My new flying consisted mostly of work between a major oil company and a global payments technology company that was “everywhere I wanted to be.” Both had great flight departments that were completely different in personality and my learning continued.
The oil company got me back into the deepest darkest reaches of Africa and other intriguing places. The most fascinating trip I helped with was up to Calgary to pick up some of the Canadian executives of the firm and take them out to the oil fields in Ft. MacMurray for an inspection.
I remembered Ft. Mac as a place that was ravaged by wildfires in the summer of 2016. It is located in Northeast Alberta on the Athabasca Oil Sands, a region that is instrumental in Canada’s rise in prominence in the oil industry. I knew they used fracking to extract the oil from the sands and tar pits, but I admit I had only heard the controversy about fracking in the news and wasn’t aware of how the process worked. That was about to change.
We spent a night in Calgary so we could get going early the next day. The flight was a little over an hour, so I planned a quick breakfast for the trip over. I met with the chef in the hotel to get recommendations for the favored local microbrews for the the trip back and some interesting snacks. The in-house prepared thick cut fresh potato chips were worth the effort along with some sliders and the group enjoyed my thoughtful offerings immensely.
As we began our descent into Ft. Mac, I grabbed a window to see what this operation looked like. It was like landing on another planet. I was prepared for the industrial nature of the infrastructure, but the vast barren area shocked the senses.
We flew in low over the pits and the plant that processes the extracted material. The enormity of the operation and the scar it leaves was astonishing. As we landed and rolled out on the runway, I watched the trees of the surrounding forest flash by. Many were nude and others were bleached white. Nothing about those “trees” looked normal. I was curious about their condition.
My guests donned heavy boots and left for the tour. Our crew stayed on the aircraft and prepared it for the trip back. When the plane was ready for the return trip, I sat down for a quick break and in the quiet I noticed an unsettling percussion every few minutes. A deep, muffled “thud” would sound and then the entire G550 would shudder. The plane actually moved. After a bit I asked the pilots about this and they shrugged and said it was probably the fracking process. As the realization set in that there were eruptions every few minutes, I began to grasp the violence of that process. I realized clearly why this procedure caused earthquakes. We were bombing the earth in a new kind of oil war.
The FBO at the field consisted of a large Quonset hut. I headed in to check it out and it seemed to be more of a military base in its starkness inside. The workers were quick to greet me, Carhartts and hard hats seemed to be the dress code. I asked one of them about the trees. The answers were disarming and ranged from questioning which trees exactly did I mean, to assurance that the trees look like that all the time and they would bloom in the Fall. I lived only 60 miles from the Canadian border for over 10 years, and it was not my experience that many trees “bloomed in the Fall.”
I quickly dropped the clearly unwanted inquiries and toured their office and headed back to the jet. Keeping my curiosity to myself, I settled in to relax to the rhythmic thuds and jolting of the aircraft until our guests returned and we would head home.
As we took off, the evaporation ponds for waste water spread out under us and the vast barren wasteland was left behind.
Everyone enjoyed their curated snacks on the way home and I could tell it was just another day for all concerned. I certainly learned a lot and was thankful for the chance to view the operation in person. This isn’t where I want to share opinions on controversial subjects, I was just glad to see it all for myself.
The education continued…
Whitefish Dog and Home 