Grubbing for oil

Originally published Dec. 9, 2007

FORT CHIPEWYAN, Alberta – Like a great silver snake, the Athabasca River glides though a spongy-wet wilderness of spindly forests, lakes and marshes 650 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border.

Breathe deeply, though, and you catch a whiff of fresh, hot tar. In the river, fish are speckled with shiny, wart-like blisters. And in the tiny Indian village of Fort Chipewyan, people are coming down with leukemia, bile duct cancer and other diseases.

Those who aren't physically sick are worried sick. Much of their unease is directed upstream at a moonscape of strip mines, tailings ponds and clouds of dust and gases, including climate-warming carbon dioxide.

What's being clawed from the earth there may surprise you. It's America's next tank of gas.

As reserves of crude oil tighten and gas prices soar, the quest for a backup energy source grows more heated. Already, a biofuels industry based on corn is booming. There are dreams of adding switch grass and wood chips to the mix, perhaps one day running cars on cleaner hydrogen.

In northeast Alberta, though, the race for a stand-in fuel is taking a U-turn, one in which fleets of dinosaur-sized trucks and shovels larger than two-car garages are tearing apart a rich mosaic of woods and wetlands to extract some of the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet – more than two-thirds of which is exported to the United States to be refined into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

All new fuels pose environmental challenges, but Alberta's proxy petroleum is filled with them, from the destruction of migratory waterfowl habitat to rising greenhouse gas emissions and growing concerns about pollution and cancer.

Last month, a new report catalogued industrial contaminants – from arsenic to mercury to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – downstream of the digging zone and concluded that more independent scientific inquiry is urgent.

Jim Law, the spokesman for Alberta's minister of the environment, disputed the report's conclusions, saying, "The development of the oil sands does not proceed at the expense of the environment." But Kevin Timoney, an Alberta ecologist and the report's author, disagreed.

"These compounds are already at levels sufficient to cause harm, (and) levels are increasing in concentration," Timoney said. "There is no logical explanation … other than industry activity."

The new Persian Gulf

The stockpile of energy under Alberta's swampy woodlands, an estimated 175 billion barrels of oil, is the largest reserve in the Western Hemisphere and the second largest on Earth, behind Saudi Arabia.

This oil doesn't slosh into a barrel like conventional petroleum. It clings to dark, gooey layers of sand and clay that look like cookie dough when dug out of the ground. Alberta's oil isn't really oil at all, but bitumen, used for canoe patching by early fur traders and more recently for road sealing and paving.

Coaxing bitumen out of sand and clay and upgrading it into synthetic petroleum is so costly and energy-intensive that for years most companies ignored the region.

When crude oil prices climbed over $50 back in 2004, however, companies began rushing to Alberta as if it were a new Persian Gulf. Today, that rush is a stampede.

The road from Edmonton to Fort McMurray – the frontier outpost where the digging starts – thunders with big-rig trucks hauling mining gear. In town, dollars flow so freely some call the place Fort McMoney. Near the airport, a billboard barks out the bonanza spirit: "We have the energy," it says.

Already, Alberta's tar sands oil field produces 1.3 million barrels a day, three times more than Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. By 2016, daily output is expected to rise to 3 million barrels, exceeding the oil production of Venezuela.

Scores of companies are active in the area, from U.S.-based Chevron and ConocoPhillips to homegrown Petro-Canada. This year, projects, expansions and acquisitions totaling more than $50 billion have been announced.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Tom Knudson, (530) 582-5336. Travel and research for this story were underwritten by a grant from the Alicia Patterson Foundation in Washington, D.C.