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Alberta Is The Third Biggest Recoverable Oil Patch Essay

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1. Alberta has the second biggest recoverable oil patch in the world after Saudi Arabia, which hides underneath Canada’s boreal forest. Indeed, the Albertan oil patch consists of tar sands, also referred as oil sand, a combination of clay, sand, water and bitumen – a thick and sticky form of crude oil. Tar sands are mined and transported to extraction installations, where the oil-rich bitumen is extracted from the mixture. Alberta holds at least 175 billion barrels of crude bitumen throughout its vast territory, thus the industry disturbs a 149 000 square kilometers area – about the size of England –, where the land was removed due to the mining required to access the oil sands. The bitumen is separated from the mixture by using large amounts of fresh water – about four barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil – and is heated by natural gas, thus requiring larger quantities of energy and water than conventional extraction. Indeed, the industry itself results in the emission of more carbon dioxide in a year than all Canadian cars combined, thus accelerating climate change at an alarming rate. The Albertan industry exploits the water from the Athabasca River, which is fed by the Canadian Rocky Mountains’ glacier, which shrinks at a frightening rate and is further endangered by the carbon emission of the industry. Therefore, the extraction of oil sands in Alberta results in a cycle of consumption that truly endangers the environment. The clay and minerals from the oil

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