extremely polluting oil derivatives. it's the last giant rush for black gold on a global scale. and the oil companies have come together here in the state of. the sandman's eldorado. us and is a very interesting story because it has been there for ages that resource is so large today it represents the amount that can be recovered both economically as well as technically so with the right technology one hundred seventy three hundred sixty nine just counting the oil sands a billion barrels so that hundred sixty nine billion barrels makes it the third largest resource of oil anywhere in the world third only after saudi arabia and venezuela that's just over one hundred years worth of reserve and so therefore it is a very large very attractive and now very globally recognized source of oil for the world into the future. oil doesn't mean the end of oil is essentially referring to the fact that the world's cheapest and best

petroleum deposits have been mined out and now we're on to unconventional resources so now we are mining stuff that costs more we are mining stuff that has a higher environmental footprint we have to use more energy to get this energy and that's what peak oil is really all about it's simply saying look we've run out of the cheap stuff now we're hitting the dirty stuff. the cost of doing so is going to cannibalize the global economy at the same time it undermines the world's mind and security. north of the state's capital the site of the biggest oil sand mines two million barrels are extracted every day by twenty thirty that will increase to five million barrels a day. a blessing for petroleum engineers. faced with depleting traditional

reserves. but ecologists call the project an aberration not least because one barrel of oil has to be used just to produce three or four. that's ten times less efficient than saudi crude the gas growth in these factories could provide power to three thousand households every day bitterman is an unconventional source of energy like shale gas the latest technologies are required to to extract dirty oil. out of the head of the scariest year if you're interested in c.d.o. needed you mr dan is going to. be here. so what i'm going to do now is the how extraction so this is after mining trucks and shovels have done all their work all of the deposits gone through the crusher to bring it down to that size then they have hot water and start mixing it because they need to add air to make sure that all of that fiction starts to float away

that's when to do right now the heat is important because that actually is very thick and heavy as i mentioned this is fiction in that room temperature. so what they have to do though is they have to dilute it this is done with what's called not so so once the bishop has been diluted it's very thin very runny it's kind of like this and that's a little bit human will then go through a series of centrifuges and settling plates let's just say you know a little bit heavier there was. great to get one barrel of pitchmen they need about eight to ten barrels of water in this extraction method so collectively the leftover clay and sad and water and a little bit of fiction and all this together is called tailings so the tailings pines this is essentially what it tailings on looks like. the plant is supposed to include reclamation and so reclamation is the rebuilding of any of them. harmony disturbed or destroyed in their process so that doesn't

just mean refilling it in my it doesn't just mean cleaning up the tanks i disses that and experiment and trying to make industry more accountable the only area that's been reclaimed to that level of government certification used to belong to syncrude is about one square kilometer and it was certified in two thousand and eight but that's after they started replacing it in the early ninety's. for twenty five years one square kilometer has been restored hundreds more still await. arab lands covered with slabs of bittermann. but the oil companies guaranteed that the forest will grow back to its natural state one day. kevin timony doubts such a miracle is possible. he's been studying ecosystems in the north of bertha for three decades. when the industry

says that it's reclaiming the land what they're actually saying is that fear fear fear revenge. but what they're not telling you is that they're not reestablishing the native plants they may have some trees growing there but if you were to look at that forest find that it's missing a lot of the plants and animals that should be there we're losing the natural biodiversity and what we're getting in return is imperative those systems that have a higher number of exotic species that don't belong there and if you are species that are native to the community are precious. but nothing can stop the expansion of the industry. nasa has been aiming its satellites at fort mcmurray for twenty years the increase in the number of mines artificial lakes and tailing pones is clearly visible. the spread of bittermann has made

almost one billion cubic meters of water highly toxic. it stays there for fifty to one hundred years before it can be treated. jennifer gratz is worried about this environmental time bomb. she's an oil sands expert at the pen being a institute an organization that advises canada's government on how to adapt as the oil runs out. the rules of the game have changed over the past fifteen years. and the industry has become all mighty. not a single company in the last year was actually able to meet directive seventy four those are the tailings rules that are designed to help reduce the proportion of future tailings waste to any of the companies actually challenge that analysis or what was the government's response pretty quiet so there was a lot of interest in the story from the media but i didn't actually see any responses from companies i mean i think there's this is a case of of being guilty on not meeting the regulations and i think they're trying

to you know keep that story as under wraps possible right now. there are huge growing problem we have not resolved challenges with tailings and there's a number of challenges there's risks of waterfowl in wildlife encounters which has happened before we had six hundred ducks and just die on one incident alone in two thousand and eight there's risks of seepage so we know that tailings lakes see around eleven million liters of waste per day and of course one of the biggest challenges is how we how we're actually going to reclaim and deal with this at the end of my life so can we actually reclaim this magnitude of toxic waste and i started it working at the pentagon institute nearly seven years ago at the area of tailings ponds was about fifty square kilometers that area has now grown to one hundred seventy six. some of the tailings ponds like this one at suncor run parallel to. athabaskan river. pollution from the

petrochemical industry weakens this ecosystem in which the northern peoples live. where the river ends deep in the northern forest the land of the first nations the native americans there are no roads there you have to fly over the mines and discover what this land looked like before sands extraction began. last stop for chip away in the middle of nowhere. run thousand two hundred souls live here on the banks of the lake formerly a significant site for fishing. today these indian tribes can see the oil industry swooping down on them between fatalism and resistance. huge.

huge ship it's clear it's just ten kilometers square and this whole area is slated to be mined. which is under its where i think it's four thousand square kilometers less than ten percent is being mined but our government wants to mine the whole thing in fifty or seventy years the indian reserves these beasts parts are the places that have the best chance of preservation but look at them they're surrounded by oil sands so. nothing has a chance here anymore but really my wife's family is afraid will become environmental refugees that will have to leave this part of the world just to find a healthy place to live. and i seen no sign of alberta taking any responsible attitude towards the potential damage that could happen.

that's for chips is because we're down down river from all of this that river flows right to us that's our drinking water. that's our wildlife that's everything that's here fishery. larson the old native canadian is taking us to his land hunting and fishing here since he was a child he's one of four chip away in living memories he has seen his people and nature itself change. lanes will be here to come and go sure maybe one hundred miles from here they've got plans now. and then is going down every year but it's not ok you see the level of the rocks. and there will be a question before here's where you seem to live in. all because.

the plants would take so much water and the big dams they have. we got the hint i would stuff it. might be a worker would have bread to feed your family now. big money big money. you might have a good deed for a while not to riches here we've got a billion dollars to dig a lot of the you know i still buy the government out below million dollar stake right all noise. or. i may hurt on a dollar did. grab. and we didn't go there. but the native canadians patience is slowly wearing thin and for chip away is living on welfare.

you know in july of two thousand and eight just weeks before the collapse of lehman brothers took down the financial markets with. the bank and before tarp and served unnerve george w. bush was caught on camera at a fundraiser in houston texas saying quote there is no question about it wall street got drunk the question is how long will it take to sober up and not try to do all those fancy financial instruments. if drug is code for fraud then georgie the party was just getting started. they want to so this country is back to the middle ages a public event. for the database and you know they derive their ability from the very very rigid interpretation of the law and if you look at a country like egypt for example sounding off the very high poverty the reason this

might also be i think is because delusions called the boundary and the border and that's the kind of suppression if you look at the liberal the say that a country like turkey almost ninety nine percent muslim. economy is. right on the street. first street. and i think picture. on a reporter's twitter. and instagram. to

be in the. on. the first nations. is taken very seriously their anger could challenge the expansion of the industry so while companies pay them a school here a youth center there a new road to create a few jobs and make them forget about the pollution scandals. such as the scandal of a commercial fishing the main livelihood of the people of four chip away and it's been declining for years fishermen condemned the impact of oil sands on the fish i never see any fish years back and we had a bad water which. last batch twenty years which are a little more we start catchin dipping. normal fish like meat to be born to

do had you because you know some kind of chemical god and to me. raymond regularly senses catch to researchers who are putting together a scientific report be objective to launch a large scale toxicology study in the area which the authorities have consistently refused to conduct the fishermen unfortunate and have been seeing more of these malformations over the years and not only more fish is showing these deformities but also different kinds of deformities that they haven't seen as much in the past . you can see here in this in this bourbon or ling cod see here some sort of lesion below one of its fins increased temperatures of water and can lead to malformations we know that stress is related to spawning and lead to malformation but we also know that ph is and high levels of selenium and

other contaminants in the water can lead to to all sorts of abnormalities so you know something like this where there's missing vertebrae is quite commonly the result of water pollution i mean once we have contaminant plumes leading away from telling spawns it's too late they can't be remediated so now we have a situation where mildred lake settling basin and other major tailings ponds have contaminant plumes that in contact with ground water and heading towards the at the best river we can't do anything about that what effect that will have on on the downstream over the centuries to come nobody knows but it's the sort of thing that needs to be studied. the first nations feel betrayed by the government. destruction of oil sands calls into question treaties signed almost a century ago. at the time being state of canada had finalized treaties with each

tribe. an old arrangement that's almost disappeared even if the text is still in graves in the country's constitution. morning. i have my. files placed trees one two level thank you will will your is the lawyer for his people it's a family affair his grandfather signed a treaty that sanctified the native tribes rights in alberta with his own hand there is many people that took a canoe along the at the basque river and as they're going along they seen oil seeping out from the side of the hills and they asked the first nations people the digitas people what. they said all that soil and they said we have to make a treaty with these indians to access that. resource rich area treat allowed the first nations people to hunt trap fish. for

their subsistence that is the basis for the relationship between canada and the first nations and what it's done is the promise of for ever as long as the grass grows as lawns and sun shines as long as the river flows all of those don't mean much because the rivers are flowing but they're full of pollutants and so is the air you know. it's not the same as it was thirty years ago it's polluted it's dangerous. it has or it contains carcinogenic samosa in the water. we hear of cancer cases everywhere from this pollution beatriz it in tells us about the loss of a loved one dozens of them and all come to the same conclusion. nothing has changed here except for the oil development.

cecilia lost her son a young boy taken away in only a few weeks by a cancer a very rare type of cancer. in the hospital and. the doctor said. that it was can't. so he said you'd out across town to connect. and won't. you know we gain this nightmare one of my son's friends that are he has aunts. and. there is a few other diagnosed here around his age have cancer it's not

normal. it's just water and this pollution like what they're burning out there at these sites is not safe or even the work people that work there. it's just aren't real like follow today money rules you know the people that are killing these people. they should be traveling every other murder everybody's. great. a few years ago the law of silence was broken we went to fort mackay another native canadian reserve to meet dr john o'connor the man who sparked this scandal.

are you. so what's going on. right if you had to pay for. this irishman was the only doctor at four chip away in for forty years. and it's not appear trace of her own a rural district doctor and he was alarmed by the increase of cancer in such a small community. it's. discovered a margin of pathology cancers and old immune diseases that. really surprised me cancer board came up to the community got the information he needed went back to edmonton and they took a year and two thousand and nine they announced there's actually a thirty percent higher rate of cancer and for chip and among them rare cancers is it environmental is it bad luck is it lifestyle is it genetics we know the people

for chip eighty percent of the community is traditional they subsist off the land on fish gather and trap. genetic cancers you can see them i off you know and there's no there's no real suggestion that there's a genetic issue bad luck could happen anywhere. the environmental changes that have been seen are increasing independent science has proven that we've never had and by the way a public health official said one word or other one word of concern that the tar sands may be causing an impact and it is bizarre even based on the precautionary principle you know which is a sort of a fundamental of public health if there's a risk he removes the risk of you move the people people are hardly concerned about these native canadians and cancer in fort mcmurray the region's resources keep attracting gold diggers black gold that is. this city has become one of the most prosperous in the country the most expensive two entire districts are hastily built

to welcome poil workers and their families and you house a fabulous salary people from around the world come here to make a fortune canadian petro dollars can withstand all crises when the recession hit like you never really get married ever really felt or say right it was a little now like everywhere else like a lot of places they felt really hurt but here everything just kind of kept on going as it was. right everything just kept going up. realistically it's not going to stop a lot of people in a negative attitude if you have a positive attitude and there's lots to do and you can keep yourself entertained and there's the really good opportunities for oil sands should earn canada two trillion dollars in twenty years so criticisms or warnings are often brushed aside the government drums its official line in terms of oil exploration there is much worse elsewhere we are so transparent people sometimes try to use that transparency

against us but i would encourage them to go to other countries where it isn't so transparent for example iran's or many of the other middle eastern countries they're having increasing difficulties mainly because of the result of political instability it would be great if there was another. magic source of energy that had no consequences on the environment there is no such thing so as long as we're going to be using oil as part of the energy mix in the world they all sands in alberta are an important piece of that and we're determined to work hard to ensure that our environmental standards are amongst the very best in the world. the image of a responsible and ecological canada has been dented. on december twelfth two thousand and eleven the country shut the door on the kyoto protocol reducing greenhouse gases is impossible with the oil sands boom. andrew nikifor of has done the math the country ran the risk of getting

a fourteen billion dollar fine for exceeding its quotas many members of the canadian government do not believe climate change is a threat the prime minister of canada is a climate change skeptic so the canadian government is in a mad rush to exploit this resource as quickly as possible before the rest of the world shames us into controlling production and says look. joe million barrels that's enough we don't the world will not need five million barrels of this stuff it's too dirty you know this resource is telling you now you must get off oil this is the end game when you have to dig up the forests the size of rhode island or delaware when it takes two tons of sand to make one barrel of oil you know you're at the bottom of the ninth inning and that's where we're at. a fork in the road between fossil energy and renewable energy also a fork in the history of canada's north. in fort mcmurray oil workers take their

children to see the bison. the animals are housed in a former mine of the same crude oil company. proof that the environment is in good health. in for chip away and in other native canadian reserves the elderly are withdrawing even further into their communities they watch the factories advance on this land that they consider a sacred. i cry. if you had to were trouble. will be not. going to be be. might. i'm a man and earth to do. i cannot be john mark or my painfully to the ship where people that create or are down here i'd feel them and. the bad were mitchell led many think shadow of. witchery wrong

to begin with good for the old maybe you already. know you know memorable a bad bad crash and they destroyed you that your never. serious. piece of tried to. pull. the trigger for it's a sure thing every minute. the time.

the law oh well. i know why but he. was saying sixty times. skeets just beat him up still sometimes for nothing. just so he can still smoke just keep still he can still be shot still if you see the stage to speak to keep tabs but speech was still. stands. in fish farms waters they have a pond to me because. i size spread all over norway is the most toxic food you have in the whole world. drowns out in the tissue inquiry furthermore tells restrictions . on.

who really knows what's inside the. moon. you show no way over. there.

in fish farms waters. upon the me because. you have in the whole. drama zone to nutrition inquiry furthermore restrictions.

ukrainian warplanes reportedly bomb a town near the crash site of the malaysian passenger jet despite the president's hostilities. and government forces have handed over the flight data recorders to the officials probing the crash of the train carrying the bodies of flight m.h. seventeen victims. completing the first stage of its journey. defense ministry presents radar evidence that a ukrainian fighter jet was in the nearby asked faces the time of the disaster and the crash site. western media.