Dirty Oil Video: Canada's Tar Sands Explained


As President Obama prepares for his first foreign trip to Canada on Thursday, attention is focusing on the biggest energy and environmental issue on the North American continent: Canada's vast deposits of tar sands.

About 10% of U.S. oil imports now originate from this dirty source. Restricting use of the highly polluting supply will be essential if the president is going to meet his greenhouse gas reduction targets. How Obama deals with the issue in his talks with Canadian Prime Minister Harper could demonstrate how the president intends to scale back on fossil fuel energy development as the clean energy economy expands.

Required reading on the subject is the book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk which was published to wide acclaim in Canada in the fall and is slated for release in the U.S. in March. It details the impact that the $200 billion of oil money that has poured into the region has had in creating the world's largest energy project and one of its dirtiest and most dangerous.

By all means order the book and read it; and while you're waiting for it to arrive, watch this video which Nikiforuk produced.

 

See also:

A Must-Read Book on Tar Sands for Obama Before His Trip to Canada

A Tale of Two Disasters: Coal Ash and Tar Sands Tailings

 


Oil Sands Development

Easy to throw stones. How about a viable solution? You say 3 barrels of water are used for every barrel of oil produced but miss to mention that 97% of that water is now recovered for reuse. How about the gasification process in wich synthetic natural gas is produced and burned for energy in the prodution of synthetic crude. Technology can and will help develop the oil sand resource that our children will prosper. Or do you wish that we just go back to the caveman era?

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