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Article: Digging black gold: Milwaukee machines unlock oil supply larger than Mideast's.
- Article from:
- The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI)
- Article date:
- May 28, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Rick Barrett
May 28--Fort McMurray, Alberta -- Like a monster rising from the tar pits, a Bucyrus mining shovel takes huge bites of gooey sand and drops them with a thud into the biggest truck you've ever seen.
Four scoops of the sticky dirt, roughly 400 tons, fill the truck that stands three stories tall. The dirt contains a tarlike grade of petroleum called bitumen, which can be processed into synthetic crude oil.
Most of the synthetic crude from this desolate region in northwest Canada is used to make gasoline, jet fuel or home heating fuel. It flows through a network of pipelines to oil refineries across North America, including ...