US 'Dirty Oil' Imports Set to Triple
May 3, 2012 Various plans and schemes are planned or under review for the United States to triple import of Canadian 'bitumen' -- aka tar sands oil, which scientists and environmentalists call the 'world's dirtiest oil' -- over the next eight years from roughly a half million barrels a day to over 1.5 million barrels.
Trucks in the Alberta, Canada tar sands. (AP File) Those numbers are estimates generated by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups in a recent report, but were confirmed by CNN, who compared them with the Canadian oil production numbers generated by the US Energy Information Administration.
Environmental groups have launched a spirited, and in many ways effective, campaign against Canadian tar sands, but the Canadians have so much of it that the push for its continued development will not die easily. "We've got all this unconventional crude, and we're completely unprepared for it," said Michael Marx, a senior campaign director at the Sierra Club. "It's definitely more dangerous" than regular oil, he told CNN.
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