Canadian Oil Sands
Once considered too expensive, as well as too damaging to the land, exploitation of Alberta's oil sands is now a gamble worth billions.
Nowhere on Earth is more earth being moved these days than in the Athabasca Valley. To extract each barrel of oil from a surface mine, the industry must first cut down the forest, then remove an average of two tons of peat and dirt that lie above the oil sands layer, then two tons of the sand itself. It must heat several barrels of water to strip the bitumen from the sand and upgrade it, and afterward it discharges contaminated water into tailings ponds ... Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala
Canadian mining interests seem to have political dominance over environmental advocates up north. There seems to be a free market short term profits paradigm operative there, as well as the one that has wreaked havoc here in the U.S.