Word: mining
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What does a real synfuel operation look like, the kind that can change a country's energy fortunes? The answer can be found 700 miles north of Montana near a onetime frontier outpost in Alberta called Fort McMurray. At Syncrude Canada's North Mine, a huge open pit nearly two miles across and 250 ft. deep, giant shovels scoop out a petroleum-soaked deposit called oil sand that is beginning a long journey from here into the gas tanks of American cars. The region contains enough of the crude mixture to produce an estimated 175 billion bbl. of oil, eight...
Everything here is done on a scale that would make Paul Bunyan feel right at home. The electric-powered shovels that mine the sands are several stories tall. Dozens of giant yellow earthmoving trucks lumber in and out of the mine carrying tons of freshly excavated sand. The largest ones weigh as much as 400 tons--more than 200 times the size of the average car. The trucks use huge tires that cost $55,000 each. The drivers sit so high above ground that one says piloting these behemoths is "like driving a two-story house from the second-floor...
...shale workers. It has become a retirement community. Against a backdrop of majestic mountains, retirees pump iron, hike scenic trails, swim and play golf. There's no trace of the Exxon project that was supposed to be shale oil's breakthrough. All vestiges of the mine and outbuildings are gone. The road leading to the plant site is still there, but it abruptly ends at the top of the hill. The land has been reclaimed and today looks much as it always...
...shale, a claylike rock soaked through with fossil fuel. In fact, at least 1 trillion bbl. of it, or four times Saudi Arabia's oil reserves, is locked up in the mountains 200 miles west of Denver. The U.S. spent billions of dollars to figure out a way to mine the stuff, then gave up and walked away. Why Canada has succeeded at creating a homemade source of alternative fuel while America has failed to tap its resources is testimony to Washington's short attention span when it comes to energy concerns...
...envisioned by President Jimmy Carter, synfuels would "replace 2.5 million bbl. of imported oil a day by 1990." Oil companies flocked to Colorado. Those already active in the field, like Union Oil Co. of California (Unocal), redoubled their efforts to bring plants online. Unocal started construction of a mine and processing plant near Parachute, Colo., in 1980 and predicted that it would produce 50,000 bbl. of oil a day by the late 1980s. Calling the Unocal project vital to the nation's energy supplies and national security, chairman Fred L. Hartley described it as a "solid economic proposition...