Robert Collier visits Alberta’s vast oil sands:

Alberta’s oil sands are destined to be the main supply of foreign oil to the United States for at least the next century. The sands hold proven reserves of 175 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia’s 262 billion, and far more than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s estimated 10 billion.
If Americans want to keep filling their gasoline tanks at a reasonable cost, they will need the oil sands industry to push ahead on its expected path of doubling, tripling and even quadrupling production in coming years.
Nowhere else is the conflict between energy use and ecological cost so stark.
“The oil sands are a big challenge,” Canada’s environment minister, Stephane Dion, who has fought publicly with other Cabinet officials for a tougher line on global warming, said in an interview. “They are sending out a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.