An empire from a tub of goo

How did the quest to retrieve the treasure hidden beneath huge swaths of northern Alberta go from fool’s errand to monumentous payoff?

Murray Smith remembers what happened on the morning of April 9, 2003, the way other Canadians remember Paul Henderson’s miracle goal against the Russians. For Mr. Smith, then Alberta’s energy minister, the big score was a letter from his federal counterpart south of the border. It was about the oil sands


Mr. Smith had grown up among the oil rigs of central Alberta and bought his first share in an oil company when he was 11 by collecting his older brother’s beer bottles. He had also spent much of his adult life in the oil patch and understood more than most the significance of Mr. Abraham’s message. The endorsement from the world’s hungriest oil consumer was like winning an Oscar. Keen to reduce its dependence on the Middle East, the U.S. was officially acknowledging for the first time that the tarry mud around Fort McMurray could be turned into gasoline, diesel and heating fuel at a profit.

The world finally was acknowledging what Albertans had been saying for decades: that their oil sands rival any source of crude on Earth.