A Leaky Future for Oil Sands

Canada’s wealth of oil is considered the world’s second largest supply by many measurements, but the lionshare of it is trapped in sand and rock. Oil sands extraction and conversion is energy intensive and, especially in the suddenly affordable oil market, costly. But oil will remain a high demand item, and oil sands are a major extraction point for the future–and that means significantly better environmental controls are needed. A report released by the Canadian non-profit group Environment Defense indicates that 11 million liters leaks from oil sands tailings pits and processing cycles each day. If the major planned sites go online, that daily rate could rise to 72 million liters per day.