Nearly 50 years after the opening of Canada's first major oil sands mine, the site on the banks of Alberta's Athabasca River is an epicentre of energy, teeming with bustling workers amid signs of its pioneering past and cutting-edge future.
Estimated to contain 166 billion barrels of crude recoverable with today's technology, they are also loathed by environmentalists who fear their development will accelerate climate change. Other challenges include a carbon pricing regime, a cap on emissions, pipeline constraints and a flood of U.S. shale oil production that is weighing on prices.
Despite growing environmental outcry, oilsands production is expected to continue to grow in the years ahead, and so the industry is developing unique technologies to extract more black gold more efficiently while lessening its environmental footprint.
At the mine that began as the Great Canadian Oil Sands project, where the air is filled with the occasional muffled "thump" of bird deterrent cannons, Suncor staff is implementing practices aimed at keeping the operation competitive in an era of lower oil prices and tougher public scrutiny.
On a well pad at the MacKay River project 60 kilometres northwest of Fort McMurray, Suncor is testing the injection of carbon dioxide into oilsands wells to reduce the amount of steam required to keep the bitumen flowing, a technique considered more environmentally friendly.
Suncor and its partners are also testing the results of a pilot project that used warm solvent to recover some 125,000 barrels of bitumen with no water and much lower emissions in anticipation of potential commercial use.
The Canadian Press
