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Getting
the Big Picture at the Oils
Sands Discovery Centre
In the heart of the world's
single biggest oil deposit,
you can see a massive dragline
bucket, an 850 tonne bucketwheel
excavator, and a 150 tonne heavy
hauler with tires 3 metres high.
Visit the province of Alberta's
Fort McMurray Oils Sands Interpretive
Centre to learn more about the
enormous scope and scale of
the oil sands industry.
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The Oil Sands of
Fort McMurray
In the course of his famous 1778 expedition
across the Meythe Portage and down the Clearwater
River to the Athabasca River, explorer Peter
Pond recorded his observations of the bitumen
used by local aboriginals to waterproof
their canoes. But it wasn't until the early
1900's that oils sands research began in
earnest, and Fort McMurray's destiny as
a worldwide center of oils sands technology
and extraction was established.
Since 1967, when the Great Canadian Oils
Sands company (now known as Suncor Energy)
began extracting crude oil from the Athabasca
oil sands on a large scale, Fort McMurray
has been the headquarters of the Canadian
oil sands industry. With the addition of
the Syncrude Canada plant in the mid 1980's,
the city's population base mushroomed. Although
the industry has experienced ebbs and flows
in the past two decades, the oil sands industry
is currently expanding, and remains the
biggest employer of Alberta's Wood Buffalo
Region.
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