Road to riches: New proposals for Canadian oil sands

Shaun Polczer drives into Canada's oily heartland. Men, money and machines travel north. Oil flows south

Don't run out of petrol in the world's third-largest oilfield. Heading from Edmonton, Alberta's capital, into Canada's oil sands, motorists are warned to check their fuel gauges because there are no filling stations for 300 km. It is no small irony considering the region holds about 1 trillion barrels of bitumen. Highway 63, Canada's "Golden Road", is paved with oil. Depending on prices, as much as 5% of the country's GDP travels alongside 500 km of blacktop to refineries and export transit points to Edmonton. Next to the roadway, pipelines pump almost about 2.2 million barrels a day (b/d) of oil-sands crude south along a steady procession of batteries, storage terminals and pumping stations