FORT McMURRAY, Alberta - Just north of this boomtown of saloons and strip
malls, a moonscape is expanding along with the price of oil.
Deep craters wider than football fields are being dug out of the pine and spruce
forests and muskeg swamps by many of the largest multinational oil companies.
Huge refineries that burn natural gas to refine the excavated gooey sands into
synthetic oil are spreading where wolves and coyotes once roamed.
Beside the mining pits, propane cannons and scarecrows installed by the
companies shoo away migrating birds from giant toxic lakes filled with water
that was used in the process that separates oil sands from clay and dirt.
About 82,000 acres of forest and wetlands have been cleared or otherwise
disturbed since development of oil sands began in earnest here in the late
1960's, and that is just the start. It is estimated that the current daily
production of just over one million barrels of oil - the equivalent of Texas'
daily production, and 5 percent of the United States' daily consumption - will
triple by 2015 and sextuple by 2030. The pockets of oil sands in northern
Alberta - which all together equal the size of Florida - are ...