tar-sands

Put to a Canadian, such talk may elicit reminders of that country's pivotal influence as a potash, tar sands and uranium producer.

One of the draft energy bills floating around the Senate this year even proposed removing the ban on government purchases of tar-sands oil.

Although reclamation of the land, a legal obligation, has not kept up with the disturbance of the tar sands, it was "achievable" .

Of course, the oil spigot is not going to run dry tomorrow. There is still coal, tar sands, heavy oil and shale gas.

True, alternative sources, like oil from Canada's tar sands, have continued to grow.

Alberta tar sands: Referred to as the most damaging project on the planet.

To many critics the broader environmental legacy of the tar sands is reason enough to halt the whole endeavour.

That would give oil from the tar sands much easier access to refineries in Texas, even if the rest of the project remains in limbo.

Canada has overtaken Saudi Arabia as the top supplier amid aggressive investment in its tar sands region.

Environmentalists, so vocal about Canada's tar sands (see article), have so far been silent over Venezuela's bitumen.

The Earth holds other, less-accessible fuels, such as tar sands, and a more exotic possibility in the form of icy methane hydrates.

Both methods, say the tar sands' critics, threaten local rivers, poison fish, destroy the landscape, kill wildlife and pollute the air.

Whether Alberta's government can be relied on to promote greener tar sands, however, is questionable.

He wrote part of an energy bill passed in 2007 that seemed to ban American government agencies from buying oil produced from the tar sands.

Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta?

As long as the price of crude oil continues to increase, the technology and money for tar sands mining will probably be found.

As well as curbing oil use, high prices have put tar sands in business which create far more carbon dioxide than conventional oil.

Tar sands take lots of energy to process, and therefore entail copious emissions of greenhouse gases.

Claims that the tar sands were the "most environmentally destructive project on Earth" were "not accurate" , it said.

And domestic opposition to exploiting the tar sands and building pipelines, which has long been fierce, is gathering momentum.

Tar sands and biofuels represent only a small part of global energy use.

THE latest print issue of The Economist features a comprehensive briefing on Canada's oil-producing tar sands.

One by-product of the tar sands upgrading process is sulphur, which has a number of industrial uses.

But now, Canadian tar sands are starting to look much more attractive to the oil giant.

Our known fossil fuel reserves are soaring. New finds of coal, natural gas, oil, tar sands, and oil shale keep growing, not declining.

"We're looking at our carbon footprint, and tar sands fuels are higher carbon, " Mr Besancon said.

If given the go ahead, the pipeline would carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, across six U. S. states to the Gulf Coast.

Kill Alberta's tar sands, say some, and rising crude prices would choke oil consumption and force an era of clean energy into being.

There is oil aplenty of other sorts (tar sands, liquefied coal and so on), so the stuff is unlikely to run out for a long time yet.

Our innovations are many, from extracting oil from tar sands to deep-sea exploration and production.

A small group gathered outside the meetings to protest against the excavation of the tar sands in Alberta.

Extracting oil from tar sands causes more carbon emissions than traditional drilling.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would carry heavier crude oil produced from tar sands in Canada. Ms.

A five-year energy boom here in the administrative heart of Canada's oil patch and in the tar sands far to the north has ended.

Tar sands are unlikely ever to yield more than 3-4m barrels a day, equivalent to the pace at which existing fields are declining every year.

Canada's oil sands, or tar sands, as the goo is known, are outsized in every way.

It also dismissed as myth a widely held expectation that tar sands in Canada could fill the supply gap.

Shell has the highest exposure of the majors to the tar sands and is most at risk from a decline in demand.

"Unconventional" oil from shale or tar sands is a different matter.

Environmentalists dislike the project chiefly because it would increase America's imports of oil from the tar sands of Alberta.

Unconventional oil won't save us: even a crash programme to develop the Canadian tar sands could deliver only 5m barrels a day by 2030.

Tar-sands schemes, like most oil projects, are very capital-intensive and so very sensitive to changes in financing costs.

So even if the credit crunch eases and the oil price steadies, Canada's tar sands may face tougher scrutiny from their main customer.

Some American retailers have forsworn fuel from the tar sands.

No. The two big tar-sands deposits are in Canada and Venezuela.

There is still coal, tar sands, heavy oil and shale gas.

By 2030, according to IHS CERA, a firm of consultants, the tar sands should supply more than one-third of America's imported oil.

Federal government agencies were banned from buying tar-sands oil in 2007.

It recently announced a $10 billion expansion plan in the tar sands of Canada.

An estimated 32 billion barrels of oil could potentially exist in Utah's tar sands.

In Canada's tar sands alone, some $90 billion of projects were shelved.

But who now owns a substantial share in the Tar Sands?

There are many kinds of hydrocarbon types, including the normal oil, condensate, heavy oil, tar sands and natural gas.

The return on sources such as tar sands and biofuels like ethanol are in the single digits.

They have worked out how to squeeze oil from the tar sands of Alberta.

The world's endowment (including unconventional sources such as tar sands) is estimated at 15 trillion barrels.

We can still extract oil from the tar sands of Canada.

If you are investing in tar sands or shale oil, then you have a portfolio that is crammed with sub-prime carbon assets.

Suncor Energy, a big producer in Canada's tar-sands industry, agreed to buy Petro-Canada, a rival, for C$19. 3 billion ($15. 8 billion).

The "exceptional circumstances" required for future tar-sands purchases are vague

Information Centre for Heavy Crude and Tar Sands;

Bituminous or oil shale & tar sands

Centre for Heavy Crude and Tar Sands;