Up until recently these were called the tar sands. Now, they’re the oil sands.
You’ve probably heard of the huge reserves of oil locked up in the sands of Canada. This is an operation that extracts bitumen deposits from the sandy earth and purifies them. They manufacture petroleum.
By the end of 2005, half of the crude oil exported from Canada will be recovered from the sands in this way. This represents ten percent of the total oil production in North America. The reserves cover an enormous area and, given current technology, the reserve of energy there is said to be larger than the reserve in Saudi Arabia. Given future technology, there is maybe ten times as much extractable oil there. So, no energy shortage. In the future.
The first thing you notice about the operation is that there is a lot of water involved. That’s because the so-called oil sands are about ten percent bitumen, a tarry substance, and 85% clay, sand, and rocks. To remove the bitumen from the sand, they wash it, using the Clark water-based extraction process, which involves hot water, aeration, and allowing the bitumen particles to settle out. It’s still pretty expensive, but $50/barrel oil makes it more attractive.
Have you ever been to the beach, and seen an oil slick that darkened the sand? Did you wonder if they could somehow clean the sand off?
That’s what they’re doing.
Once the particles settle out and are nice and hot, the stuff will flow more or less like crude oil, and you can pump it and refine it. Liquid fuels are much easier to work with.
When they’re done with an area, legislation in Canada requires that it be restored to at least the equivalent of its previous biological productivity. In other words, the region as a whole must form a productive ecosystem. I’m told that laws of this type are enforced in Canada.
If there’s one thing Canada has, it’s mosquitoes land. There’s plenty of room there. Not so much room that you can’t see the impact of these operations from space, however.
It’s small from this height, but it’s there. The next time someone tells you that thing about the Great Wall of China, tell them about this.
Fantastic photos … very interesting.
P.S. check the date on your post – typo?
http://amazngdrx.myblogsite.com/blog
Great story, great site!!
I will link to many more of your stories on my site.
Were this oil extracted using wind electric powered heat pumps for heat and aeration, the increased profits would make the whole project efficient enough to completely clean it up as it goes on.
As is done with coalmining in Germany. But it is being sold to Chinese companies which removes the property rights offshore, preventing Canadian environmental policies from steering the project in this greener direction.
That oil reserve used this way would end oil wars, allowing it’s economic leverage to instigate free and fair, and greener international energy markets.
I spent two work terms in the tarsands as an engineering student.
I remember being in a pickup on a cold morning, taking a drive to see the syncrude tailings pond..the surface was fog covered, grey/black. A vision of hell.
The refinery at the syncrude site has in the order of six hundred (600) fires per year.
Beyond the tailing ponds at the syncrude and suncor sites (and there are several – check the darker blue ponds on your first few photos), there are other environmental concerns; a huge smoke stack that produces odors in Ft. McMurray, 45 km away. Occasionally the scubbers upstream of the stack would malfunction and they would need to be bypassed. An engineer sang it to me thus:
“I see a blue sky and I want to paint it black
So I open the valve on my diverter stack”
The tarsand deposits in the area are HUGE. Currently, I believe all operations are located north of Fort McMurray, in an area where the tarsand can be removed by open pit mining. However, there are other technologies under research to extract the bitumen from the sand in areas where open pit mining isn’t economical.
With the price of oil at record highs, there is a renewed interest in oil sand projects, with several underway – each classified as billion+ megaprojects.
My great uncle went to the Klondike via the Backdoor Route down the Athabasca River. He mentioned the tar swposits and might have got richer stopping at Ft MacMurray
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