Athabasca tar sands
The Athabasca oil sands are an oil sands deposit-District Wood Buffalo in Alberta in western Canada . It is named after the Athabasca River and the region's largest city is Fort McMurray . The Athabasca deposit is by far the largest of the three oil sands deposits in Alberta.
General
The oil sands in Alberta is a mixture of an average of 83% sand , 10% bitumen , 4% water and 3% clay . The sand consists of 92% quartz grains, the remaining 8% are grains of other minerals such as mica , pyrite , rutile , zircon and tourmaline . Athabasca oil sand is generally referred to as “hydrophilic”, although this characterization is problematic in two respects (see → “Hydrophilicity” of oil sands ).
Often, oil sands are generally referred to in German as “tar sand”, a literal translation of the English word “ tar sand ”. The bitumen contained in the oil sand is a naturally occurring in nature, volatile ( "light") constituents strongly depleted (degraded) and therefore very viscous or even solid oil . Viscous bitumen is actually also called " tar " in the oil geology of the English-speaking world . In German, however, “ tar ” is the name for a product of the distillation of organic material. The term “tar sand” should therefore be avoided when actually referring to oil sand. Heavy oil in the petroleum geological sense is also depleted petroleum, but less degraded than bitumen and therefore not as highly viscous.
The bitumen content in the sands is between 1% and 18%. Mining oil sands with a bitumen content below 6% is currently considered unprofitable. On average, it takes 2 tons of oil sands to make one barrel (159 liters) of synthetic crude oil.
Around 1.8 trillion barrels of bitumen are stored underground in the province of Alberta , of which around 169 billion barrels are considered recoverable (as of 2013). The distribution area of this "Alberta oil sands" covers an area of around 140,000 km² and, in addition to Athabasca, also consists of the two smaller oil sands deposits Cold Lake and Peace River. In addition, there is an estimated 5.5 billion tons of heavy fuel oil that is stored southeast of the Athabasca district near Lloydminster in the border region with Saskatchewan . Alberta also has potentially minable reserves of a maximum of 20 billion barrels of conventional oil (as of 2013). In 2012, an average of 1.9 million barrels of raw bitumen was extracted from the oil sands every day. Of this, 556,000 barrels were processed into synthetic crude oil. In 2006, 42 percent of Canada's oil production was synthetic crude oil made from oil sands. In Alberta, oil sands production accounted for 62 percent of total crude oil, heavy oil, and raw bitumen production in the province. An increase to 86 percent was expected by 2016.
geology
The Athabasca tar sands are stored in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin . The sands impregnated with bitumen in minable quantities are part of the geologically more recent filling of this basin (Rocky Mountains foreland phase). They are of lower Cretaceous age ( Barrême - Apt ) and belong to the McMurray formation. This formation consists in the deeper part of quartz sand (92% SiO 2 content) and siltstones (" Lower McMurray ") and in the higher part of sandstones with intermediate silt and clay layers (" Upper McMurray "). It lies discordantly on Devonian carbonate rocks ( waterways formation). The McMurray Formation erupts in the valley of the Athabasca River and is covered to the east and west by up to 800 m younger sediments ( Clearwater Formation, Alb ; Quaternary loose sediments). Oil sands occur in both the lower and upper portions of the formation. The deposits of the McMurray Formation are interpreted as fluvial ( Lower McMurray ) as well as deltaic and neritic ( Upper McMurray ) sediments.
The oil sands deposits were probably formed during the unfolding of the Rocky Mountains. As a result of the pressure exerted on the foreland by the mountain formation, relatively low-viscosity crude oil from the primary reservoir rocks in the Devonian carbonates of the Waterways Formation pushed into the uncemented Cretan sandstones above . There the oil was due to the relative proximity to the earth's surface due to the loss of the highly volatile constituents, u. a. as a result of the activity of microorganisms ( biodegradation ), finally converted into tough bitumen.
Dismantling and processing
|
|
|
|
Left: Satellite image of the northern part of the “Millennium Mine” of Suncor Energy and associated infrastructure. The big river in the left half of the picture is the Athabasca River.
Right: Part of the opencast mine as well as sulfur heaps and settling basins (“Syncrude tailings pond”) of the Syncrude “Mildred Lake” processing plant . |
||
In the areas where the oil sands near the surface or under a cap rock with more than 75 meters in thickness are pending , they can profitably in the open pit , u. a. using large shovel rope excavators and large dump trucks such as the Liebherr T282 (but see → Profitability and effects of the global economic crisis ). This potentially affects 20% of the Athabasca deposit. In fact, open pit mines can only be built on a total area of 4800 square kilometers to the left and right of the Athabasca River north of Fort McMurray , and as of December 31, 2012, the open pit actually only covered an area of 767 km². The oil sands extracted in the open pit are then treated to separate the bitumen from the mineral components and the raw bitumen obtained in this way is partially processed into synthetic crude oil (see → Oil sands processing ).
So-called in-situ methods are used when the overburden is thicker (60 meters and more) . The bitumen is mobilized and pumped out directly in the subsoil via boreholes using heat or solvents. In the Athabasca oil sands area, currently (2015) the so-called Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is practically exclusively used, in which hot water vapor is pressed into the deposit. In 2012, the proportion of in-situ extracted bitumen in Alberta was for the first time greater than the proportion of bitumen from oil sands extracted in open pit mines. However, low-risk in-situ extraction is not possible in the entire Athabasca district, but only where the McMurray Formation is overlaid by the Clearwater Formation with its basal claystone (Lower Clearwater Shale), as only this is a sufficiently dense and gives off stable cover rock. But even there, under certain circumstances, injected fluids (especially water vapor) can escape to the surface of the terrain and potentially cause damage to people and material. One such “ blowout ” occurred on May 18, 2006 in the area of Total's Joslyn Creek project . Rocks up to 1 meter in diameter were ejected and part of the ejected material fell up to 250 meters from the blowout point.
One of the largest man-made structures is the “Syncrude Tailings Dam”, which surrounds the sedimentation basin of the “Mildred Lake” (“ Syncrude tailings pond ”). Overburden from the adjacent opencast mines and / or the coarse-grained residues from bitumen processing were and are used to fill the dam .
Participating companies
The following companies are involved in oil sands extraction and processing with the following projects (as of 2015, projects in small print have not yet got beyond the planning phase):
|
|
Engagement of German research institutions
At the beginning of 2012, a cooperation between the University of Alberta and the German Helmholtz Association called the Helmholtz-Alberta Initiative was set up. Research tasks named include improving the CO 2 balance of oil sands production by examining the possibilities with regard to the use of geothermal energy in oil sands processing and with regard to the separation and sinking of CO 2 underground as well as the development of concepts for the renaturation of disused opencast mines. For this purpose, around 25 million dollars from German tax funds were available. Due to public criticism of the cooperation, especially after Canada's exit from the Kyoto Protocol , all research projects that dealt directly or indirectly with oil sands extraction were discontinued in 2013. Projects related to the general reduction of CO 2 emissions will be followed up.
Export and transport routes
The USA, one of the largest economic powers in the world, is highly dependent on oil and the main buyer of Canadian oil. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) even stipulates that the high proportion (around two thirds) that exports to the USA make up of total Canadian oil production must not be reduced by government measures on the Canadian side. In this way, the USA is securing a certain independence from oil from potentially politically or actually unstable oil producing countries, for example in the Middle East or the Maghreb . The raw bitumen and crude oil obtained from the Athabasca oil sands are also exported to the USA. It is transported by rail, among other things. However, a very large part reaches the USA via pipelines (the bitumen is diluted for this, see “Synbit” and “Dilbit” ). One of these pipelines is Alberta Clipper , which runs from Hardisty in southwest Alberta via Saskatchewan, Manitoba and North Dakota to Superior (Wisconsin) on Lake Michigan and was completed in 2010. The original capacity of the nearly 1,100-kilometer pipeline is 450,000 barrels per day. Currently (2015) the expansion is taking place to 540,000 barrels per day, and a potential of 800,000 barrels should be possible. The 2800-kilometer Keystone Pipeline also went into operation in 2010 , which also runs from Hardisty via Saskatchewan, Manitoba and North Dakota, but continues from there via South Dakota , Steele City in Nebraska , Kansas and Missouri to Wood River (Illinois) . In 2011, a 480-kilometer southern route from Steele City to Cushing (Oklahoma) was connected and put into operation . The construction of a total of around 2,700 kilometers long, through Montana to Steele City and from Cushing to the Texas Gulf Coast, called "Keystone XL" , was launched by the incumbent US President Barack Obama at the end of 2011 after massive protests by environmentalists, several Nobel Prize winners and celebrities Personalities like Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama stopped for the time being. While the construction of the route through Montana, with a planned transport capacity of approx. 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day, is still on hold, the extension of the southern route to the Gulf of Mexico was finally built and completed in 2014.
Additional new pipelines were originally planned to complement Keystone: including one to the west coast of Canada near Kitimat (British Columbia) under the name Northern Gateway , and one to the east coast near Saint John (New Brunswick) under the name Energy East . With a length of 4,400 kilometers, the latter would be the longest pipeline in North America. Protests from nature and environmental conservationists formed against both projects. Under the Trudeau government, in office since the end of 2015 , the permits issued by the previous government were revised and made stricter environmental requirements, whereupon the companies involved TransCanada (Energy East) and Enbridge (Northern Gateway) suspended both projects. Also controversial is the expansion of Edmonton to the southwest to refineries in Vancouver and Anacortes leading Trans Mountain Pipeline ( Trans Mountain pipeline expansion ). entire paragraph after
Profitability and Effects of the Great Depression
Just as, for example, the extraction of shale gas by fracking is more expensive than the extraction of natural gas from conventional deposits, oil sands extraction is also more expensive than the extraction of conventional crude oil. After mining in the open pit, the bitumen must first be separated from the sand fraction in several work steps and then processed into synthetic crude oil (see → Oil sand processing ). With in-situ extraction, at least the separation of sand and bitumen is not necessary. In addition, the synthetic crude oil ( Athabasca crude ) is of lower quality than the "standard grades " Brent and WTI and therefore achieves a price of 20 to 30 US dollars less per barrel . The lower profitability limit for oil sands production is therefore at a world market oil price (Brent / WTI) of 65 to 80 dollars per barrel. For the production in the open pit it should even be up to 100 dollars per barrel. However, these price limits only apply to new or the expansion of existing oil sands projects. In particular, open-cast mining is more comparable to a mining project than to a "classic" oil production project. Most of the costs are incurred in the construction phase with the erection of the oil sand processing and refining plants. The pure production costs should only be in the range of 10 to 20 dollars per barrel. Because open pit mining projects run over several decades, they are profitable in the long term if the oil price is above the total cost per barrel for a sufficiently long time during operation. Oil sands extraction is therefore considered to be less susceptible to falling oil prices than extraction of fossil hydrocarbons by means of fracking.
As a result of an oil price slump to 35 US dollars in early 2009, the total volume of investments in Alberta oil sands projects was reduced from 125 billion to 85 billion Canadian dollars (around 78 and 53 billion euros at the time), with a significant effect on economic growth and the public Finances of Canada and especially Alberta. In 2014, the investment volume was 69 billion dollars (around 50 billion euros). Due to the renewed drop in prices in the last quarter of 2014 to well below 70 US dollars, a decrease to around 46 billion Canadian dollars (around 33 billion euros) was expected for 2015. Another drop in prices in the course of the second half of 2015 with prices of just under 38 US dollars at the end of December could mean the end of a number of oil sands projects currently being planned, or at least a longer-term planning freeze. The austerity constraints in the oil companies not only lead to job cuts in the oil sands industry, but also have a direct negative effect on those branches of the economy that are dependent on the oil sands industry, for example plant manufacturers or manufacturers of mining equipment.
In addition to the price of oil, other factors also affect the profitability of oil sands mining. The oil companies involved in Athabasca hope that the Keystone XL pipeline (see → Export and transport routes ) will lower transport costs and thus weaken the effect of low world market prices on the profitability of their production and processing plants. The exchange rate of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar is also important. Because exports to the USA are paid in US dollars, but construction and ongoing production costs (energy, maintenance, wages, etc.) are paid in Canadian dollars, a weak Canadian dollar has a positive effect on the profitability of oil sands mining. Political factors also play a role or do they more or less directly influence economic factors. For example, approval of pipeline projects depends on government decisions in the United States and Canada, which in turn can be influenced by public opinion. After a "landslide victory", the Alberta New Democratic Party under Rachel Notley has been ruling Alberta since May 2015. It has expressly spoken out against the expansion of the pipeline network and in favor of increased taxation on the oil industry.
Impact on the environment
Oil sands extraction, in Alberta as elsewhere, is inevitably associated with a number of negative environmental impacts in the mining area. These are particularly drastic when mining in opencast mines (see → Effects of oil sands mining on the environment and climate ).
As part of a study by Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and the Canadian environmental agency Environment and Climate Change Canada , lake sediments were sampled in the vicinity of the main mining area of the Athabasca oil sands. An increased pollution of these sediments with toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) was found up to 90 kilometers away from the main mining area. The point in time of the sometimes drastic increase in PAH exposure (by up to 23 times) coincides with the start of oil sands mining and upgrading in the 1960s. A high proportion of, among other things, dibenzothiophenes (DBT) and chrysene in these sediments shows that the PAHs probably originate from the oil sand bitumen. The PAHs presumably get into the lakes through wind blowing from the opencast mines and through the leaching of dust from the exhaust gases of the oil sand processing plants. Despite the increased entry of PAHs were measured by the frequency of pollution-sensitive water flea genus Daphnia in the polluted sediment layers, no adverse effects on the affected freshwater ecosystems are detected. However, a strong change in the species composition of the water flea communities was found in the sediment sequence with a general increase in the remains of Daphnid water fleas, which correlates with a presumably climate-related increase in phytoplankton remains. This may hide the adverse effects on ecosystems from the PAH input.
Criticism and protests
The British daily The Guardian described Canada in 2009 as the dirty old man of the climate world , because it state sponsors oil sands mining and processing and thus consciously accepted the target value set in the Kyoto Protocol for CO 2 emissions in 2012 fell far short. Shortly before the deadline, Canada finally withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol entirely. It is not only with regard to the climate problem that environmentalists describe oil sands mining as the “greatest environmental crime in history”.
An "international coalition" of environmental associations and First Nations was formed in 2009 against the increasing export of crude oil from oil sand bitumen to the USA and the expansion of the North American pipeline network planned for this purpose (see → Export and transport routes ) . The main point of criticism was the poor environmental and climate footprint of the "dirtiest oil in the world". Among other things, it says: " The greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands extraction and processing are three times higher than those from the extraction of conventional crude oil and it [d. H. synthetic crude oil from oil sands bitumen] contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel , six times more nitrogen and five times more lead than conventional oil. These toxins get into the air and water of the United States when the crude oil is made into fuel in refineries . "
It is also criticized that the construction of the Alberta Clipper Pipeline (see → Export and Transport Routes ) was approved by the US Department of the Interior before all administrative ordinances were processed. Thus did Authority of Indian Affairs until then no completed applications the operating company Enbridge Energy and the Leech Lake resident Chippewa submitted to strain to begin the approval process for the indigenous areas that are affected by the pipeline construction.
In March 2010, environmental and Indian associations described the Athabasca oil sands as "Canada's Avatar Sands" in an advertisement in Variety Magazine , alluding to the film Avatar - Departure for Pandora . In this film, the destruction of a culture (on the moon of an extrasolar gas giant ) is portrayed in which a raw materials company ruthlessly asserts its economic interests against the resistance of the indigenous population. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) reacted with incomprehension and invited the responsible environmental activists to “return to planet earth and participate in the discussion about a balance between environmental protection, economic growth and a safe and reliable energy supply participate."
The organic food chain Whole Foods Market and the housewares and furniture chain Bed Bath & Beyond gave in 2010 announced its intention to no longer refuel their vehicle fleets with fuels that are derived from the Athabasca oil sands to its CO 2 footprint to reduce. In doing so, they responded to a corresponding initiative by the environmental organization Forest Ethics . Whole Foods no longer sources fuel from Marathon Oil , which has a 20% stake in oil sands projects in Alberta, but only from suppliers who only process crude oil from the USA.
At the beginning of 2010, a group of shareholders of the British-Dutch mineral oil company Shell demanded that the company revise its involvement in the Athabasca oil sands area, but less because of the oil sands' poor environmental image and more because they carried too high a financial risk in the corresponding projects see for shell.
On December 3, 2012, as part of a protest near Winona, Texas, three environmental activists barricaded themselves with concrete blocks in a section of the southern extension of the Keystone Pipeline , which was under construction at the time, in order to paralyze construction work.
Web links
- Oil Sands Discovery Center, Alberta
- Bernd Schröder: The Canadian oil sands complex. Part 1 - A boom and its consequences. Telepolis, April 2, 2008
- A. Lejay, C. Yuill: The Bitumen-Bearing McMurray Formation: Description of Reservoir Units in a Large Fluvio-Estuarine Setting from the Athabasca and Christina Rivers Outcrops, Alberta, Canada. Optical presentation for a talk on the sedimentology of the McMurray Formation given at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' annual meeting, Calgary, Alberta, May 19-22. June, 2005
- HG Babies: Oil sands in Canada - an alternative to conventional petroleum? Commodity Top News, No. 20, BGR Hannover 2003
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Facts about Alberta's oil sands and its industry. Oil Sands Discovery Center, Fort McMurray, Canada, 2009 ( PDF 500 kB)
- ^ Walter L. Pohl: Economic Geology: Principles and Practice. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4443-3662-7 , pp. 530 f.
- ^ Oil Sands - A Strategic Resource for Canada, North America and the Global Market. Natural Resources Canada, 2013 ( PDF 3.1 MB)
- ↑ a b c Alberta Oil Sands Industry Quarterly Update, Summer 2013. Alberta Government, 2013 ( PDF 5.2 MB)
- ↑ Caineng Zou: Unconventional Petroleum Geology. Elsevier, Amsterdam a. a. 2012, ISBN 978-0-12-397162-3 , p. 328
- ^ Conventional Oil Statistics. Alberta Energy, accessed May 23, 2015
- ↑ Alberta's Oil Sands 2006. Alberta Department of Energy, 2007 ( PDF ( Memento from February 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) 73 kB)
- ^ A b Frances J. Hein, C. Willem Langenberg, Campbell Kidston, Habtemicael Berhane, Tim Berezniuk: A Comprehensive Field Guide for Facies Characterization of the Athabasca Oil Sands, Northeast Alberta. EUB Special Report No. 13, Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, Alberta Geological Survey, Edmonton 2001, pp. 3–16 ( online )
- ↑ a b K. Haug, P. Greene, S. Mei, C. Schneider: Geological and geomechanical characterization of in situ oil sands caprock in the Athabasca Oil Sands Area, Alberta, Canada. American Rock Mechanics Association symposium, San Francisco, California, United States, June 24-26, 2013
- ^ Alberta's Clean Energy Future: Reclamation. ( September 25, 2014 memento on the Internet Archive ) Government of Alberta, accessed October 7, 2014
- ↑ a b Alberta Oil Sands Industry Quarterly Update, Spring 2015. Alberta Government, 2015 ( PDF 5.0 MB), p. 10 ff.
- ^ E. Visser, P. Bergey, J. Clark: Geological Insights in the Joslyn May 18th 2006 Steam Release. TEPC / GSR 2007.005, Total E&P Canada, Calgary 2007 ( PDF 90 MB, comprehensive dossier with further investigation reports on this event), p. 6 (p. 113 in PDF)
- ↑ May River Regulatory Application - Section 1: Project Introduction. Grizzly Oil Sands ULC, Calgary 2013 ( PDF 2.8 MB)
- ^ Southern Pacific files for creditor protection under the CCAA. Press release from Southern Pacific Resource Corp. of January 21, 2015 ( PDF ( Memento of February 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) 304 kB)
- ^ Dan Healing: Southern Pacific to 'hibernate' STP-McKay oilsands project. Calgary Herald, May 14, 2015
- ^ Silke Hasselmann: German help for controversial oil sands mining in Canada. Deutschlandfunk, March 2, 2012
- ↑ Ralf Nestler: Out of the oil sands. Tagesspiegel, March 21, 2013
- ^ Helmholtz-Alberta Initiative. GFZ / Helmholtz Center Potsdam, accessed on May 26, 2015
- ↑ Gordon Laxer, John Dillon: Over a barrel: exiting from NAFTA's proportionality clause. Parkland Institute / CCPA, Edmonton 2008 ( PDF ( September 24, 2015 memento in the Internet Archive ) 1.0 MB)
- ↑ a b c d U.S. State Department OKs Pipeline From Canada's Oil Sands. ( Memento from August 26, 2009 on the Internet Archive ) Environment News Service, August 21, 2009
- ^ Alberta Clipper pipeline ready to move oil. Minnesota Public Radio News, March 20, 2010
- ^ A b Alberta Clipper Pipeline Project, Canada. hydrocarbons-technology.com, accessed May 24, 2015
- ^ Alberta Clipper (Line 67) Capacity Expansion. ( Memento of May 27, 2015 on the Internet Archive ) Website of the Enbridge pipeline operator , accessed May 24, 2015
- ^ Keystone's Cushing Extension Begins Deliveries to Oklahoma. ( Memento of March 4, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Press release of February 8, 2011 on the website of TransCanada , one of the partner companies in the Keystone project, accessed on May 23, 2015
- ↑ Klaus Remme: Obama can postpone the construction of a mega oil pipeline. Deutschlandfunk, November 15, 2011
- ↑ Patrick Welter: Pipeline construction postponed - nature conservation triumphs over oil interests. FAZ, November 11, 2011
- ↑ Micah Luxen: Keystone XL pipeline: Why is it so disputed? BBC News, Feb.25, 2015
- ↑ TransCanada cancels $ 15.7B Energy East pipeline project. Calgary Herald, October 5, 2017
- ↑ Brian Zinchuk: Build the pipeline - but which one? Pipeline News, March 26, 2019
- ↑ Kyle Bakx: Enbridge has no plans to resurrect Northern Gateway project, says CEO. CBC News, May 9, 2019
- ^ A b Adam Wernick: Big companies are pulling the plug on their projects in Alberta's tar sands. Public Radio International, October 21, 2014
- ^ A b Ian Austen: Lower Oil Prices Strike at Heart of Canada's Oil Sands Production. New York Times, February 2, 2015
- ↑ David Teather: Greenpeace study finds oil companies may be doomed. The Guardian, July 27, 2009
- ↑ a b Gerd Braune: Canada: The oil sand industry steps on the brakes. The press, January 14, 2009
- ^ A b c Matthew Philips: Can Canadian Oil Sands Survive Falling Prices? Bloomberg, December 22, 2014
- ↑ a b Jennifer Rankin: Dozens of Canada's tar sands projects on hold as prices fall, analysis shows. The Guardian, May 29, 2015
- ↑ Joshua Kurek, Jane L. Kirk, Derek CG Muir, Xiaowa Wang, Marlene S. Evans, John P. Smol: Legacy of a half century of Athabasca oil sands development recorded by lake ecosystems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Vol. 110, No. 5, 2013, pp. 1761–1766, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1217675110
- ↑ Extraction of oil sands with toxic effects at a distance. Scinexx, December 23, 2013
- ↑ David Adam, James Randerson: Copenhagen conference: The countries to watch. The Guardian, Nov. 30, 2009
- ↑ Canada pulls out of Kyoto protocol. The Guardian, Nov. 13, 2011
- ↑ a b Terry Macalister: Shell faces shareholder revolt over Canadian tar sands project. The Guardian, Jan. 18, 2010
- ↑ US approves Alberta Clipper pipeline project. The Globe and Mail, August 20, 2009
- ^ A b Canadian firms upset with oilsands-slamming ad in Variety. ( Memento of May 16, 2010 on the Internet Archive ) Edmonton Journal, March 4, 2010
- ↑ Dina O'Meara: Two retailers Avoiding fuel from oilsands. ( March 17, 2010 memento on the Internet Archive ) Edmonton Journal, February 11, 2010
- ^ Three People Barricade Themselves Inside Keystone XL Pipe To Halt Construction. tarsandsblockade.org, accessed December 4, 2012
Coordinates: 57 ° 1 ′ N , 111 ° 39 ′ W