The Patch
CBC Books | | Posted: August 3, 2017 7:39 PM | Last Updated: December 20, 2018
Chris Turner
The Patch is the story of Fort McMurray and the oilsands in northern Alberta, the world's second largest proven reserve of oil. But this is no conventional story about the oil business. Rather, it is a portrait of the lifecycle of the Patch, showing just how deeply it continues to impact the lives of everyone around the world.
In its heyday, the oilsands represented an industrial triumph and the culmination of a century of innovation, experiment, engineering, policy and finance. Fort McMurray was a boomtown, the centre of a new gold rush, and the oilsands were reshaping the global energy, political and financial landscapes. But in 2008, a new narrative emerged. As financial markets collapsed and the cold, hard, scientific reality of the Patch's effect on the environment became clear, the region turned into a boogeyman and a lightning rod for the global movement combatting climate change. Suddenly, the streets of Fort McMurray were the front line of a high-stakes collision between two conflicting worldviews — one of industrial triumph and another of environmental stewardship — each backed by major players on the world stage.
The Patch is a narrative-driven account of this ongoing conflict. It follows a select group of key characters whose experiences in and with the oilsands overlap in concentric narrative arcs. Through this insightful combination of global perspective and on-the-ground action, The Patch will show how the reach of the oilsands extends to all of us. From Fort Mac to the Bakken shale country of North Dakota, from Houston to London, from Saudi Arabia to the shores of Brazil, the whole world is connected in this enterprise. And it demands that we ask the question: In order to both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch? (From Simon & Schuster)
From the book
On any given day, well before dawn in the interminable boreal winter and long after the sun has risen on the longest days of the bright boreal summer, the traffic in Fort McMurray streams out onto Highway 63. The flow is heaviest by far in the northbound lanes, heading to the big oil sands mining sites north of town that employs workers by the thousands. There are oil sands projects south of the city as well, but those are drilling operations for in situ oil sands deposits, deeply buried bitumen seams extracted by drilling operations that require far fewer workers than the mines. Twelve-hour shifts are the norm here, fourteen-hour shifts not uncommon. And though the traffic, like the industry itself, goes around the clock, it is heaviest during the morning and evening shift changes, just before six in the morning and after six in the evening. Every day.
From The Patch by Chris Turner ©2017. Published by Simon & Schuster.