If you could peer inside the two-metre-long green tube at the
University of Calgary, you would see something glowing like an
ember. It is oil, mixed with water and sand, and it is on fire-a
slow burn fed by a constant injection of air. The temperature
inside is between 500 and 600 C, and can leap to double that
level. If you were feeling poetic, you might describe it as a
microcosm of hell. Or, if you were Gordon Moore, the 66-year-old
researcher who has devoted most of his adult life to
understanding the process, you might describe it as a vision of
the future. That future would see underground fires cauterizing
at least some of the dirt from the image of Canada's oil sands-
and ushering in more profits, too. The technology, it's true,
has been long a-borning and yet is still far from reaching
critical mass. But as governments move to penalize emissions and
environmental groups castigate the oil sands as a leading global
climate villain, the experts in these underground fires hope
they are also igniting a new