The Oil Rush

U.S. News & World Report article by Marianne Lavelle: How high-tech prospectors are trying to squeeze fuel--and fat profits--out of the earth while transforming the petroleum market. "The Canadian sands yield fossil fuels nearly identical to those hidden below the drifting sands of the Middle East. But this mother lode lies in a unique geological formation just 500 miles north of the U.S. border, and it won't surrender its treasure without a lot of labor, vast amounts of energy, and oceans of water. It costs more to wrest a barrel of oil from the ground here than virtually anywhere else in the world."