Mining

The first step in transforming the oil sands into commercial petroleum products is getting the sand out of the ground.* About 20% of the Athabasca Oil Sands are within 75 m (246 ft.) of the surface of the ground. At Bitumount, the deposits are very near to the surface. In some places, there is less than a metre of overburden. To mine the oil sands, the overburden—including vegetation, soil and underlying sediment and rock—must be removed. Then, once the oil sands are exposed, they can be strip mined and hauled to the separation plant. It takes about 2 tonnes (2.2 tons) of oil sand to produce one barrel of oil.

In the early days of oil sands extraction at Bitumount, there were no machines to do the work. It was all done by man and beast. Horses supplied the power to clear away stumps and haul away overburden. Men were also directly engaged in the process, digging,

loading, transporting and dumping the oil sand. However, as the scope of the plant became more ambitious, the scale of excavation had to increase as well. By the time operations came to an end in the early 1940s, a dragline had been in place for several years.

When a mine was opened for the Alberta Government Oil Sands Project, it, like many other aspects of the new operation, was approached systematically, with an eye to efficiency and future needs. Not surprisingly, the site was more organized and logical than its predecessor. It was supported by a realistic budget and benefited from having powerful earthmoving equipment unavailable to Robert Fitzsimmons’s more modest operation. Plans for excavation well into the future were devised, but, since the new site did not operate for very long, these were never put to the test.