Cycling Through Oil Country

A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean:
A Bicycle Journey Through the Northern Dominion of Oil

David Goodrich, 2020

While browsing the new books at a public library recently, I saw a familiar name. David Goodrich, a retired climate scientist and a long-distance bicycle traveler, had written another book. His first, A Hole in the Wind, recounted the cross-country bicycle trip he took to experience firsthand the effects of, and nationwide attitudes toward, climate change. (See A Cross-Country Tour with a Different Spin.) This book is something of a sequel.

Goodrich wanted to better understand the oil extraction industry and its impact. So he decided to take a thousand-mile bicycle trip from northern Alberta, source of the oil for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, down through western North Dakota, which now rivals Texas in oil production. The title of his book refers to the ancient sea in which these oil deposits were created.

Goodrich’s bicycle ride along this challenging route serves as the spine of his story. But the meat is his account of the oil industry operations centered in these two regions.

Unlike in Saudi Arabia, where one can access oil basically by “sticking a straw in the ground,” mining the oil reserves in northern North America is far more difficult. In Alberta, the oil is bound up in sand deposits. The tar-like oil must be extracted using complex physical and chemical processes. In North Dakota, the oil is trapped within shale deposits. Here, fracking—injecting fluids at high pressure into the earth—is used to free up the oil.

Goodrich begins his journey in Fort McMurray, a remote town in the forest of northern Alberta and the heart of the oil sands operation. Before starting his ride, he arranges to fly over the vast oil extraction facilities and also gets a ground-level tour. While reading this section, I tried to follow along on Google Maps. It’s not a pretty sight. One of the photos in his book shows several gigantic yellow pyramid-like mounds of sulfur, a byproduct of the extraction process. After some searching, I spotted them using satellite view.

Goodrich was nervous about the reception from locals he might receive on his trip—a bicyclist in oil country couldn’t seem more out of place. Instead, he encounters warm hospitality and kind assistance. But when he brings up the subject of climate change, conversations always chill a degree or two. People living in these regions rely on the oil industry for their livelihoods, so they can pay their rent or mortgage and feed their families.

A constant theme is the link between our heavy reliance on fossil fuels and the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the driving force behind global warming. Goodrich offers a fascinating and disconcerting look at the geology, history, politics, and power behind oil production in these two regions. He admits that, like all of us, he benefits from fossil fuels. But those benefits come with great long-term consequences, from devastating damage to local and regional environments to increasingly dire effects on weather and climate.

Nearing his goal of Dickinson, North Dakota, Goodrich bikes through Williston, “Boomtown, USA,” the hub of the oil shale operation. He continues on through the uncanny badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. In a dark bit of irony, this national park, which preserves parts of the region that helped change the future president into one of America’s foremost conservationists, is now besieged by the encroachment of oil drilling.

In Voyage, Goodrich once again combines an engaging story about a challenging long-distance bicycle trip with a ground-level look at the state of our climate crisis. Although he tries to close on a positive note, I can’t say I came away feeling optimistic about the future of our beleaguered world.

David Romanowski, 2022