ABOUT THE FILM Ever wonder where America gets most of its oil?
If you thought it was Saudi Arabia or Iraq you are wrong.
America’s biggest oil supplier has quickly become Canada’s oil
sands. Located under Alberta’s pristine boreal forests, the
process of oil sands extraction uses up to 4 barrels of fresh
water to produce only one barrel of crude oil. It goes without
saying that water — its depletion, exploitation, privatization
and contamination — has become the most important issue to face
humanity in this century. At the same time, the war for oil is
well underway across the globe. A struggle is increasingly being
fought between water and oil, not only over them. Alberta’s oil
sands are at the centre of this tension. As the province rushes
towards a large-scale extraction, the social, ecological and
human impacts are hitting a crisis point. In only a few short
years the continent will be a crisscross of pipelines, reaching
from the arctic all the way to the southern US, leaving toxic
water basins the size o