Megastructures: Black Gold (Oil Mine) – Nat Geo Documentary (2005)

By Sandeep on Aug 15, 2012 with Comments 0

Megastructures: Black Gold: This Nat Geo documentary film is about oil deposits worth trillions situated in Canada. Taking out crude oil from the ground means you need giant rigs and a mega size refinery. The biggest oil companies are going head to head in a race to build the ultimate oil sands mines. Currently, a ten million dollar mega project that covers over a hundred thousand hectors of ground is going on in the region, housing almost twelve thousand workers who work tirelessly under extreme climatic conditions to take out crude oil from the ground.

At Alberta, big oil companies are going to every possible length to take out the reserves from the ground, no matter what the cost in dollars or impact to the natural environment is. It is a massive undertaking that requires the parade of giant machines and megastructures that scoop, hold, extract and refine.

Even though the oil reserves are right under the feet, they are not easy to extract. The oil is in the dark sticky form called bitumen, mixed with soil to form very massive mixtures, which can only be extracted by the greatly powerful machineries. Extracting the oil from this dark heavy mixture is a very expensive process but to meet the increasing demands of oil, this is being done here every day in enormous quantities.

A few decades ago, this business was considered to be expensive and not very profitable but now days oil companies are dwelling to make a place within the region. Millions of dollars are being invested to drill out oil and convert it into useful products every day. Black Gold, Nat Geo documentary film of Megastructures series is Produced by Daniel Miller.