Prices Spark Oil-Sands Heyday

Along Highway 63 here the rolling hills give way to massive open pits, huge waste ponds and tangles of pipes and refining equipment that spew smoke into the air.

In the pits, shovel trucks load dirt into dump trucks so gigantic that a driver has to climb a ladder attached to the front grille to get behind the steering wheel.

The changing landscape reflects an ambitious quest to develop a new source of oil.

Major companies, faced with tougher prospects for developing big new oil fields around the world, are doing what was once unthinkable: sinking billions of dollars into projects to wring oil out of deposits of petroleum buried amid sand and clay.
Washington Post via Houston Chronicle