The sun is rising, helping the temperature inch up to 22 degrees below zero, as the door to the chartered Dash 8 aircraft swings open. Thirty engineers and executives who have flown 440 miles north from Calgary, Alta. wearily emerge to start another workweek building Horizon, the world's fifth-largest oil recovery project going. They were supposed to be commuting from Fort McMurray, just 44 miles from the site, but their employer, Canadian Natural Resources, couldn't find housing for them there. So they sleep at a nearby camp during their shift, and another flight has been added to the $9 million airport that Canadian Natural recently built in the middle of a frozen forest. Adapting to the housing shortage will add as much as $90 million to the cost of building the Horizon mine.
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