From North to South: How Norman Wells led to Leduc

I delivered this presentation to The International Commission on the History of Geological Sciences, August 11, 2009

Synopsis: In Canada’s early years, important hydrocarbon discoveries occurred almost independently of settlement. In the frontiers, of course, that pattern continues. The relationship between Norman Wells and Alberta’s post-war discovery at Leduc is one example of a pattern that turns on its head the American model of petroleum development. Remote exploration has always played a critical role in our industry’s development.

It would be easy to think of Canada’s petroleum industry as one that began in the south, grew wealthy, then began exploring and developing more remote lands. That is indeed a realistic caricature of the US industry, but in Canada the story was different. The most important oil discovery prior to Leduc actually took place just south of the Arctic Circle. In a drama worthy of the great white north, that discovery led directly to the creation of Canada’s modern petroleum industry.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown
Before I address the major topic of my presentation today, I would like to suggest an idea about the development of Canada’s petroleum industry compared to that in the United States. Simply put, the patterns of petroleum industry development in the two countries paralleled their respective patterns of settlement.

As you know, the US takes up the best temperate lands along the eastern seaboard, and there are no major barriers to settlement between New York and San Francisco. The Cordillera is a problem, but settlement in the far west was still not seriously hindered – especially after the construction of the transcontinental railways. That pattern exactly reflects the development of the US petroleum industry. In the US there are many sedimentary basins – smallish, but regularly spaced across the country. Once Colonel Drake drilled his historic well, the American petroleum industry developed with patterns of settlement.

Canada has quite a different geography. Settlement was difficult in this country because of the predominance of the Canadian Shield, which provided barriers in many ways. Trapped between the Shield and the Cordillera, the Western Canada sedimentary basin is far bigger than the many on-shore basins in the US. Because of the Shield, it is well separated from the small basins in eastern and central Canada. The Shield and our northern latitudes created what I call the coureurs du bois model of how the Canadian industry developed.

In case you don’t know the expression, coureurs du bois were fur traders who earned their livelihoods with the aid of canoe transport along our mostly northward-flowing rivers. They played a big role in the creation of Canada. For example, from remote northern locations they brought information about resource potential to our political and commercial centres.

Partly because of their efforts, our earliest hydrocarbons were found in outposts of settlement. Consider our Oil Springs discovery, for example, which was contemporaneous with Colonel Drake’s 1859 well. Based on investigation into the well-known gum beds near Black Creek, the Oil Springs discovery took place on the north shore of Lake Erie – in an area without roads, but along the transportation and trading system afforded by the Great Lakes.

Alberta’s first recorded natural gas find came in 1883 from a well at CPR siding No. 8 at Langevin, near Medicine Hat. This well was one of a series drilled at scattered points along the railway to get water for the Canadian Pacific Railway’s steam-driven locomotives. The unexpected gas flow caught fire and destroyed the drilling rig. The discovery took place as we built our first transcontinental railway – itself an effort to settle our empty prairies before the Americans did the job for us.

The Athabasca oil sands were already well known – in fact, the first recorded mention of Canada’s bitumen deposits goes back to a Hudson’s Bay Company record of June 12, 1719. Hoping to find light oil beneath the sands, in the late 19th century Ottawa undertook a drilling program to help define the region’s resources. Using a rig taken north by river, in 1893 contractor A.W. Fraser began drilling for liquid oil at Athabasca, where the oil sands had been known for centuries. In 1897 he moved the rig to Pelican Rapids, also in northern Alberta. There it struck natural gas at 250 metres. But the well blew wild, flowing huge volumes of gas for 21 years. It was not until 1918 that a crew succeeded in killing the well.

These few examples illustrate my point. Quite unlike the situation in the US, Canada’s early hydrocarbon exploration took place along transportation corridors rather than in settled areas. The country had been well explored during the fur trade era, but settlements were still few and far apart. That pattern is in evidence in the case of Norman Wells, to which I now turn my attention.

Ask any of Canada’s exploration professionals when Western Canada’s oil industry began, and you will get one of two answers. The first is the Dingman #1 discovery, which began disgorging wet gas at Turner Valley in 1914. The second is Imperial’s 1947 oil discovery at Leduc. The more thoughtful industrial historian would probably say Dingman was the critical event for the industry’s early years, while the modern era began at Leduc.

I want to suggest that another event was equally pivotal. The year was 1914. The occasion was an expedition down the Mackenzie River by a British geologist, Dr. T.O. Bosworth. There are direct links between that trip and the modern industry’s birth.

The Bosworth Expedition: Two Calgary businessmen, F.C. Lowes and J.K. Cornwall, commissioned Bosworth’s journey. They wanted to investigate the petroleum potential of northern Alberta and beyond, and to stake the most promising claims. Bosworth did not disappoint. His confidence that the north was highly prospective is apparent on almost every page of his 69-page report.

Bosworth’s own words suggest how ambitious the expedition was. “The undertaking was planned in March 1914,” he says. “In April I consulted with the officers of the Government Geological Survey and other Departments in Ottawa and gathered from them all available information; maps and literature bearing on the subject.

“At the beginning of May, I journeyed from London to Canada accompanied by three assistant geologists and surveyors, and on May 19th, the expedition set out from Edmonton to travel northwards in the Guidance of the Northern Trading Company. We returned to Edmonton September 24th.”

During that period, the Bosworth expedition covered huge distances. And according to his report, there were excellent exploration prospects in three general regions: “The Mackenzie River between Old Fort Good Hope and Fort Norman; the Tar Springs District on the Great Slave Lake; and in the Tar Sand District on the Athabasca River.”

His report offered concise, well-written geological descriptions of rocks, formations and structures. It also included chemical reports on both rocks and oil from the many seepages in the area. Some of his greatest praise came from investigations north of Norman Wells, areas which to this day have not yielded a major oil discovery. “Near Old Fort Good Hope (lat. 67 30’) in the banks of a tributary stream, the shales are well exposed ... from the fossils it is evident that the shales are of Upper Paleozoic Age and probably belong to the Upper Devonian,” he said. “This remarkable series of Bituminous Shales and Limestones, of such thickness and of such richness contains the material from which a vast amount of petroleum might be generated and might pass into an overlying porous rock. It is admirable as an oil generating formation.”

In a discussion of the evidence of good reservoir rock, Bosworth points to a nearby occurrence of “gray clay shales and shaley sandstone,” and to another of “greenish shaley sandstone containing occasional fossils – corals, chenetes and rhynconella.”

Both of the reservoir rocks Bosworth speculates upon lie above the Devonian shales. He was looking specifically for “overlying porous rock” to form the reservoir. It does not seem to have occurred to him that reefs within the shales could have served as reservoirs, even though he specifically noted the presence of Devonian corals.

Before I turn to the outcome of this expedition, which was quite important, I would like to share with you the business advice he gave his clients in the conclusion to his general report. “To avoid all competition,” he said, “I strongly advise that you form a controlling company or syndicate containing the most influential men. I recommend particularly that you arrange matters in such a way that it would be to the obvious advantage of every oil man to join you, and that you freely provide the opportunity so that the Company may include every man who wishes to venture anything in the exploitation of the oilfields of the North. By this means alone can you hope to avoid competition and the unfortunate results which must follow….”

In his report Bosworth noted that he had “investigated” the discovery at Turner Valley. Fifteen months in the drilling, the wet gas discovery came in on May 14, 1914 – just before Bosworth left Edmonton on his expedition. Within 20 years, that discovery would be recognized as “the largest oilfield in the British Empire.” Bosworth, however, was not impressed. In his view, the real potential was in the North.

Believing Turner Valley was doomed to disappoint explorers, he wrote that that “there are a number of oil companies in Western Canada who have capital in hand which must be spent on drilling wells. At this moment they are faced with failure (at Turner Valley), and might gladly turn to any region where there is a genuine reason to expect oil. Any such companies might become associated with your controlling company to the obvious advantage of all parties, on terms which can be mutually arranged...”

After further commentary, he advises his clients in these words: “You would also provide for the transportation; the necessary railroads; the pipe lines, the refineries, and, what is more important than all the rest, and which would give you complete command of the whole situation, all of the oil produced in the region would pass through your hands to be marketed by you.

“If you could succeed in promoting a great scheme on some such lines as these, no smaller rival group could hope to compete against you, and you might eventually be in the position to control the great oil fields of the North.”

One of the great ironies of these comments, of course, is that they came barely three years after the Standard Oil Trust was dismantled for just such anti-competitive practices. In addition, Bosworth completely misread the importance of Turner Valley and the petroleum potential of Alberta, so smitten was he by the North. The practical value of his advice may be seen in the fact that seven decades elapsed before oil from the Norman Wells oilfield actually began flowing to southern markets.

Now, let us push on with our story. Bosworth does not remark on the coming of World War I. However, when he and his men left the world was at peace; when he returned, Europe and the British Empire had become embroiled in that terrible war. He was probably totally unaware of those developments while in the north.

The exigencies of war postponed exploration of Bosworth’s claims. So did the Dingman discovery. The petroleum industry by this time was focused on Turner Valley field development, where standard practice was to strip naphtha from the gas stream and flare the gas itself. By 1918 an Imperial Oil subsidiary, The Northwest Company, had acquired the properties Bosworth had staked for his clients. Imperial had hired Bosworth himself as chief geologist. The company decided to drill on one of those claims.

Imperial Oil Limited’s legendary exploration geologist, Ted Link, led the drilling expedition. By train, scow and riverboat, he and his crew followed Bosworth’s route north to Fort Norman, just south of the Arctic Circle. They had taken with them the wherewithal to assemble a cable-tool drilling rig, and they soon set to work. One valuable member of the party was an ox, which supplied heavy labour during the summer. As the autumn cold began killing off the forage, he delivered steaks and stew.

Before moving on, it is worth noting that the most important early geological work at Norman Wells, including the location of the discovery well, needs to be attributed to Ted Link – not to T.O. Bosworth. In an important 1947 presentation to the AAPG, J.S. Stewart of the Geological Survey of Canada is adamant on this point.

Canol: Imperial’s first well brought in the great Norman Wells discovery, in 1920. However, there was no practical way to get the oil to market. Because demand in the Northwest Territories was marginal, Imperial had little reason to develop the field. However, later in the decade the company constructed a tiny refinery at Norman Wells to supply gasoline and other products to missions, mines, riverboats and other local customers. The company did not need many wells to meet local needs, and did little investigation of the geology of the reservoir.

That changed after Pearl Harbor. When the Americans came into the Second World War, they were extremely concerned about having secure local fuel supplies in the North, especially after Japan took control of a couple of Alaska’s Aleutian islands. They therefore worked with Canada to develop Norman Wells into a source of local oil supply for a refining and distribution complex. This was the beginning of the Canol Project. The name supposedly comes from the contraction of “Canadian” and “oil”, but I suspect the second syllable is actually “oil” with a Texas accent.

Construction crews built a 950-kilometre oil pipeline over the Mackenzie Mountains to a newly constructed refinery in Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory. The pipeline was built over some of the most difficult terrain in the country, and much of the work had to be done in bitter cold. Crews also laid product pipelines to Skagway, Alaska. In total, they constructed 2,560 kilometres of pipeline.

By any standard those lines were terrible. The line ran on top of the ground, alongside the road, often without supports. Vulnerable to frost heaving, snowstorms and flooding, the Canol pipelines were not designed for extreme cold. They were neither installed nor handled properly, and they failed frequently. The crude oil pipeline leaked onto the permafrost. So did the product pipelines, which delivered diesel and gasoline to a fuelling station in Skagway, Alaska.

To meet the needs of the refinery, Imperial drilled more wells, and began to better understand the Norman Wells reservoir. Of particular note, the company discovered that it was a Devonian reef – of earlier vintage than the Leduc and Redwater fields soon to be discovered in Alberta, but still a Devonian reef. That turned out to be the geological key.

By the time the refinery was ready to begin operations, the company had drilled 60 productive wells out of 67 project wells in total. The test for the field came on February 16, 1944 when the pipeline began operating. As a producer of good-quality oil (39° to 41° API), the field surpassed expectations. By October 1944 Norman Wells was producing 4,600 barrels per day by natural pressure.

The extraordinary Canol project did not contribute meaningfully to the war effort. The threat to west coast shipping had disappeared and it was clear that the war would soon be won. First oil flowed through the pipeline in 1944, and the refinery operated for less than a year before being mothballed. Perhaps Canol was the greatest white elephant in petroleum history.

No one really knows how much the project cost – estimates range up to US$300 million, all paid by American taxpayers. However, for the following calculations I will use one of the conservative estimates: $134 million. Total oil production was about 1.5 million barrels. In as-spent dollars, therefore, it cost $89.33 per barrel. The Whitehorse refinery only produced 866,670 barrels of refined product. Dividing that by total project cost, you get $0.97 per litre.

Now, let’s adjust those numbers by official consumer price inflation in the United States. In today’s money, the oil would cost $982 a barrel. The refined products would cost $10.69 a litre. And that’s before taxes!

Later studies of the project’s environmental impact in Whitehorse were revealing. The Canol legacy included the creation of an environmental horror known locally as the Maxwell Tar Pit. Appalling disposal and clean-up practices during the Canol debacle had created an oily mess that was declared an environmentally contaminated site in 1998. Forty years earlier, a man had stumbled into the pit and got stuck. He later died in hospital.

Leduc: Although Canol had little impact on affairs of state, it had a huge impact on oil development in Western Canada. As the result of wartime field development at Norman Wells, Imperial learned that the field’s reservoir rock was Devonian reef. Armed with this knowledge, the company’s geologists – led by Ted Link, who by this time was in charge of Imperial’s exploration efforts – rethought their approach to Western Canada.

This was an important example of thinking outside the box. Other oilmen at the time were on the hunt for big plays that looked, walked and talked like Turner Valley. They would be roughly 340 million years old. They would be thrusted anticlines of Paleozoic age in a Mississippian formation. Much fruitless drilling in the foothills sought the next Turner Valley.

Perhaps we should not give all the credit to Imperial Oil for the geological idea that there might be Devonian reefs in Alberta. In an email, my friend Clint Tippett asked whether GSC mapping of the Rockies west of Edmonton – work undertaken by Helen Belyea, Digby Maclaren and others – influenced Imperial’s thinking. Before the Leduc discovery, Charles Stelck at the University of Alberta also gave thought to the question of Devonian reefs in Alberta.

However Imperial arrived at its revolutionary idea, the importance of its decision to drill for a reef cannot be understated. That geological idea brought forth a series of great discoveries. The first came with the aid of primitive seismic technology, and it was a big one – the famous Leduc #1 discovery well. When it came in to much fanfare on February 21, 1947, Leduc laid the groundwork for one of the world’s great post-war oil booms.

There is another important connection between post-war oil development in Alberta and the Canol project. The refinery built in Whitehorse played an important role in Alberta’s industrial development. Imperial bought the mothballed refinery for one dollar, dismantled it and moved it to Strathcona, near Edmonton. There, the company reassembled it to handle production from Leduc and other post-war discoveries. That refinery laid the foundation for one of Canada’s biggest refining complexes.

As I leave this discussion, a final piece of trivia. Although Imperial is the hero of this drama, I understand that the company’s geologists mapped the Leduc reefs at a 90° angle to their actual orientation. After mapping them correctly, Texaco came to have the dominant position in the Leduc chain of reefs.

Summary: The Norman Wells story illustrates a pattern that turns on its head the American model of petroleum industry development. Briefly put, remote exploration has played a critical role in the industry’s development since the earliest years of oil and gas exploration in this country. Bosworth was wrong in important areas. However, his work greatly influenced that of his successor, Ted Link, who ultimately proved that Devonian reefs were an important key to Canada’s petroleum wealth. That change in thinking paved the way for a series of discoveries which represented the birth of the modern petroleum industry in Canada.

It would be easy to think of Canada’s petroleum industry as one that began in southern Ontario and Alberta, grew wealthy, then began exploring and developing its frontiers. But this model doesn’t fit the facts. Key discoveries and developments took place in remote regions. In the sector’s early years, important discoveries occurred almost independently of settlement, and a great deal of oil and gas development continues to take place in sparsely populated areas. In our frontiers, of course, that pattern is fully intact.

If not for the Bosworth report, Canada’s petroleum industry would have had quite a different history. Imperial Oil’s efforts were heroic – indeed the stuff of legend. Enormously frustrated with its unbroken string of 133 dry holes, Imperial planned the program that yielded Leduc as its last major wildcat play in Alberta. If Leduc had not come in, it is easy to imagine the Devonian oil fields lying fallow for many, many years. No other big players were exploring the prairies.

In the actual case, however, oilmen around the world soon became aware of this important new discovery, and they began to bring expertise and investment into the province. They created one of the first great post-war oil booms, and helped lay the foundation for one of the world’s most diverse and technically advanced petroleum industries.

In respect to its long-term impact, T.O. Bosworth’s 1914 report may have been the most influential geological document in Canadian history. I hope my brief comments today have given you reason to consider that claim.

References:
1. T.O. Bosworth, 1914; “The Mackenzie River between Old Fort Good Hope and Fort Norman; the Tar Springs District on the Great Slave Lake; and in the Tar Sand District on the Athabasca River.”Available at the Glenbow Archives, Calgary; reference number M-8656; 69 pages.
2. J.S. Stewart, 1948; “Norman Wells Oil Field, Northwest Territories, Canada”; in Structure of Typical American Oil Fields, Volume III, pp. 86-109; original paper read before an AAPG meeting in Wichita, Kansas, on January 18, 1947.
3. Peter McKenzie-Brown, 1988; “Two Historical Documents: Notes for an Address to the Petroleum History Society”; online at http://languageinstinct.blogspot.com/2006/09/two-historical-documents.html

The Next Step

An image from Qingcheng mountain, near Chengdu, in Western China

One of the most under-appreciated alternatives to crude oil is biofuel from lowly algae. According to a frequent contributor to this blog, who is developing production in China, algal oil is more than a good alternative. It’s good business.

By David DuByne
Media organizations continue to feed us down-turning economic news. That’s fine for now, but why isn’t anyone talking about the problems we will encounter as the global economy starts to strengthen and recover?

Economists and energy traders are increasingly coming to the same conclusion: When the economy begins to get back on its feet again, there will be an immediate ceiling of resistance due to high energy prices which will once again crash the markets. This recurring cycle will continue until world population begins to decline, the economy permanently contracts to keep step with falling oil supply, or we develop energy alternatives and environmental solutions. Of these choices, developing alternatives is better than standing in a soup line during a prolonged worldwide depression and fighting wars for the world’s remaining energy reserves.

Biofuels
We need substitutes for liquid fossil fuel and it looks as if the current options will have to be combined as a multi-solution approach with each part contributing to the whole. Biofuels are part of the solution.

We have all witnessed dramatic food price increases as our world first produced biofuel using corn, sugar cane, sorghum, canola and palm oil instead of putting that on our plates. Plus, many of these crops could only be harvested twice or three times a year. This led most governments to quickly realize that non-edible feedstock crops were needed on non-arable lands. Second-generation biofuels included jatropha, castor beans and Chinese tallow. Those products have important limitations: multi-year long “seed to harvest” growth times, high transportation costs and the need for additional seed treatment to get refined product.

Problem is, by next year when there are 80 million more mouths to feed on our planet, the availability of farm grown biofuel will diminish even further. The market for fuel is growing with our growing population. But so is the demand for food.

Now we have entered the third generation of biofuel. Algae bio-crude is stepping out in front as a real contender to make a difference as energy demand continues to increase. According to one authority, “In the beginning, there were algae, but there was no oil. Then, from algae came oil. Now, the algae are still there, but oil is fast depleting. In the future, there will be no oil, but there will still be algae.” We argue that common sense dictates that algae biodiesel will become one of the most important biofuels.

Profitability
Alternative methods are great in theory, but in our world “profit is king”. Projects must show a return so investors will seed the investment. Until the solution itself is profitable there will be no change-over. In this area, algae have important advantages. It has multiple product revenue streams from the bio-crude and associated by-products, and it qualifies for carbon tax credits.

As worldwide energy reserves dwindle, the Chinese government has had a serious wake up call and is now aggressively pursuing renewable energy projects including algae biodiesel. Newspapers around the country carry stories of how China is moving down the green path of development. If it’s true, China’s move in a new direction toward algae-derived liquid fuel may leave the west far behind in the number of installed hectares. Since the world’s manufacturing is done in China all they have to do is manufacture and install, the infrastructure is already there.

China can ramp up production on a scale to convert our existing liquid energy production within the next three to five years. It has the resources and motivation. Additionally, since many pollution and environmental problems exist in Asia, solutions could emerge from countries like China to tackle both issues in the energy production chain.

When we look back in history, production follows the same model. First a product is introduced but it is extremely expensive and there is no centralized manufacturing of that product. As more companies start to come out with the same product, than larger scale production begins and the price drops slightly. In the last stage many businesses are manufacturing in a centralized location with prices driven down to the lowest levels that make it affordable for the average person or family. The DVD player is a perfect example. It cost $1500 in the 1980s; now you can buy one for $50.

Algae growing equipment is still in the beginning stage where machinery is expensive and not readily available for the average person or family. DAO Energy intends to change that. I am one of the principals in this company.

Global Solutions
DAO Energy, LLC is an algae bio-diesel company registered in Texas. However, our staff live in Chengdu, in Western China. Our market research has led us to the opinion along with most others in the algae industry that manufacturing cost for photo bio-reactors and grow-out units is the major stumbling block on the way to viable mass production globally.

Our solution is to help algae bio-diesel companies worldwide to inexpensively source, manufacture and commercialize growing systems. This will provide a cheaper alternative for algal production in every country. We seek to cooperate and partner with international companies that wish to reduce material costs by manufacturing in China. These algae growth systems can then be maintained domestically in any country to create local jobs and support energy independence. Additionally, we will produce high quality, inexpensive “off-the-shelf” photo bio-reactors for schools, universities, and private individuals. I personally hope schools will use these as educational tools for students to see where we are heading with renewable energy and solutions that already exist. We are not out to reinvent the wheel, we want to offer basic photo bio-reactors. We want to seed the concept of “algae growth for everyone” at the individual level into the mind of the populace, because if we are going to convert systems for energy production it will take an effort from everyone, individually, not just at the corporate and governmental levels.

Dao Energy is in the process of designing, modeling and building algae bio-fuel prototype equipment with the purpose of lowering material costs and advising on materials sourcing and logistics in China. Local extrusion and injection molding factories already have everything we need right now for production of our “off-the-shelf photo bio-reactor”. There is a tremendous amount of overproduction and idle factories that are looking for different higher value chain products to manufacture. This is the consequence of the economic recession in China.

A close-up of Dao Energy's reactor

Our near-term plans are to build a grow-out photo bio-reactor next to an ammonia plant, sequester their excess CO2 and then harvest and process algae on site at the plant. In the future when algae production does evolve into a global industry this model of local production, local usage can be mimicked everywhere. Eventually, installation of mass grow-out units will increase and as with everything else over time the single dots will connect into a massive web that should cover the planet and provide some assistance as a liquid fuel replacement.

The Sichuan Trump Card
We have been courted by local business owners that have connections to Sichuan government officials who want us to conduct our project in Sichuan province. The reasons include earthquake reconstruction, job creation, environmental cleanup, carbon sequestration and energy production all in one program. Not surprisingly with mandatory CO2 emission compliance just around the corner, carbon credits have been one of the main subjects talked about in our discussions along with oil production.

Sichuan province remained one of the only electrical generation carbon neutral provinces in China as of 2008. In fact, provincial authorities sold all of 2008’s hydroelectric carbon credits to Saudi Arabia in early 2009. As we have been told, the current Chinese time line is three years before emissions controls take effect on a compulsory level and all carbon credit trading or sales go through China Construction Bank (CCB) in Sichuan. There has also been quite a bit of talk about a “Carbon Credit Trading Floor” being started in Sichuan to cover the western part of China. These are the reasons we have chosen Chengdu.

It’s all about Cost
Consider for a moment that we would be squandering our remaining energy reserves and commodities by building new facilities in every country to produce algae growing equipment while existing factories in Asia are unused. If we choose to go down that path it will be one of the greatest wastes of commodities, energy and investment in human history. During the last 15 years investment poured into Asia for this very purpose; centralizing world production of consumer goods. We should use that investment wisely in a way that benefits every nation.

I need to reiterate to everyone that although our system is manufactured in China for a lower cost, the installation, upkeep and repair of the grow-out and bio-reactors units will be done in each individual country along with growing, harvesting, de-watering and pressing of the algae. Refinement of the oil and processing of algae press cake by-products will be handled by companies in the local community. Local and interstate truck drivers will be driving on fuels produced as a supplement to existing nationwide supply chains. This idea of locality can be replicated everywhere.

At the end of the day, whoever manufactures the most affordable equipment will have the ability to produce oil at a lower cost than anyone else. Manufacturing algae bio-fuel equipment in China utilizing existing infrastructure should ultimately lower the cost of machinery, which in turn will lead us to our main objective; the production of inexpensive crude oil and local job creation in every country.

You can contact Dave Dubyne through his website.

Star Power

As fusion power progresses, the Alberta Council of Technologies urges the province to take a leading role in developing the power of the sun This article appears in the August 2009 issue of Oilweek; graphic from here

By Peter McKenzie-Brown
During the Second World War, celebrity physicist Albert Einstein suggested in a now-famous letter to American President Roosevelt that nuclear chain reactions in large masses of uranium could release “vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements.” And, he speculated, “Extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.”

While America had only poor-quality uranium, Einstein noted, “There is some good ore in Canada.” The ore used to create the first atomic bombs came from a rich deposit of uranium and radium along the shores of Great Bear Lake, in the Northwest Territories.

During the long days of summer, a wartime mining company hired local Indian men to carry 40-kilo burlap bags of ore from the mine to the Mackenzie River. They carried those loads for long hours, for months on end. When the bags ripped apart, they shifted the spilled ore off the trail, but took the contaminated bags to their temporary village. Years later, the ore-carriers began dying of cancer, and the community now known as Deline became a village of widows.

Canada was thus an important contributor to the first nuclear age, which was born of the fission of radioactive elements. Within a decade, the United States had made tentative steps toward a different kind of nuclear age – one based on nuclear fusion. This system smashes together light atoms like those of hydrogen. As it turns lighter elements into heavier ones, fusion releases vast amounts of energy.

This is the principle behind the hydrogen bomb. It is star power – the fuel that keeps the Sun and the countless other stars alight. As a human invention, its only practical use has been as an unused weapon of violence and terror. Until now.

"[Fusion ignition] is imminent and will be one of the most extraordinary technologies discovered by mankind. We will be reproducing the physics of the sun.”

On March 10, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California trained 192 high-power lasers onto a point the size of a couple of match-heads. The ensuing reaction generated more than a million joules of energy – enough energy to theoretically light up 10,000 100-watt light bulbs.

The American effort was costly, but its implications were huge. That step suggests the birth of a nuclear age in which virtually limitless amounts of inherently safe and environmentally attractive will be cheaply available.

Compared with carbon or uranium fuels, fusion generates little radiation and no greenhouse gases or air pollution. Since it uses small amounts of fuel, it is likely to have little impact on land and habitat. The day before this extraordinary American achievement, a standing committee of the Alberta Legislature met to consider a proposal by which Canada would become involved in these revolutionary technologies.

Canada would not supply ore, as we do for nuclear fission. After all, the fuels needed for fusion are abundant around the world. Instead, we would help develop technological expertise for the second nuclear age.

Visionaries: The proposal came from a small, minimally-funded and loosely-organized group of visionaries provincially chartered as the Alberta Council of Technologies. Clearly, the goal of the media relations surrounding the meeting with the legislature was maximum public awareness. In this, they certainly succeeded.

The idea is to prove that controlled nuclear fusion can become the world’s energy future. Theoretically, it could provide clean and nearly limitless electrical power for humankind, with everything that implies. It could mean a reversal of global warming and the reversal of policies by which agricultural products are transformed into fuel. According to Dr. Perry Kinkaide, the group’s chairman, his council was asking the province to contribute to a demonstration of fusion ignition.

Fusion ignition, he said, “is imminent and will be one of the most extraordinary technologies discovered by mankind. We will be reproducing the physics of the sun.” When you get into the physics of this “imminent” technology, which talks about creating temperatures so hot (up to 100 million degrees Celsius) that they can only be enclosed by magnetic fields or lasers, it’s like tripping forward through a time-warp. Yet new technologies – demonstrated by the test at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories – have changed the picture.

Adds Allan Offenberger, a retired University of Alberta engineering professor and another program proponent, it is the new technology of “inertial confinement” of the heat of fusion that is changing everything. Inertial confinement uses laser beams to quickly heat to ignition a “fuel pellet” of simple atoms like the commonplace hydrogen isotope deuterium and the much less stable hydrogen isotope tritium. Because this process rapidly induces fusion, you don’t have to confine the fuel at all. The advantage: a relatively simple reaction chamber design.

Even so, this is a long-term proposition. A demonstration project isn’t likely for 25 years, say, with commercial facilities following a decade after that. However, the promise is great. Once the bugs have been worked out, the fusion energy could be very cheap.

To begin to develop expertise in this area, the proposal suggested that the province pony up $4 million this year and commit to another $17 million, total, in the two fiscal years following. The proponents argued that if Alberta scientists don’t get in on the ground floor, they will fall behind in expertise. Joining the project later, they argue, will be more expensive Once the province got its foot in the door, the proponents call for an intensive program of R&D “to develop inertial fusion as a viable energy technology.”

This phase would cost perhaps $40 million per year. Eventually, according to the council, having expertise within the province could lead to commercialization of the technologies. Perhaps the province could become “a provider of high power lasers, reactor systems engineering and related technologies for fusion energy and other applications.”

According to Offenberger, the aim is to create a safe, relatively cheap and clean method of producing electricity based on fusion. One attraction of this form of energy, he says, is that huge amounts of energy could be created with less than a kilogram a day of two types of hydrogen fuel. Also, there is no chance of meltdowns from this form of nuclear energy, which produces no hazardous wastes. The only waste products are heat and, from the size plant the group visualizes, about a kilo of helium per day.

The proposal also points out that there could be huge savings on transmission costs “because (fusion) plants can be located close to electricity users.” Canada is the only major industrial country without a fusion research presence. Given the country’s energy wealth, proximity to the United States and trade surpluses, perhaps that’s not unreasonable. I put the question to someone with the broadest imaginable view of electricity supply and demand within Alberta.

Technological Dominance: At the time of our interview, Martin Merritt was completing his term as the Alberta government’s Market Surveillance Administrator. His job was to make sure electricity and natural gas markets within the province were free and fair. Although he was quick to say he had no expertise in nuclear fusion, he surmised that “The best place to do this would be in the US, where the problems of energy supply, environmental problems, worries about global warming and the need to remain technologically dominant are so powerful. Europe also has those problems. In that sense, the timing seems perfect” to be developing these technologies.

By contrast, he opined, “Alberta’s main reason (to become involved) is that as an important energy power, we have many reasons to have an oar in developing energy technology.” He added that “Alberta needs to get around the (environmental) brush we’ve been tarred with. Perhaps adopting this form of energy could earn us green credits.”

Perry Kinkaide’s Council of Technologies, however, sees an urgent need for Canadian involvement. In a document on the council’s website, the group argues that “The window of opportunity is closing fast for Alberta and Canada to participate in a global partnership for developing ‘fusion,’ the ideal solution for meeting the world’s primary energy requirements – forever! Participation will secure our position as an energy superpower as the world transitions to fusion, with significant socio-economic and environmental spin-off benefits.” In this compelling commentary, the organization addressed “the need for fusion energy and the prospects of a revolutionary new technology for its achievement.”

Citing significant environmental, health and safety implications, it also noted that “the strategic fit of fusion technology with the demands of North America’s coal-based electric power industry as plants reach end-of-service and require replacement.” What is needed immediately, they insist, is an action plan “to ensure Alberta’s and Canada’s place in the emerging fusion-energy economy.” While the notion of fusion energy is closely tied to the generation of electricity, perhaps it could meet an oilsands challenge which went untried during the optimistic early years of the first nuclear age.

Fifty years ago, Richfield Oil Company proposed an experimental plan to release liquid hydrocarbons from the oilsands through the expedient of an underground nuclear explosion. The company proposed detonating a nine-kiloton explosive device below the oil sands at a site 100 kilometres south of Fort McMurray.

Thermonuclear heat would create a large underground cavern and simultaneously liquefy the oil. The cavern could serve as a collection point for the now-fluid bitumen, enabling the company to produce it. This idea came remarkably close to actually taking place. The project received federal approval in Canada, and America’s Atomic Energy Commission agreed to provide the device. But before the pilot could take place, public pressure for an international ban on nuclear testing had mounted.

As the late Ernest Manning once told me, when he was premier the provincial government withheld approval and thus killed the plan. Perhaps in the second nuclear age, energy from nuclear fusion could become a safe and realistic heat source for producing and refining the dense oils Canada is famous for. This idea may sound far-fetched until you consider that in Peace River Shell is already testing the use of electric heaters to refine bitumen carbonates in situ, deep inside underground formations. When you start talking about a second nuclear age, nothing seems impossible.