Tar Sands

Over two thirds of currently planned expansions of U.S. oil refining capacity are designed and intended to accommodate heavier, dirtier crude oil from Canadian “tar sands,” according to data on U.S. oil refinery permitting activity under the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) recently compiled and analyzed by the Environmental Integrity Project. The data in this report suggest that U.S. refineries are placing a major bet on a fuel source which is dirtier to mine, process and refine, and the extraction of which releases three times more greenhouse gas as conventional crude oil.