Investor Resources
Making Oil from Dirt
- September 16, 2009
We’ve all heard a lot about the Canadian oil sands and how a modern-day oil boom is taking place in the forests of northern Alberta.
This is oil that begins not with holes drilled deep underground, but rather as aromatic clay and sand clawed out of the ground by giant backhoes and hauled in huge dump trucks to nearby refineries.
The oil sands in the Fort McMurray region give Canada the second-largest reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia -- some estimate that more than 170 billion barrels could be recovered with existing technology.
It’s may be hard to picture this process. A series of photos from National Geographic provide a good look at the oil sands and the positive and negative impacts of their development.
The size of and demand for the resource ensure that the oil sands will be developed on a large scale. For Canada, the challenge is to strike that balance that allows the land, water and people to be protected while the valuable oil is extracted.
The story that accompanied the photos, titled “Scraping Bottom,” includes a telling line about the global influence on the oil sands boom: “The fact that we're willing to move four tons of earth for a single barrel really shows that the world is running out of easy oil”
Click *here for the oil sands photos by Peter Essick.
Click *here for the National Geographic story.
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*By clicking the link you will be redirected to the National Geographic website. U.S. Global Investors does not endorse all information supplied by this website and is not responsible for its content.
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