
Athabasca Oil Sands
2014-2020
An exploration of oil sands mining operations in Alberta, Canada between 2014 and 2020.
Athabasca Oil Sands are the 3rd largest oil deposit in the world. As you can see from this photograph, oil sands are not conventional oil. They are mined with enormous excavators and trucks and require two refining steps to become syncrude - which can be treated like conventional crude oil and refined into gasoline, diesel or fuel oil.

Oil sands are a mix of bitumen, sand and clay. The bitumen is separated from the sand and clay with steam.
The bitumen is refined into synthetic crude oil. The leftover mix of water, sand and clay is collected in tailings ponds where the sand and clay are allowed to settle and the water is reclaimed. 75-83% of tailings pond water is recycled into steam and used to separate more bitumen.

The mines are big, but the tailings ponds are even bigger. The footprint of the ponds ebb and flow as they fill with sand and clay and are refilled with tailings.
The water, however, remains extremely toxic.

During the summer of 2014, the world oil market collapsed. Oil prices plummeted from over $100 per barrel to less than $50 per barrel.
Athabasca Oil Sands, which are estimated to cost $30-$60 per barrel to produce, became a very shaky business.
This graph shows the price for West Texas Intermediate - the bell weather for US crude oil prices - for the five years before the crash and the six years since.


Fort McMurray Oil Sands Mines - 2014(l) & 2020(r)
This is satellite imagery of the oil sands operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta. The light spectrum has been rearranged to render the mines in shades of pink and the tailing ponds in shades of blue (making them much easier to see). Scrolling between the two, there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference. But my research shows that between 2014 and 2020, the mine footprints increased 19%.
Fort McMurray Oil Sands Mines - 2014(l) & 2020(r)
These images were developed to measure changes in the footprint of the mines and tailing ponds. Mines render in beige, water in blue and the surrounding boreal grasslands in green. By measuring the area of each color and then removing the Athabasca River (which runs north/south through the image) as well as naturally occuring lakes, the size of mining operations could be compared between 2014 and 2020.
Kearl Oil Mine, Aerial Tour
The processed imagery indicates that mined area increased by 27% between 2014 and 2020 while the footprint of tailing ponds decreased by 12%.
This indicates that the mines continue to operate despite slim or negative profit margins, but production has been curtailed in response to six years of low oil prices.
This video shows Exxon-Mobil's Kearl Oil Mine. In the opening shot, the tailing ponds are in the upper right and render beige. The mines are along the lower left and render dark grey.
This video is the same mine shown in the opening slide. The depth of the mine is captured well in the photo. The video illustrates the sprawl of the mine but almost none of the depth.