The Patch: The People, Pipelines, and Politics of the Oil Sands

by Chris Turner

To that end, Chhina throws rhetorical pitches very much like a guy on the mound in the first inning. He talks about next-generation technologies—not just elaborate, expensive bolt-on gear that might sequester carbon dioxide from a SAGD plant deep beneath the ground but also the sci-fi stuff. Technologies that will take a CO2 stream, whether from a SAGD plant’s boiler or a car’s exhaust pipe, and convert it back into a synthetic fuel, closing the emissions loop for good. Or perhaps turning carbon dioxide into a useful material, a replacement for laminated wood tables or steel auto bodies. Research of this sort is already underway in elite university labs. “This is our moon shot,” Chhina says. “How to get to zero emissions.” He betrays no doubt. He’s the confident engineer again, standing at the wellhead, valve in his hand, knowing that when he turns it, the oil will flow. And it will be good.

Construction finally began that winter, and by early 1974 Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site bustled with 1,500 construction workers. But the deal remained tentative as cost estimates grew beyond the initial $1.5 billion to $2 billion or more and the federal government’s new budget arrived with punitive new taxes for oil and gas exports. Then, in the first week of December, one of the Syncrude partners, Atlantic Richfield, summarily quit the consortium, leaving a 30 percent hole in its financing. A mad scramble ensued in search of a solution. Phone calls pinged back and forth between government officials in Edmonton and Ottawa. Finally, on the morning of February 3, 1975, executives from the Syn-crude partner companies and cabinet ministers from the Alberta, Ontario and federal governments met without fanfare and outside the media’s brightest spotlights at an airport hotel in Winnipeg to negotiate a deal to save the project. Lougheed and Ontario premier Bill Davis both attended, along with their energy ministers. Federal mines minister Donald Macdonald represented Pierre Trudeau’s government, accompanied by Trudeau’s ambitious Treasury Board president, Jean Chrétien. Macdonald and Davis, both Upper Canadian patricians in the classic mould, were put off by Lougheed’s blunt style. By midday, the Albertans were convinced Macdonald would not be willing to compromise enough to reach a deal. Rumours in Lougheed’s camp after the fact had it that over lunch, Chrétien persuaded the mines...

interesting that the federal liberals helped save a project they were later vilified for not supporting