This is a color film, produced in 1967 by Bechtel corporation called, “The Fabulous Oil Sands”. The film looks at the development of the Athabasca Tar Sands, one of largest petroleum deposits in the world, and its effect on the nearby community of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.

The film features photography by William Heick, supplementary photography by Richard Finney and Kenneth R.L. Hill and a Script and Narration by Richard Finney. The movie opens with some heavy excavation units digging into the site of a quarry wall and then an aerial view of Edmonton, capital of Alberta 1:00. The city streets of Alberta 1:20. A map of Edmonton is shown in shows the distance to Fort McMurray. Peter Pond visited Fort McMurray in the 18th century as a fur trader. Aerial view of Fort McMurray 2:00. The railroad depot called Waterways is shown 2:33. Steamship pushes a barge, 2:40. 1940s seaplane at Fort McMurray 3:00. Outcroppings at Fort McMurray 3:35. Max W. Ball, built a plant in 1936, with Canadian capital opened Abasand Oils, Ltd in 1940. Trains taking military equipment to Waterways to expedite the building and launching of barges for the war effort 4:40. The Canoil project. 4:43. Equipment on barges 5:13. Scientist test sand for oil 5:52. Sun Oil and Great Canadian Oil Sands (GCOS) Limited. 6:30. Forest clearing on Tar Island, 7:00. Aerial view of plant 7:15. GCOS and Bechtel do oil experiments at the plant 7:35. Edmonton businessmen sit down 8:05. Bechtel designers 8:21. Disassembling scale model of the plant, 8:38. Building of the plant begins 9:50. Plant workers board a bus to boarding house 10:15. The mess hall and the crew eats 10:35. Curling lanes for the men, 11:34. Man commutes to work by dogsled 12:11. Supplies are trucked in over icy winter roads 12:50. The Alberta Athabasca Bridge opens 13:20. Oil tankers come down the road with crude and equipment 13:45. Fort McMurray expands 14:41. Construction at Tar Island 15:00. Aerial view of the new refinery 15:50. Superstructures are built 16:10. Buildings are insulated for the second winter of plant building 17:43. Men lay the first pipeline for the refinery 18:30. Men fill in dirt over the pipeline 19:30. Workers try to keep warm in the frigid cold 20:00. Truckers continue to bring equipment to the site 20:18. Two giant bucket wheel excavators are brought, in exported from Germany, to dig out tar sand 21:20. The ice flow under the Alberta Athabasca Bridge 22:00. Testing of bucket wheel excavators. TCO control room 22:40. Older houses versus new ones in Fort McMurray after plant development. Aircraft land on paved runways in Fort McMurray. Opening Day luncheon for the plant 25:00. J. Howard Pew gives a speech 25:12. GCOS president, Clarence Thayer is honored 27:23. Robert McClements, JR gives a speech of welcome 28:03. An electric shovel is shown digging the sand 28:40. Dump trucks dump the sand 29:00. Bucket wheel excavators mine the tar sand 29:25. Tar sands are moved by conveyor into primary extraction plant 30:00. Sand is fed into conditioning drums with steam and caustic 30:30. Bitumen separation 30:47. Bitumen pumping station 31:40. Diluted bitumen goes into the storage tanks 32:00. Gas and oil power tanks 32:45. Coke is burned to use steam to power the plant 33:00. Blending tanks that lead to pipeline 33:48. Ernest C Manning the premiere of Alberta makes a speech 34:31. Sidney Blair, petroleum engineer wrote first oil report in 1950.Sid Blair’s original report is shown 36:30. Aerial view of finished plant 37:00.

The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada – roughly centered on the boomtown of Fort McMurray. These oil sands, hosted primarily in the McMurray Formation, consist of a mixture of crude bitumen (a semi-solid rock-like form of crude oil), silica sand, clay minerals, and water. The Athabasca deposit is the largest known reservoir of crude bitumen in the world and the largest of three major oil sands deposits in Alberta, along with the nearby Peace River and Cold Lake deposits (the latter stretching into Saskatchewan).

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com