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Oil Sands: True Grit

by The Green A-Team

What’s worse than oil?  Oil sands.

According to Christine MacDonald, author of Green Inc., oil sands is an extremely heavy form of crude oil found in great quantities in Canada and Venezuela.  It requires an open-pit mining process that destroys forests and uses a lot of water, making it even more environmentally invasive than old-fashioned drilling.

Essentially, the oil in oil sands is mixed together with sand and clay to form a viscous and dense form of petroleum that must be separated out in order to be useful.  It takes three to five barrels of water to separate a single barrel of oil from the clay and dirt.

Turning oil sands into something you can pour into your car’s gas tank takes several times more energy than processing conventional oil and contributes more than twice as much greenhouse gas.  So if you hear of legislators trying to pass off an oil sands project as a way to counteract the global energy crisis, fight it with all your might.

For more on oil sands, click on some of the following links:

High stakes in Canada’s vast oil sands fields (CSMonitor.com)

We’re still fans of oil sands (Motley Fool)

The oil sands of Alberta: Where black gold and riches can be found in the sand (60 Minutes)

Tar Sands Basics (Oil Shale & Tar Sands Programmatic EIS)

Alberta oil sands catastrophe pending: ACT NOW

Photo by shanebe.

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