Wayne Sands
Is This a Park or a Building Site? And Who Decides?
When is a park not a park? Or, more pointedly: When does a piece of undeveloped land become a park, in the eyes of the law? This is the question which Myron Blumenfeld, local resident and environmental activist, wants a judge to answer.
Northern Alberta, Canada is the location of a very large, rich oil sand field. The Athabasca oil sands are named for the Athabasca River, where the oil sands are easily seen from the river banks. One third of the world's oil sands are found here in Alberta, Canada and in Venezuela. The Athabasca oil sands field is unique in that the oil sands are located very near the surface and can be easily surface mined. This makes it much cheaper to mine, and makes Athabasca the leading provider of oil sands in the world.
Oil sands are a solid form of oil also known as tar sands. They are made up of clay and sands that are covered in bitumen oil. Bitumen oil is so thick that it must be heated in order to make it flow. Therefore, oil sands are very thick and sticky. Oil sands contain some water. This makes them sticky in the summer and as solid as rock in the winter, when the water is frozen.
Strip mining is the easiest and most common way to mine for oil sands. To strip mine, we simply need to dig a big pit. Then we can drive in big trucks and bulldozers to get the oil sands out of the ground. We get the oil sands on to the trucks and then mix them with water. This helps break up the clumps and turn the oil sands into a more liquid substance called slurry. Turning the oil sands into slurry makes it possible to transport through pipelines to a plant. At the plant, the oil is separated from the sand and the oil is sent to a refinery for processing. Here, the oil can be turned into synthetic oil and other petroleum products.
When deeper sections of the oil sands fields are encountered, then strip mining isn't really an option. We need to go deeper to get to the oil sands. You can see where this would create a challenge, considering that the oil sands are very sticky and can be solid or near solid. To combat this problem, we can pump water into the ground. Mixing the oil sands with the water turns it into slurry underground. This makes it much easier to extract by simply pumping it out. Another form of extraction is to pump oxygen into the reserve. The oxygen is set on fire, in a controlled fashion, and the bitumen is melted down to a liquid state. Then, the oil sands can be pumped out.
In some cases, we identify areas where oil sands are present by the tar pits that they can form on the surface. Tar pits are formed when the pitch and tar rise up to the surface and separate from the sand. These pitch tar pits are well known for almost perfectly preserving prehistoric animals that got trapped in them. The most well known tar pit is the La Brea tar pit in California. Another famous tar pit is in Trinidad. This tar pit is the size of a lake and may be up to two hundred and fifty feet deep. It is believed to be located directly over a fault line in the earth.
Companies like Triple Diamond Energy help us extract oil sands, bringing us many of the petroleum products that we use every day.
About the Author: Bob Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com
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