WHATS A TAR SANDS?
Not a dumb question. It’s clay, sand and oil all jumbled up with some bitumen (which is a thick, sticky form of oil). And since it’s oil in there, you can bet your bottom dollar that there are a bunch of people (Petro-Canada, Exxon subsidiaries, Shell…) out there trying to make a buck off it. But they just didn’t think it through. To get tar sand oil to a usable state, the bitumen has to be extracted from all that other gunk and then refined. This is a complex and difficult process. Most people don’t know that most of the world’s oil exists in the form of oil sand. What’s more is that Canada has the highest concentration of tar sands. Next is Venezuela. But silly Canada! Tar sands represent 40% of Canada’s oil production. Most countries don’t use their oil sands on such a commercial level. Canada’s the only place doing so. All this extra work of extracting and refining is using far more water and energy than regular old oil mining. In fact, since steam is an integral part of the bitume
