Guest Column by GeoT
Dateline: 09/14/00
There is a lake in northwestern Saskatchewan, Canada called "Peter Pond", which is sort of an interesting name for a lake!
It turns out that Peter Pond was a trader looking for furs in the Athabasca Country and traversed the Methye Portage and the Clearwater Valley getting there. What he found was very different than what he was looking for. He found an oil-saturated sand deposit. Peter was the first European to actually see this deposit and the First Nation people using the tar-like bitumen to waterproof their canoes along the Athabasca River!
Many years earlier, Wa-pa-su, a Cree trader, had taken some of the bitumen from the Athabasca region to a Hudson Bay Company trading post at Fort Churchill. This event marks the first knowledge of the oil sand in Canadian history. Apparently little interest was shown in this material -- uses for oil in 1719 were somewhat limited. If they had known then what we know now!
Today, these deposits are known as the Athabasca Oil Sands.
This is a body of sand that contains heavy oil called bitumen. The problem is, the oil is too thick to flow easily and be pumped by conventional methods. Study of the sand has shown that each grain has a film of water around it, and oil surrounds the water. What this means is that the heavy oil will not move efficiently through the pores of the deposit. It does flow, but very slowly - accumulations of bitumen along stream banks is what the First Nation people collected for their canoes.
These deposits attracted attention, and experimentation was done to determine the practicality of this resource. In 1883 it was found that water would wash the oil off the sand grains, and improvements to this basic process continue to this day. Hot water was found to be most effective, and then hot water with a type of detergent. (1920s experiments in separating the oil and sand actually took place in a washing machine!) The newest technology involves drilling parallel horizontal bores -- one atop the other. Steam injected into the upper bore heats and releases the bitumen from the sand so it can be collected and pumped out the lower bore. This is called SAGD, (SAG-dee) or Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage. The bitumen/water mixture is then piped to a refining facility. This eliminates the need for surface mining as practiced today.
The Athabasca Oil Sands are located north of Edmonton around Fort McMurray, Alberta. Approximately 100 million years ago a sedimentary basin between the lands to the west and the east collected sand and clay. The oil is believed to have originated in organic shales in the southern part of the Alberta Sedimentary Basin and then migrated to its present location in the McMurray Formation sand deposits. The oil sand is approximately 70% sand and clay, 10% water, and from 0 to 18% oil. It is presently being surface mined, but the majority of the deposit will have to be developed via subsurface techniques. Swampy surface geography, deep overburden, and environmental concerns are the reasons why. Several companies have committed billions of dollars to the Oil Sands and production amounts to some 20% of Canada's oil output.
But, here is the amazing part of the story: The Athabasca Oil Sands are said to be the world's largest oil deposit. They may contain as much as 1.7 trillion barrels of oil! That's 1,700 billion barrels!! Far greater than the Middle East's reserves! Perhaps as much as one trillion barrels will be recoverable! Enough to keep things running for a while I'd think!
So, Wa-pa-su and Peter reported quite a valuable resource. And, additionally, we know how that lake in Saskatchewan was named after a Pond!
Now, about those oil sands on Melville Island and the Colorado Oil Shales...
GeoT is a long-time high school geography teacher from Illinois. In addition to geography, he enjoys railroads and model railroads, old Oldsmobiles, and gardening.
