Lease 86, the 4,000-acre tract of land presently being mined by Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. is in northeastern Alberta and has estimated recoverable reserves of 490 million bbl of oil.

The heavy viscous oil is found in the Lower Cretaceous McMurray Formation, which is unconformably on the Devonian strata. Several hypotheses have been expounded on the source and origin of the hydrocarbons; however, the lack of positive proof has not led to the acceptance of any hypothesis.

Modern strip-mining operations, high-powered scrapers, and bucketwheel excavators are used by GCOS to deliver the oil sand to the plant site, where a hot-water separation process extracts the bitumen from the mixture of sand, shale, and clay. The bitumen is upgraded to a high-quality synthetic crude in the refinery and delivered by means of a 16-in. pipeline to the Interprovincial Pipeline system at Edmonton for shipment to eastern refineries.

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