I spent a week in the Athabasca oil sands last month and what I saw was a truly massive operation that's driven by the demand for something we all use every day.
The Athabasca sands hold the second largest deposit of oil in the world and could eventually produce up to 2-trillion barrels of crude.
But the type of oil there is thick and needs considerable refining even after it is extracted. The following presentation outlines how the oil gets from the ground to your gas tank.
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="ooyalaPlayer_i5jg_h362g77w" width="616" height="347" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/swflash.cab"><param name="movie" value="http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=VvcXV5NDqcEoeniMm6Na68-UPZ_W-e_o&version=2" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="flashvars" value="embedType=noscriptObjectTag&embedCode=VvcXV5NDqcEoeniMm6Na68-UPZ_W-e_o&videoPcode=BhdmY6l9g002rBhQ6aEBZiheacDu" /><embed src="http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=VvcXV5NDqcEoeniMm6Na68-UPZ_W-e_o&version=2" bgcolor="#000000" width="616" height="347" name="ooyalaPlayer_i5jg_h362g77w" align="middle" play="true" loop="false" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="&embedCode=VvcXV5NDqcEoeniMm6Na68-UPZ_W-e_o&videoPcode=BhdmY6l9g002rBhQ6aEBZiheacDu" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></object>
Produced by Robert Johnson and Daniel Goodman
Don't Miss:
• Here's Why The US Should Allow Natural Gas Exports
• The US Can Produce As Much Oil As Saudi Arabia
Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook .
Join the conversation about this story »