Canada's golden sands?

Oil companies are mining the sands of Alberta state in Canada for oil, with a drastic impact on the environment




Aerial view of the Suncor oil sands extraction facility on the banks of the Athabasca River and near the town ofFort McMurray in Alberta Province, Canada on October 23, 2009. (AFP Photo)

Greenpeace is calling for an end to oil sands mining in the region due to their greenhouse gas emissions and have recently staged sit-ins which briefly halted production at several mines. At an estimated 175 billion barrels, Alberta's oil sands are the second largest oil reserve in the world behind Saudi Arabia, but they were neglected for years, except by local companies, because of high extraction costs.



Aerial view of rock containing oil deposits near the town of Fort McMurray in Alberta. (AFP Photo)

Since 2000, skyrocketing crude oil prices and improved extraction methods have made exploitation more economical, and have lured several multinational oil companies to mine the sands.



A scarecrow lies in a tailings pond in front of the Suncor oil sands extraction facility near the town of FortMcMurray. (AFP Photo)

In September 2009, Greenpeace activists entered a Suncor Energy Inc. oil-sands mine to disrupt production of what they called "dirty" crude at the site in northern Alberta.



The Syncrude oil sands extraction facility behind a lake reclaimed from an old mine near Fort McMurray. (AFP Photo)

Tailings ponds pollution has been a hot issue for years because of the impact on the environment, but it became more prominent in the public mind in 2008 when 1,600 ducks died in a toxic oilsands sludge at the Syncrude Canada oilsands tailings pond



Syncrude advisor Cheryl Robb shows a reclaimed wetland on the site of a former Syncrude oil sands mine. (AFP Photo)

Syncrude is the world's biggest oilsands operation and is a venture of several companies, including Canadian Oil Sands Trust, Imperial Oil Ltd. and Suncor.



Workers use heavy machinery in the tailings pond at the Syncrude oil sands extraction facility in Alberta, Canada. (AFP Photo)

Recently Suncor Energy said that it had a new technology that will turn tailing ponds near its oilsands operations in Northern Alberta into a solid landscape in a matter of weeks, thereby speeding the reclamation process significantly.