Not all the oil produced in the sands is mined

This is the hot new way they're extracting more oil from the sands than anyone imagined

There are two ways to separate the Alberta oil from the sand it's glued to. The way it's been done since the '60s is to basically strip mine huge swathes of land, separate the crude, and dump the waste off to the side. It's as ugly as it is spectacular to behold, it turns out, but that's not what's causing this new boom.

The new oil sands explosion is somewhat similar to the fracking boom here in the states and doesn't involve open mines at all. In the new process, actually called drilling not mining, holes are bored, pipes are run, and through various miracles of technology oil that was never expected to be pulled sees the light of day.

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Oil sand drilling basically works like this: Twin vertical holes are bored down 800 meters, where they turn sharply horizontal and continue a 1,200 meter path parallel to the surface.

The shaft closest to the the surface delivers high-pressure steam that warms the surrounding bitumen enough to get it seeping into the vacant shaft below. When that line fills with oil, it's drawn to the surface where it gets separated from the remaining earth and water.