In a warming world, the most important natural resource is fresh water. Yet, as the price of crude oil soars past $100 a barrel, our insatiable addiction runs the risk of polluting 4.2 percent of ...

As oil has become scarcer and more expensive, oil companies have begun seriously pursuing a politically charged method of oil extraction in Canada. The ­world’s second-­largest oil reserve lies under ...

ONE of the bleakest scenes of man-made destruction is the strip mining of oil sands in the forests of Alberta, Canada. The sand is permeated with natural bitumen, a type of petroleum with the ...

THE separation of the bitumen from the Alberta bituminous sands by washing with hot water has been under study by the Research Council of Alberta for a number of years. It has been found that ...