Oh Shit! We're Going To Attack Canada

The last thing any country needs is to have a supply of oil. Bushco smells it like flies smell shit. Now Canada's oil is looking good.

More expensive to process than the light crude oil of the Middle East, Alberta's oil sands have long remained a largely untapped resource. But with oil at $70 a barrel, it has become economically feasible to extract the thick, sticky bitumen that in former years was used to seal native people's canoes - not fuel a global economy.

Only Saudi Arabia, with 259 billion barrels, has larger oil reserves than the Florida-sized patch that surrounds this Canadian outpost. And a pipeline already exists to carry the oil to a key market: the United States.

Over the next five years, oil companies from Exxon Mobil to France's Total are expected to invest C$60 billion in oil sands. Earlier this week, Shell Canada announced a takeover of Canadian oil-sands producer BlackRock Ventures, valued at $2.4 billion Canadian ($2.17 billion).

At least the logistics will be relatively easy.

There is a small, environmental problem. Excuse me. There seems to be a huge environmental problem.

"With projections that oil-sands production will grow from 1 million to more than 5 million barrels per day over the next 25 years, the air, land, and water of Alberta's northeastern boreal forest is at risk of severe environmental degradation," said the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental organization, in a statement on its website.

The giant smokestacks at the refineries send black smoke into the air that stretches for miles in the clear blue sky above the forest.

"The proposed tar-sands developments will tear a hole in Canada's lungs - our vital boreal forest ecosystem," said Lindsay Telfer of Canada's Sierra Club.

Thank God the US and Canada have the requisite politicians to ignore such problems so extracting the oil can proceed.

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