by Morgen Jahnke

Picture of a part of the world covered with enormous sand dunes. You may be thinking of a desert in Africa, Asia, or the southwestern United States. But there’s another place, above the 49th parallel, where you can find such sand dunes—Saskatchewan, Canada. Many of my compatriots from other parts of Canada love to make fun of how topographically dull Saskatchewan is; they say it’s an endless expanse of flatness, with no trees or hills. But this western Canadian province is full of surprises. Although the southern half of the province—where you’ll find major cities such as Regina and Saskatoon—is mostly prairie grasslands, the northern half is a wild expanse of rivers, lakes, and coniferous forests. It even has a salt lake with a mineral density greater than that of the Dead Sea, Lake Manitou (Cree for “Lake of Good Spirit”). And furthermore, Cypress Hills, in the southeastern corner of the province, is the highest point in Canada between Labrador and the Rockies. Besides, you can’t claim that a piece of land twice the size of Italy and almost as big as Texas could have so little range (pardon the pun). Is my defensiveness showing? And did I mention the glorious sunsets?

The sand dunes I mentioned earlier are associated with a body of water—Lake Athabasca, the province’s largest lake. Located in the far northwest of Saskatchewan, almost at the border with the Northwest Territories, Lake Athabasca is accessible only by floatplane, there being no roads that go that far north. On the south side of the lake, there is a natural geological formation that is unique and surprising to find at this northern latitude—the Athabasca Sand Dunes. In places 30 meters (98 feet) high, and stretching 100 km (62 miles) along the shore of Lake Athabasca, the Athabasca Sand Dunes are the world’s largest area of active sand dunes north of 58 degrees latitude.

Don’t Desert Me
Although we often associate sand dunes with deserts, in the case of the Athabasca Sand Dunes, this doesn’t hold true. For one thing, deserts are identified by their lack of water, and not only do these dunes border 7,850 square kilometers (3,030 square miles) of water, they also contain significant patches of water in places, percolating up from the shallow water table below. Another feature of deserts—limited plant and animal life—does not hold true for these sand dunes either. In fact, of the 300 plant species that grow in the dunes, there are 10 species that are endemic (found nowhere else in the world), and another 42 species that are considered rare in the province. Not that the dunes are entirely welcoming to the local flora. Because the dunes are active, shifted by wind and eroded by water, they are constantly on the move. Visitors to the region tell of seeing entire stands of skeletal trees emerging from the sand—once above ground and flourishing, these trees were slowly buried by the shifting sand, and now are revealed by further dune movements.

Icing on the Lake
So, if these sand dunes are not a desert ecosystem, created by extreme drought and aridity, how were they formed? The short answer is: the glaciers did it. The sand dunes are the product of the Athabasca sandstone formation, originally a delta in a freshwater lake created out of materials eroded from ancient mountain ranges by glaciers and rivers one billion years ago. These materials were eventually compressed into sandstone, and later still, eroded by wind, water, and glaciers to create the sand dunes that exist today. Of course, I find the native Dene legend about the dunes’ creation more interesting—that a giant man speared a giant beaver, which thrashed and ground the earth with its tail, making soil into sand.

Sand by Me
Although I’ve never been to the Athabasca Sand Dunes, I do hope to see them one day. Until I do, it makes me happy just to know that they are there, a concrete affront to all those who say that Saskatchewan is nothing more than a boring strip of land between the Alberta and Manitoba borders. And did I mention the sunsets? —Morgen Jahnke

Morgen Jahnke is a native of Saskatchewan, Canada, now living in Paris.

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More Information about Athabasca Sand Dunes...

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Saskatchewan has an area of 651,942 sq. km, compared to Italy at 301,230 sq. km and Texas at 695,673 sq. km.

The Athabascan Adventure site chronicles one family’s 23 day canoe trip odyssey in the Athabasca Sand Dunes area.

Athabasca Eco Expeditions gives guided tours of the Athabasca Sand Dunes.

To learn more about Manitou Lake, see Lake of the Healing Waters A History of Manitou Beach.

For more information on the dunes, read Northern Sandscapes: Exploring Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Sand Dunes by Robin Karpan. Also see Northern Saskatchewan Canoe Trips: A Guide to Fifteen Wilderness Rivers by Laurel Archer.

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For the last few years, I’ve led a blissfully car-free (though not carefree) life. I’ve been vaguely aware that the price of gasoline has gone up quite a bit, but not having to buy it myself, I haven’t felt much of a personal impact. I am, however, keenly aware of the many lives lost in the name of oil, not to mention the environmental problems to which it contributes—air and water pollution, global warming, and so on. And oil is destined to become more expensive still as the planet’s finite reserves are depleted. Call me naïve, but it seems to me that any reasonable person would have to conclude we should all do whatever we can to reduce our need for, and use of, the stuff. So when I learn about yet another potential source of oil that could keep our cars running a few more decades, I must confess my first thought is not, “Great! Less dependence on foreign oil!” Instead, I’m thinking, “Drat! Another blow to solar and wind power, another step backward environmentally.”

That rather large disclaimer aside, I do find one particular source of oil increasingly interesting, not least because obtaining the oil requires some impressive feats of engineering. I’m referring to the vast amount of tar-impregnated sand in the Canadian province of Alberta, which some experts are hailing as the world’s largest and most important oil reserve.

A Sticky Situation
The first of many problems with this stuff is what to call it. In Canada, the term oil sands is most often used to describe the deposits, while in the U.S. they are more commonly known as tar sands—a bit of a misnomer since technically, tar is an artificially manufactured product. In any case, it’s a thick, sticky, and smelly mixture of clay, sand, water, and bitumen—a naturally occurring mixture of liquid hydrocarbons, or crude oil. Once separated from the sand and minerals, the crude oil is sometimes referred to as heavy oil, though that term is often used interchangeably with “oil sands” or “tar sands” as well.

Where did the oil sands come from? The sand itself was undoubtedly deposited by ancient rivers. As for the oil, the prevailing theory is that it began as a lighter oil that formed deep underground some distance away and was pushed by geologic pressure to its current location. After being absorbed into the sand, it gradually thickened due to bacterial action.

The sheer quantity of oil sands in Alberta is staggering: the equivalent of an estimated 1.6 trillion barrels of oil, of which at least 300 billion barrels are recoverable—considerably more than in, say, Saudi Arabia. But getting the oil from the ground to your car is a mammoth undertaking. Because the oil sands contain less than 20% bitumen, it takes about two tons of oil sand to yield one barrel of oil. And this oil doesn’t squirt out of the ground for your convenience.

Oil and Water
Most of the oil sands are not on or near the surface of the ground; workers must sometimes dig 200 feet (61m) or more to reach the deposits. Because the oil sand is both heavy and sticky, even more effort is required to bring it to the surface. Furthermore, extracting the oil from the sandy mixture is no mean feat. Because the tarry substance is much too viscous to flow through pipes, it has to be shoveled out and carted away in gigantic dump trucks. Before it can be used, the bitumen must be separated from the sand. There are several techniques to achieve this, but all of them involve large quantities of water and elaborate equipment. To oversimplify somewhat, oil companies blend the oil sand with water, and sometimes solvents, until the mixture becomes thin enough that the sand and the bitumen can separate (sometimes with the help of a centrifuge). The reliance on water makes the process all the more challenging in winter, when temperatures of –40° (C/F) in Alberta are not uncommon. Once the sand and water are removed, the bitumen must be processed further under high heat to remove impurities and break it down into a more useful and smoother-flowing oil. Even then, it must go through multiple refinement stages to become fuel.

Given all the time, effort, and equipment needed to recover usable oil from oil sands, the cost of production is quite high—about three times that of drilling for oil. However, this is a tremendous improvement over the situation a few decades ago, when production costs far outweighed the value of the oil recovered. Improvements in technology are slowly but steadily making the process even more cost-effective. One technique, for example, involves forcing steam into a deep well to melt the bitumen so that it will flow to the surface—without the sand. Besides reducing transportation and refining expenses, steam extraction also provides access to bitumen that’s too deep for conventional mining.

Slippery Slope
As challenging as it is to extract oil from oil sands, Alberta is already producing upwards of 600,000 barrels a day, a figure that’s likely to triple within a decade. Oil sand deposits in several other parts of the world—notably Venezuela—are being exploited with equal success. And yet, even as output increases and costs decrease, other problems loom large. Most conspicuously, the mining operations are often devastating to the landscape and vegetation. The separation and refining process requires a great deal of heat, which usually comes from natural gas—consuming one natural resource to get access to another. And the equipment used to extract and process the oil sands also creates a significant amount of air pollution.

Still, if I were the type of person who invested in new methods of energy production, I’d bet heavily on oil sands to make a fortune in a few years. Then just think how much solar energy research I could fund! —Joe Kissell

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