Student Researcher: Britten Johnson and Wanjiru Mugo
Faculty Advisor: Julie Andrzejewski
Canada is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States sending over 370 million barrels a year, half of which comes from Alberta’s tar sands. Tar Sands oil is extremely toxic to our environment. The amount of energy that you have to use to get tar sands oil out of the ground is so labor intensive that it creates a greater impact on climate change and produces three times the pollution as other oil. Roughly three barrels of water are required to process one barrel of heavy oil. Tar sands production is set to increase from its current 1.2 million barrels or oil per day, to some 3 million barrels per day by 2018, most of which is slated for export to the United States. Canadian lobbyists for Tar Sands oil in Alberta are threatening the Obama administration that if they aren’t interested in continuing their partnership that they would export to China and India.
“Canada’s Tar Sands Lobbyists Focus on US Democrats” Chris Arsenault, Inter Press Service
September 4, 2008 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43765
Lexis/Nexis: “An Oil Sandstorm” in the NY Times Section B, pg 1 Jan.7, 2009: