I came to know about the history of Canol pipeline construction as well as the abandonment of this project. And also about the Shutagot’ine trail remediation project. TheCanol pipeline was built to carry crude oil across 800 kilometers. It was to transport oil to the refinery in Whitehorse and it was done with approval of the Canadian war committee of the cabinet. Thirty thousands members of US Army was involved in this project and after two years of construction, the oil line began pumping 3000 barrels of oil to the refinery in Whitehorse. Despite this enormous amount of investment of both capital and labor, the pipeline was abandoned after only 15 months are in operation. There were of a lot of contributing factors for this abandonment. For example – Some construction faults, supply problems, oil trading prices, the end of the war etc. After abandonment, some pieces of the engines were removed and taken elsewhere and some parts of the pipelines were salvaged. The estimated cost of this project was 30 million dollars. Dr. Earley  also gave us an idea of the infrastructure of this pipeline with some pictures. It was a four inches steel pipeline. She also showed us the pictures of the pump stations with pump house above ground storage tanks, generator building hall in dormitory, the access road parallel to the entire pipeline, the telegraph line, maintenance camp and emergency shelter. Then Dr. Earley  talked about the remediation process, it started in 2007 when the federal government put it in the list of contaminated sites. Some of the activities involves in remediation is- removal of batteries, drop site disposal, excavation of contaminated soil removal of fuel from storage tanks and machinery as well as rolling up and lifting out the telegraph etc.

The most interesting part was watching some of the clips of the documentary. There was shortage of time otherwise I would love to watch more of the documentary. I liked Dr. Earley ’s whole presentation specially her way of presenting. She was so enthusiastic and intelligent. She is very passionate and excited regarding her research. The presentation was not directly related to my masters thesis but my major was on chemical engineering so I could relate the purpose of this pipeline construction, the reasons behind the abandonment and the remediation process as well. It was really great to know about this project.

I think last week the highest numbers of questions were asked to the presenter! Dr. Earley gave very intelligent and elaborate answers to all of the questions. Her smile, her face expression clearly indicated how passionate and excited she was while answering the questions. I think if there was more time the session would definitely continue for some more minutes.