Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
have afforded me a closer look at the other bird-deterrent: a sparse posse of small, flag-like
scarecrows that decorated the shore. Several more of the ragged little figures floated on
lonely buoys in the middle of the lake.
The mines themselves were nowhere visible, but at the north end of the lake rose the
Syncrude upgrading plant, the flame-belching doppelgänger of Disney's Enchanted King-
dom, built of steel towers and twisting pipes, crested with gas flares and plumes of steam.
A hot, wavering stain of transparent yellow rose from one smokestack, drawing a narrow
stripe across the sky.
Oil sands contain a heavy form of petroleum called bitumen, which must go through
several stages of upgrading at a plant like this before it can enter a refinery. But before
it can even be upgraded, it must be separated from the vast quantities of sand that are its
host. This first step takes place mine-side, where the sand is mixed with water and then
heated, separating out the layer of bitumen that clings to each grain of sand. You have here
two issues: the use of massive amounts of water—in this case drawn from the Athabasca
River—and the incredible volumes of natural gas required to heat it.
The separated bitumen is then piped to the upgrading plant, where—using yet another
unimaginable amount of energy—it is put through a series of distillations and
cracking
pro-
cesses to break it down into smaller, more manageable hydrocarbons. Only then can the
result—called
synthetic crude oil
—be sent off to a refinery for the production of gasoline,
jet fuel, and ziplock bags.
I hung a left, following the loop that would take me past the front gate, around the tail-
ings pond, and back toward town. Just west of the plant was the sulfur storage area, though
to call it a “sulfur storage area” is like calling the pyramids a “stone storage area.”
One byproduct of Syncrude's industrial process is a monumental quantity of sulfur, for
which it has neither a use nor a market. So it stores the stuff, pouring it into solid yellow
slabs, one hulking yellow level on top of the last, building what is now a trio of vast, flat-
topped ziggurats fifty or sixty feet tall and up to a quarter mile wide. Like everything else
around here, they may be some of the largest man-made objects in history—but I had never
heard of them before. A pyramid of sulfur just isn't news, I guess. They are less scandalous
than a city-size hole in the ground, and only a very determined duck could get itself killed
by one.
One day, though, Syncrude or its successors will see these vast—huge, monumental,
gargantuan, monolithic—objects for the opportunity they are. Tourists of the future will
summit their grand steps, and stay in sulfur hotels carved out of their depths, and sip yellow
cocktails, and attend championship tennis matches at the Syncrude Open, for which the
players will use blue tennis balls, for visibility on the sulfur courts. Thousands of years
later, explorers bushwhacking through the jungles of northern Cameximeriga will stumble
