"nothing to do with gas fracking"
Ummmm...
Maybe so, but only if you limit your definition of "fracking" to the "natural gas" production.
The petroleum industry is changing... rapidly...more so than the public is aware.
Oil Change International
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Tar sands (also known as oil sands) is a low quality form of oil that consists of bitumen mixed with sand, clay and water.
Vast quantities of the substance are found in Alberta, Canada and in eastern Venezuela.
Other deposits are known to exist in Utah, parts of Russia, Congo (Brazzaville),
Madagascar and elsewhere, but it is currently only commercially produced in Canada and Venezuela.
Tar sands is extreme oil in every way.
Its extraction is particularly energy and water-intensive, polluting, and destructive.
<snip>
It is either strip mined or produced by injecting high pressure steam into the ground
to melt the bitumen and get it to flow to the surface.
To process it into usable fuel requires complex upgrading and refining that is also highly energy intensive and polluting.
But bitumin is not only brought to the surface by fracking,
it is transported by-products of "traditional hydrolic fracking" for natural gas:
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How Fracking Boosts the Tar Sands
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There is no doubt that the dirty tar sands and fracking are revolutionising the industry.
But what is less understood is how inter-connected the two are.
Ironically one dirty technology is actually boosting the other.
One of the big energy issues dominating the energy and political debate
over the last year has been the building of the Keystone XL pipeline,
which would facilitate the export of tar sands from Canada to the US.
The fracking boom has produced an excess of condensate in the United States.
Condensate is a by-product of oil and gas production.
It is a kind of wet gas or gaseous liquid depending on how you look at it.
It is abundant in the shale gas and tight oil wells that are being drilled across America using the fracking method.
<snip>
So as tar sands producers gear up for massive expansions of their high carbon production,
more and more of the condensate produced from fracking is being exported to Canada
to facilitate the transportation of bitumen to American refineries.
According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA),
the independent statistical arm of the US Department of Energy,
in the first three months of 2011,
the US exported 1 million barrels of a type of light condensates known as “pentanes plus”.
These exports rocketed to 10 million barrels in the same period this year.
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