Oil Sands Boom Dries Up in Alberta, Taking Thousands of Jobs With it
By IAN AUSTEN: OCT. 12, 2015
FORT McMURRAY, Alberta — At a camp for oilworkers here, a collection of 16 three-story buildings that once housed 2,000 workers sits empty. A parking lot at a neighboring camp is now dotted with abandoned cars. With oil prices falling precipitously, capital-intensive projects rooted in the heavy crude mined from Alberta’s oil sandsare losing money, contributing to the loss of about 35,000 energy industry jobs across the province.
Yet Alberta Highway 63, the major artery connecting Northern Alberta’s oil sands with the rest of the country, still buzzes with traffic. Tractor-trailers hauling loads that resemble rolling petrochemical plants parade past fleets of buses used to shuttle workers. Most vehicles carry “buggy whips” — bright orange pennants attached to tall spring-loaded wands — to help prevent them from being run over by the 1.6-million-pound dump trucks used in the oil sands mines.
The TRUTH will set you FREE.
Published at 12:01AM, October 13 2015
