Letters to the Editor
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Don't rely on the Athabaska tar sands.
Just reading the first line of your article made me expect a reference to the "huge" reserves of oil stored as sticky tar sands in Alberta.
I lived in Canada as a kid and I've been hearing about them for three decades now. The terrible trouble is that it's very expensive, in energy terms, to remove the sand. Right now, for every four barrels of oil-equivalent in energy you put into the sanes, you get five barrels out, and it's not at all clear that major improvements in this process are impending, or even possible.
So when you hear about the tar sands, just knock 80% off the number of barrels in your head. Despite Exxon's sunny claims, there is an awful lot to worry about.