It’s the start of the Canadian winter and Northern Alberta is a blazing with seismic teams and drill rigs across the muskeg landscape surrounding Fort Mcmurray. Alberta as a province ranks 2nd in the world against all Oil producing countries with its known reserves of over 200 billion barrels of oil. This is 13% of the Worlds discovered oil. Only Saudi Arabia has more known reserves with around 260 billion barrels. Of all of Albertas reserves, 99% comes from the oilsands, with the other 2 billion barrels coming from conventional crude oil.
The challenge with getting oil from the oilsands is that the bitumen needs to be separated from the sand. This and the fact only 16% of the reserves are close enough to the ground surface (75 metres) to be recovered conventionally via shovel and truck method, while the other 84% is too deep and must be recovered through new technology such as in situ. In Situ is a system in which steam is injected into the bitumen reserves separating the oil from the sand under ground and then it is transported through pipes to the surface.
Too find just where the oil is it is up to core whole teams to pull core samples from the earth and for us, seismic exploration teams to open up lines in a grid like pattern so drills and line crews can come in behind us and set up a huge link of explosives. When the explosions happen they send waves through the earth which allow the smart people to figure out just how deep and how much oil is down there. 
My work partner, Fraser McDonald and I loaded up the truck with my quad, 5 chainsaws, 6 gas cans, 24 jugs of oil, work clothes, 1 bike, and some other necessities to last our 27 day shift up here in F Mac. Heading out from Jasper on Nov 25th we hit the highway to hell (highway 63 from Edmonton to Ft Mac) just around dusk and were now just hours from joining the 30 000+ other workers up in the tarsands. Fort Mcmurray’s slogan is “We have the Energy”. This is true and we were about to drain our energy stores to fill our bank accounts and do our part in supplying the world with energy.
Day’s 1, 2, 3 and 4 were rough. Lifting chainsaws for 8 hrs a day uses a lot different muscles then pedalling a bike. I was sore, and my body was not impressed with the -25 celsius weather/ 60 degree difference from the Australian outback. Day 5 things started to turn around and by day 7 we were in full swing. Days 8-17 were stellar. 18 onwards things started to go sideways as we began to tire and our minds wandered away from us. Production stayed high and the days rolled by but chainsaws started breaking, quads got stuck as we made poor route choses and the pickup truck got abused as we forget how to properly unload a 800lb quad.
The daily routine looks something like this.
5:45 am: Rooster goes off
5:55am-6:30: Train (1 day on the bike, next day breathing exercises)
6:30: Multi course Breakfast
7 Safety meeting
7:30 off to work,
8:00-8:30 Fire up quad, chainsaws head into the bush
8:30-4:30 slash slash slash eat drink slash slash eat slash drink slash eat eat slash drink slash
4:30-5:30 travel back to truck, refuel tanks, file saws. get ready for tomorrow
6 pm back to camp for food, rest and recharging
Camp itself is unreal. A mini hotel set up with private rooms, dining room with unlimited 4 star food, satellite, internet, gym, pool tables, ping pong and maids. We are spoiled. The guy to girl ratio of 98-2 is set up really good for the girls.
Working up North is a pretty good gig although there is usually one day a week in which you really question your existence on earth. I had 3 of these days over the last shift. 1 day we broke 3 chainsaws, and pulled the pull cord out of the quad, leaving us like a couple of stranded penguins scratching our heads, not earning a penny as pay is production based. Another day I got out of the wrong side of the bed, a bird crapped in my cornflakes and the more I tried the more that went wrong. Skipped chains, seized chainsaw, standing in 2 ft of muskeg water, lost lunch etc.. These days you just try to keep the chainsaw away from your limbs and try to remember the good old days in the Australian heat. The other forgettable day was when the truck wouldn’t start, we spent 8 hrs tryings to fix a broken fuel pump. First we checked all the fuses, then the wiring and then opted to change out the fuel pump, and the truck still wouldn’t start. It was a bummer day. We spent the evening google searching other possibilities for the cause of the lame truck and found out there was an unlabelled fuse to check. The next day we changed the fuse, kicked the truck, and it fired up. I don’t really want to think that a ghost fuse caused all that trouble so i’m sticking with the thought the fuel pump was dead.
All in all Fraser and I had a stellar trip up north. Last night we returned to Jasper with fat wallets, 4 limbs each, a few new cuts in our chainsaw boots and a quad with 2 flat tires.
Having 11 days off in the Jasper/Mcbride area over the holidays should provide ample time to kick start 2013 with some proper pre-season training in the form of skis, skates, wheels and snowshoes. On January 2nd its back to the patch for round two. Until then it’s time for some gold old Canadian winter fun in the Rockies.
Merry Christmas!