Video: Toxic Tar Sands

Video: John Vidal asks the oil firms tough questions on their plans for exploiting Canada’s tar sands
What happens when the world’s biggest oil companies target a northern wilderness? John Vidal heads to Canada to ask some tough questions of the oil industry and its intentions in northern Alberta

How to get oil from the Tar Sands

Middle East oil running dry? Looking for a new source of energy? Environment editor John Vidal takes you step-by-step through how to extract oil from Canada’s tar sands, destroying habitat, polluting water and increasing carbon emissions as you go

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World’s Dirtiest Oil

Canadians ponder cost of rush for dirty oil

As oil prices continue to reach record highs, the search for new sources of energy has led the world to Alberta, Canada, and its vast oil sands. Now, John Vidal finds, the country famed for its wilderness and clean living finds itself caught between fuelling the world’s oil-hungry economy and the ecological devastation and soaring greenhouse gas emissions that exploiting the tar sands produces

• John Vidal, environment editor, in Fort McMurray
• The Guardian,
• Saturday July 12, 2008

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Link to this video
The Caterpillar 797B heavy hauler is the world’s biggest truck. It’s taller than a four-storey house, as wide as a tennis court and it removes nearly 35,000 tonnes of oily sand a day from a deep open cast mine in northern Alberta in western Canada.