DEVELOPING THE CANADIAN OIL SANDS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31249, 22 December 1966, Page 13

DEVELOPING THE CANADIAN OIL SANDS

(from MELVIN SVFRtN. N.Z.P-A. Special Correspondent) TORONTO, Dec. 21. The world’s largest oilfield, covering an area of at least 13,000 square miles of Western Canada, is being opened up nearly 200 years after its discovery.

This is no ordinary oilfield, such as one might find in Texas or the Middle East There are no derricks, pumps or drilling rigs. The oil is right there on the surface. It will be mined rather than pumped. Not that this is simple. The ‘Jil is mixed with sand and one reason the field lay un-

expoited for so many years is that no-one knew how to separate the two substances economically. It is known as the Athabasca oil sands of Northern Alberta, and some 2300 construction workers, manyearning £4OO a month and more, are hurrying to complete a plant that will extract the oil.

The plant, to cost nearly £90,000,000, will begin delivering 45,000 barrels of oil a day when it goes into production on September 30. That will be just a drop in the bucket compared with the field’s potential. There are an estimated 626,000 million barrels of oil in the sands and recoverable reserves are estimated at 639,000 million—more than half the world’s oil reserves. Dr. Albert E. Moss, vicepresident of the firm building the first plant in the area,

says that estimates of the extent of the oil sands run as high as 30,000 square miles. His company’s plant is situated at the centre of the largest known deposit—lso miles long and 50 miles wide —containing enough oil to supply Canada’s requirements at the present rate of consumption for 1000 years. Peter Pond, an American fur trader, is generally credited with discovery of the oil sands. He reached the junction of the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers in 1778 and found the Indians using a sticky substance to waterproof their canoes. It was a century before a geological survey of Canada determined that the oil sands extended for 118 miles along the Athabasca river. But getting the oil out was a problem. One proposal was that an Atomic bomb be exploded in

the field in the hope that it would separate the oil from the sand. This was eventually discarded, especially since the Russians did not care to make it an exception to the nuclear test ban.

Eventually a scientist suggested a separation process—hot water flotation —but while it is ridicuously simple in theory it is difficult in practice.

It was not until engineers could overcome some of the equipment problems that a plant could be built. Great Canadian Oil Sands, Ltd., got the chance to be first

Its operation will employ two 135-foot-high excavators made in West Germany at a cost of more than £1,000,000 each. They will take huge gulps of oil sand and feed it on to conveyor belts which will speed it to the extraction plant at more than 1000 feet a minute.

There, hot water, steam and chemicals will be added to the oil sands, raising the temperature and helping break down the lumps. More hot water will be added to soak each grain of sand. The heavy oil—or bitumen—will rise to the surface and be scraped up by revolving blades resembling huge windshield wipers. All traces of water, sand and air will be removed from the bitumen in another heating operation. The final product will be a high-grade, sulphur-free synthetic crude oil which will be carried through a 266-mile pipeline to Edmonton, the Alberta capital, and then delivered to refineries.

The residue will be a clean, white sand which, in a few years, will fill a 500-acre diked area. After that it will be returned to the mined-out area and the surface will be re-afforested.