Black Bonanza: Canada’s Oil Sands and the Race to Secure North America’s Energy Future, by Canadian author Alistair Sweeny, takes you on an historical, technical, economic, and political journey through the Athabasca Oil Sands (Alberta’s Tar Sands). With an estimated 1.7trillion barrels of bitumen, a type of heavy crude oil, lying in three large deposits under 141,000sq.kms (54,000sq.miles) of Albertan boreal forest and peat bog, it is the world’s largest reservoir of crude bitumen.
Black Bonanza begins with the early history of the Oil Sands, from the tar’s use by First Nations through to the explorers of the late 1700s who first tried to estimate usefulness, to its present status – as both a prized resource and a scorned environmental monster. Both the Hudson Bay Company, the Alberta government, Canadian Federal government and, of course, many oil explorers and large oil companies, have tried, and continue, to exploit the vast resources of the Alberta Oil Sands.
Sweeney does an excellent job of putting the history, technical developments, economics and politics into an easy to read and entertaining package. The rivalry between researchers Robert Ells and Karl Clark to discover the best method to extract the oil and complete the refinement process is both interesting and informative of the technical difficulties of getting at the crude, as well as its impacts on the environment.
Black Bonanza tells the story of Syncrude and the Albertan government developing the Oil Sands, and how the economics of the Oil Sands depend so much on the world market price of crude. The environmental impacts are covered, but in much less detail and Sweeny lingers on the fact that recent processes, such as the underground processing of the oil using high temperature steam and chemicals (SAGD – Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage), can extract the crude much more cheaply and with less environmental impact.
Clearly, given the book’s front cover title, the book leans towards the positives of the Oil Sands, while also takes a bash at the environmental pressure groups and other ‘do-gooders’ who are publicly rocking the oil boat (Al Gore, Greenpeace, NASA’s James Hansen, and others). Sweeny even touches, rather old-fashionably, on the fact that the world may be in a global cooling phase (from 1970s predictions) and that the Oil Sands energy will be sorely needed.
Black Bonanza offers a lot of information and history and it is well worth a read if you are interested in the Oil Sands, the environment, and the world of politics and big oil.
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Publisher: Wiley
Pages: 254
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