Like most of our team today, I embarked on a very memorable adventure in the Fort McMurray oilsands. It was quite an eye-opening experience: having been in Toronto and southern Alberta for the last few years, the oilsands projects have not been featured in a positive light, so this served as an excellent opportunity to shed some light on the initiative.
We participated in a tour kindly provided by represenatives from SunCor, one of the key players in the oilsands development projects. The guides - a dedicated communications rep and a plant manager (mining engineer by training) - presented a very confident front and were well-versed enough in the subject to answer most of the questions with credibility. It must be noted that I am approaching this with some inherent bias: most of my incoming understanding of these projects was of the environmental devastation that they left in their wake, as well as how the ratio of output to input energy is much lower than most other energy-production endeavours. Many of my questions were answered, but naturally, many more also arose.
We started off with a look at some of the bitumen lakes, complete with artificial men and cannons to scare ducks away. Our attention was then directed to one of many restoration efforts, where they were able to re-grow much of the natually-occuring vegetation on previously-pillaged land. That aspect accounted for much of the focus of the tour. Indeed, the efforts are very admirable and they have been quite successful in revitalising the land (so far). Whether or not this (a) succeeds in the longer-term; and (b) erases more of the environmental footprint (land scorching, greenhouse and noxious gas release, significant changes to the landscape) requires more enquiry.
We also observed some of the excavation and mining operations, where workers mined for the oil-rich sands that would eventually undergo separation and be turned into a heavy-oil slurry. This also induced some questions - namely, how much usable/useful energy can be extracted from this, relative to the amount of energy necessary to convert the oil-sand energy into a usable/useful form. I have heard everything from 4 barrels of oil output per input barrel equivalent in energy (Pressnail, 2007) to 20 barrels output per input barrel equivalent in energy (Hale, 2009), the latter of which was quoted today (although he wasn't entirely certain of the number). This also merits further enquiry, as the 95% seems a little high (given that light oil in Southeastern Saskatchewan isn't even that usable in its raw form). Moreover, if it were a 95% efficient process, they should be able to operate comfortably even if the price of oil sinks below $50/barrel.
So, I'm currently working on a list of questions for tomorrow and checking more into their figures and statistics. It has been a very interesting experience that is well worth the time and distance. More details to come tomorrow!
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