Chapter 9 - Bitumen

Karson had dragged himself out of bed the next morning and into a hot shower by 11am. The stream of hot water pouring over his head did very little to ease the pounding of the hammer that seemed to exist within the confines of his skull. Digger and the gang had been successful at misleading the amount of alcohol he had consumed the previous night. By constantly diverting his attention and always touching up his glass, Karson had no clue as to how much he had drank. His head was now telling him. It was all in good fun though. He didn’t go out and drink much very often anymore, so last night hadn’t been so bad. It had actually been a great time. The alcohol had encouraged some engaging conversations to ensue, topics ranging from Canadian and American politics and the North Korean crisis to the war in Iraq.

Topics like these were repeatedly discussed whenever the gang got together. Although they were a tight-kit group and got along very well, they all had very differing points of view. One of them was a socialist and hard line NDP’er while the rest were a mix of varying degrees of liberal. Karson was the only conservative of the group, with a mix of libertarianism in him.

By 11:45, Karson was dressed and out the door with a bagel in his hand and a bottle of Advil in his backpack. He was on his way to the university and to his passion – to continue working on his “black molasses” as Digger called it.

What he was working on in fact was called bitumen. It is a black, sticky and heavy, carbon rich viscous oil. Once a nice light crude oil, time and the actions of water and bacteria are the cause for this transformation. In northern Alberta, the oil saturated sand deposits left over from ancient rivers can be found in three main areas, Peace River, Cold Lake and Athabasca covering a total of nearly 141,000 square kilometers. That is larger than the state of Florida. The Athabasca area is the largest and closest to the surface, which thus accounts for the largest oil sands development around the city of Fort McMurray. This city, located about ten hours north of Edmonton is home for about 65,000 people. Although getting there can be arduous because of its remoteness and distance from the capital city of Edmonton, the local landscape is unparalleled in many ways. The convening of land, sky and water in this area seems almost spiritual. The real treasure though had to be the mystical, magical and miraculous Aurora Borealis. This was especially true if you ventured out of the realm of the city lights into the lands natural surroundings under its natural illumination. It was here, that a gaze upward to the sky revealed the dancing lights of the phenomenon known as the Aurora Borealis. You would swear it a show put on just for from god. However, beauty aside, Fort Mac was there for one reason and one reason these days. Oil.

The Alberta Oil Sands contain one of the largest known reserves of oil in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. It is not the sweet light crude oil however that flows out of the ground in places like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, so it does not garner much attention. In addition, existing in a country that is both the second largest land mass in the world but at the same time having a population of only around 35 million, and then also which happens to be north of the world’s largest economy, the strongest and most powerful military force and the third largest population in the world, namely the United States, many things in The Great White North are often invisible, like the Alberta Oil Sands. Only in the last few years had it been garnering any attention. And even then, very minute. Even an exhibit at the Smithsonian did little to attract any attention from the U.S. administration. The only people interested were hedge funds and true oilmen.

Bitumen can be extracted from this enormous area via two methods, open-pit mining and “in situ” – latin for “in place.” Deposits found near the surface can be recovered by open-pit mining. The most efficient way of doing this is by using the largest trucks and shovels in the world. Made by Finning Interna-tional Inc., the 380-ton Caterpillar 797 trucks are 40% heavier than a Boing 747 with tires that reach more than 4 m high. These monsters are the backbone of the Oil Sands industry.

However, since about 80% of the oil is found deep below the surface, the second method for recovery need to be done in situ. Companies use drilling technology by injecting steam into the deposit to heat the oil and thus lowering the viscosity of the bitumen. It then migrates towards producing wells that bring it to the surface while the left over sand remains in place. Access to necessary nearby water sources and expensive technology make for some costly obstacles for this type of recovery and thus affecting the cost efficiency of extraction of the Alberta Oil Sands.

Overall though, the industry of the Oil Sands move enough fill and oil sand every two days to fill any major baseball stadium in the world.