Innovation by the barrel

摘要

The mining and in-situ operations steaming bitumen out of the oil sands deposits are this country's most impressive monuments to industrial innovation. The deposits themselves were easy enough to find. We have known about some of them for centuries. The most important discoveries came in the laboratories and field tests after years of hard work and valiant failures, as explored in this issue's Mining Lore (pg. 82) on the development of hot water extraction.