Alberta's Booming Oil Sands Boast Cold Weather, Hot Market - ENR | McGraw-Hill Construction

Description:
One of the biggest and most remote jobsites in the world lies in the vast emptiness of northern Alberta’s oil sands. North of Fort McMurray, which lies on the 56th parallel north, one degree up from Moscow, an assemblage of oil producers and construction workers are scrambling to ramp up production as the price of oil bounces between $90 and $100 a barrel. With production costs under $30, profit margins are huge. Arctic blasts whip across the boreal forest and muskeg plain once or twice a season, dropping temperatures to minus 40 degrees, where Celsius and Fahrenheit meet. But even that bone-rattling wind cannot chill the bonanza.

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