Last month, a Texas-Illinois pipeline built to bring oil north reversed direction to take Alberta oil south. More expensive to process than the light crude oil of the Middle East, Alberta’s [oil sands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oilsands “Wikipedia: Tar sands, also referred to as oil sands or bituminous sands, are a combination of clay, sand, water, and bitumen.”) have long remained a largely untapped resource, but with oil at $70 a barrel, it has become economically feasible to extract the thick, sticky [bitumen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitumen “Wikipedia: Bitumen is a category of organic liquids that are highly viscous, black, sticky and wholly soluble in carbon disulfide. Asphalt and tar are the most common forms of bitumen.”) that in former years was used to seal native people’s canoes. Only Saudi Arabia, with 259 billion barrels, has larger oil reserves than the Florida-sized patch that surrounds this Canadian outpost.

[Read](http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0512/p04s01-woam.html) (Christian Science Monitor)