For 30 years I’ve heard about the promise of the vast Alberta oil sands area, ever since the Opec oil crises of the 1970s, when oil suddenly became worth much more than two dollars a barrel. But decade after decade, it was only a promise of oil to come in Alberta. The oil is bound up in black bituminous sand close to the surface. But even though the reserves are so huge and so obvious the oil sands have to be steam heated to release the oil…
A recent recalculation has revealed that the amount of oil buried underneath the ground in Northern Alberta was not millions of barrels - but trillions. Only Saudi Arabia has bigger reserves… And these deposits are guaranteed to last for decades, if not centuries. Flying in a helicopter over the oil sands area, you can see for fifty miles, and know that somewhere under the surface peaty, boggy “muskeg” as the Canadian call it, oil sands stretch out almost forever…
Bob Woodward is what the Canadians call Metis, a distinct aboriginal nation descended from native (Indian) women and European incomer men. His son Rowland listened to us discussing the past, and then he said this, with quiet pride: "Our people were not only buffalo hunters but also fishermen. There are communities here that are more than 14,000 years old.
"Three hundred years ago when the American trader Peter Pond came through here, he sat on the banks of the Athabasca and the Clearwater rivers and saw the local people (the Cree Indians) taking the bituminous sands and put them in a pot of hot water and then they’d skim off the pitch and use it to waterproof their canoes. “Now, 300 years on, we’re still using the hot water extraction method… and we’re still using it for transportation.”
