Poster child for oil sands
Drew Zieglgansberger politely shows off as he tours visitors around Cenovus Energy Inc.` s Christina Lake oil sands project, an operation the industry believes will define the future of energy developments in northern Alberta.
He challenges them to spot seismic lines that cut never-ending swaths out of boreal forest, which are there but harder to spot from the ground now that their paths are jagged and narrower than in the past. He boasts how the wooden mats his company uses for machinery roads when installing pipelines reduce environmental destruction. He points out dirt bridges that serve as wildlife crossings built over suspended snakes of pipeline.
Christina Lake, after all, is essentially a drilling project, rather than a strip mine.
"Fundamentally, we should be able to reclaim [the disturbed natural environment] sooner," said Mr. Zieglgansberger, the vice-president in charge of Christina Lake. The 35-year-old started in the oil-and-gas industry as a roughneck, the bottom rung of the energy hierarchy, and is now in charge of one of Canada`s premier oil sands operations.
Without doubt, the oil sands project here, 120 kilo-metres south of Fort McMurray, is a visual victory for the industry. It looks nothing like the giant eyesores that are the oil sands open-pit mining operations, so often held up by green groups as proof of all that is wrong with the huge developments. At Christina Lake, for example, pipes replace the enormous trucks and diggers used in the oil sands open pits; the pristine forests are sliced by seismic lines and small patches of clear-cutting, rather than being replaced by massive strip mines; and as for the toxic tailings ponds, there are none and never will be.
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