Posts
The
Canadian Oil Sand Mines Refused Us Access, So We Rented This Plane To
See What They Were Up To
18
May, 2012
When
reaching out to Alberta oil sands companies before a trip to Canada
last month, I thought all of them mined oil the same way — they
don't.
The
open mining most people think of when they picture the oil sands is
just
one way of extracting crude
from the ground, but it is without a doubt the most dramatic. And we
had to see it.
After
being refused a mine tour and any type of access to a mining site or
equipment, Business
Insider
rented a plane that I used to see everything I could of the mines on
my own.
Restricted
to flying no lower than 1,000 feet above the ground, I spent nearly
two hours leaning out the window of a small Cessna 172 with a long
lens, snapping pictures and trying to keep warm.
The
oil sands hold up to two trillion barrels of oil spread over more
than 54,000 square miles, making it the second largest oil deposit in
the world after Saudi Arabia.
The
amount of energy spent recovering that oil and the pollution created
in refining it is immense and the impact on the environment
profound.
Limiting
that impact is important as oil companies are required by law to
return the land to its original condition when they're done mining,
but the amount of time required to do that has long been criticized.
Today's
environmental focus at the mining companies is figuring out how to
get the land back to its original state more quickly and efficiently.
And
that is something that everyone who lives and works near the oil
sands would be happy to see.
It
used to be that people would come to work the mines for a couple of
years and go back where they came from, but that is changing as
people put down roots and raise their children and grandchildren.
About
140,000 people are involved in working the oil sands, with 100,000
more jobs expected in the next five years.
So,
no matter how you feel about the oil sands or the burning of all that
oil, you can be sure that as long as there's a market for it and
people need jobs, the oil companies aren't going anywhere.
I
also need to extend a sincere thanks to former oil sands worker Mike
Pearson whose
experience and insight proved invaluable.
Still
coming up in our Alberta oil sands series will be an inside look at
the local lumber mill and timber industry, an interview with
Greenpeace who shut a mine down in 2009, and a tour of the Syncrude
research facility in Edmonton, and a tour of Fort McMurray.
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