Project Oilsand, also known as Project Oilsands, and originally known as Project Cauldron, was a 1958 proposal to exploit the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta via the underground detonation of up to 100 nuclear explosives; hypothetically, the heat and pressure created by an underground detonation would boil the bitumen deposits, reducing their viscosity to the point that standard oilfield techniques could be used. The proposal was devised by geologist Manley L. Natland at Los Angeles–based Richfield Oil Corporation. The project was conceived of as part of Operation Plowshare, a United States project to harness the nuclear explosions for peaceful applications.
History The use of nuclear weapons for oil and gas extraction was first theorized by American geologist Manley L. Natland, of the Richfield Oil Company in 1956. Natland was working on location in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia and contemplated using the immense heat of a nuclear explosion while watching the sun set. Natland posited that drilling a deep borehole and detonating a nuclear weapon would result in an immense release of heat and energy which would crush and melt surrounding rock, separate oil from sand, and create an underground cavity where the oil would pool for conventional extraction. This method could be effective for the oil reserves of the McMurray Formation, which could not be viably exploited with the technology of the time as it buried deep underground and highly viscous. Natland was dispatched by Richfield to Alberta's Athabasca oil sands in 1957 to scout possible drilling locations, which he found at the Pony Creek site, 8.7 km northwest from the nearest settlement of Chard. Pony Creek was chosen for six reasons: the absence of people and infrastructure, absence of developed oil fields which could be affected by the detonation, the Crown rights to the surface and mineral rights, significant estimated amount of oil to make the experiment viable, the depth of the oil sands deposit could contain the detonation, and the oil quality was high enough to be processed. Richfield entered into an exploration lease on Crown land in the area with Imperial Oil and City Service Athabasca Incorporated for 2 million acres (8,100 km2) of land and mineral rights. Prospects for Natland's hypothesis were boosted by two recent experiments, the Rainier Shot experiment in 1957 where a 1.7 kt underground nuclear test resulted in no fission products vented into the atmosphere, and the conventional explosion at Ripple Rock to remove an underwater mountain in April 1958. With the knowledge of the successful tests, Richfield executives met with United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Willard Libby and members of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory including proponent of non-military use of nuclear weapons Edward Teller, on May 9, 1958, to discuss the oilsands proposal and begin the process of procuring a nuclear weapon. Richmond received support and interest from the meeting, as the American government saw the value of a new source of strategic oil reserves. However, some experts had doubts. In 1959, oil sands pioneer Robert Fitzsimmons of the International Bitumen Company wrote a letter to the Edmonton Journal, saying "While the writer does not know anything about nuclear energy and is therefore not qualified to make any definite statement as to it's [sic] results he does know something about the effect dry heat has on those sands and ventures a guess that if it does not turn the whole deposit into a burning inferno it is almost sure to fuse it into a solid mass of semi glass or coke."
Alberta reaction On June 5, 1958 (one month after the Richfield Oil Corporation's meeting with the Atomic Energy Commission), Natland and executives from Richfield met with Hubert H. Somerville, Alberta's deputy minister of mines and minerals. Somerville was supportive of the idea, and relayed it to Premier Ernest Manning who was interested in exploring the concept. Richfield executives discussed their proposal with a group of federal regulators, including John Carvey and Alexander Ignatieff from the Mines Branch of the federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, as well as Donald Watson of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and Alexander Longair of the Defence Research Board. An investigative committee was formed with the support of Alberta's Social Credit government. One of the committee's early recommendations was that, in order to minimize public fears, a "less effervescent name" should be used; Project Cauldron was subsequently renamed Project Oilsand.
In April 1959, the Federal Mines Department approved Project Oilsand. Pony Creek, Alberta (103 kilometres [64 miles] from Fort McMurray) was selected as a test site. However, between the Canadian government's increasingly anti-proliferation stance and concerns that Project Oilsands would increase the risk of Soviet espionage, the project was put on hiatus. In April 1962, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs Howard Charles Green said "Canada is opposed to nuclear tests, period." Project Oilsand was subsequently cancelled. These changes in Canadian public opinion are regarded by historian Michael Payne to be due to the shift in public perception of nuclear explosives following the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker told Parliament that the decision to detonate an atomic bomb on or under Canadian soil would be made by Canada, not the United States, and ordered that Project Cauldron/Oilsands be placed on permanent hold, citing the risk of upsetting the Soviet Union during nuclear disarmament negotiations being conducted in Geneva. Ultimately, conventional fracking techniques proved cheaper than those proposed by Project Oilsands. The risk engendered by nuclear contamination was also significant.
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