Scraping the bottom of the barrel

TWENTY-FOUR hours, 365 days a year, trucks the size of three-storey houses roll across an Arctic wasteland, scooping up a sticky sand that has become the holy grail of global oil companies and multinational investors.

In the wake of soaring prices and the hunt for new fuel sources, a vast swathe of western Canada is being mined for its precious “oil sands”. It’s all part of the kind of oil rush that hasn’t been seen for generations in North America.

It’s happening in Alberta, in a town called Fort McMurray where, in the dead of winter, the temperature rarely goes above freezing.