consumers -- it will, however, threaten the country's overall growth. Moreover, it will push the dollar lower, threaten federal and provincial government revenues, as well as possibly delay eventual interest-rate hikes.