The Oil Sands...

---

---

Fort McMurrayBratty Comment of the Day: I'm so tired! We caught a 4 a.m. flight today to Fort McMurray. Even though this has been a great experience, I haven't slept more than six hours this whole trip. Fulbright Hayes definitely does not believe in beauty sleep. 😊

As soon as we got to Fort McMurray, we hopped on a bus to tour the Oil Sands. Alberta is the richest province in Canada, due solely to revenue earned by oil mining. Canada is one of the leading producers of oil, sending more oil to the U.S. than even Saudi Arabia. However, Canada's oil is not extracted by traditional drilling. An estimated 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in a complex mixture of sand, water and clay. Thus, Syncrude, the oil company, uses a complex process to extract the oil from the sand. Dr. Karl Clark, a scientist working for the Alberta Research Council, developed and patented the hot water extraction technique. Building on earlier experimentation by Sidney Ells and others which used hot water to separate oil from oil sands, Dr. Clark's work brought the process to a commercial scale. Oil sand is mixed with hot water creating a slurry. Early methods used large tumbler drums to condition the slurry. Today, hydrotransport pipelines are used to condition and transport the oil sand from the mine to the extraction plant. The slurry is fed into a separation vessel where it separates into three layers - sand, water and bitumen. The bitumen is then skimmed off the top to be cleaned and processed further. After further processing, the oil is ready to be used. (For more information, go to http://www.oilsandsdiscovery.com/)

While traveling through the city today, several thoughts went through my mind. Fort McMurray is a beautiful city filled with more trees than you can imagine. However, in order to create the vast oil mines, millions of trees are killed and then cleared to make room for a complex network of pipes, buildings, and trucks. What we were seeing was the mass destruction of the earth in order to create oil. Add the pollution created by the process and the huge cost of consumption and the picture became one of despair. As Syncrude will quickly remind you, the mines are filled in and the trees replanted, once the mines are dry. But as soon as one mine is dry, another is created, further destroying the landscape.

Despite the massive destuction, I don't know that I can say we should stop all the mining. For one, I'm not willing to stop driving. While I can carpool to work, I'm not willing to bike the 15 miles. And what about the other million drivers in Los Angeles? The situation becomes one of progress versus conservation. If we choose progress, are we slowly killing ourselves?

Discussion Question: To many people wait for environmentalism to acclimate to their lifestyle. What can we teach our students to do now to become environmentalists?

---