The United States now gets more of it's oil from Canada than any other source, including the Middle East. That is the good news because they are our friends and the money won't go to pay for terrorists and Maddrassas that teach hatred of America.
The bad news is that to get that oil, we are destroying the earth. The tar sands development in Alberta is the largest and the most destructive industrial project the world has seen. They are strip mining an area of Boreal forests the size of Florida, down to bedrock so little will ever grow there again. They use twice as much fresh water as the city of Calgary uses in a year and 90% of that ends up in toxic tailing ponds so large they can be seen from space. To get the oil out of the sand they use enough natural gas to heat 3 million homes. Producing the oil creates three times the greenhouse gases of regular oil.
The resultant "oil" is more like tar and needs to be mixed with toxic chemicals to get it to flow through the pipes. The developer estimated that the project would only have about seven oil spills during the 50 year life of the project, but there has already been 35 spills in the first year. The route of the XL pipeline will take it over many pristine rivers and over the Oglala aquifer, the largest source of fresh water aquifers in the world. Once spilled in a stream or river, the tar sinks to the bottom and is almost impossible to remove.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rocky-kist...The biggest lie is that the tar sands oil will lower the cost of fuel in the United States. For one thing, this process is much more expensive than the conventional oil that they just pump from the earth so they have to sell it for more. The other thing is that almost all of it is destined to be sold overseas where the price is set by OPEC and by speculation, and will actually increase domestic fuel prices.
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-resp...Some people are claiming that the new Bakken oil fields in North Dakota contain eight times the oil of Saudi Arabia. The only problem is that it is not the easy clean oil of Saudi Arabia. It is oil shale that is only recovered by fracking and then heating the oil underground to get it to flow. This process is also very expensive and very damaging to the environment.
http://www.greatplainsexaminer.com/2012/...If Canada and North Dakota are determined to destroy their environments and we need the oil the oil companies should build their refineries there in North Dakota so they don't have to destroy the rest of the country with their oil spills. If the refineries are where the oil is pumped, it could be sold in the United States and will then bring costs down, instead of being shipped into the world markets where the price is set by OPEC.