Canadian Company to Start Extracting US Oil Sands
From Ring of Fire:
The controversial process of extracting oil/tar sands, one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet, is coming to the United States. A Canadian Company called US Oil Sands, Inc. is one of the first to receive a permit to extract 2,000 barrels of oil per day from Utah’s tar sands reserves, DeSmogBlog reports.
In October, the Canadian company became the second company, along with Kentucky-based Arrakis Oil Recovery, to receive a permit for oil sands production from the Utah Water Quality Board. Despite its name, US Oil Sands, Inc. is actually based in Calgary, Alberta.
Oil sands extraction is a dirty process that involves clear-cutting and strip-mining the earth where production will take place. Tar sands consist of a mixture of 85 percent sand, clay, and silt, 5 percent water, and 10 percent crude bitumen. In addition to the difficult extraction process, the crude bitumen must undergo several stages of production just to be usable.
You can read the full article here at Ring of Fire.