What Tar Sands Look Like

In Case You Were 

Wondering 

What A Tar Sands 

Pipeline Looks Like

Shawn Drury | 2 weeks ago | Miss This?, Trending

Republican leaders in Congress are wasting little time in pushing 

an anti-environmental agenda onto the country. They’re already 

are gathering votes in the Senate to override a potential veto from 

President Obama on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship 

tar-sands oil from Canada through the United States to the 

Gulf of Mexico.

Photographer Alex MacLean offers a bird’s eye view of the

 disastrous effect extracting oil from tar sands areas has 

had on surrounding environments and landscapes.

 His photos are below:

Terraces of open pit tar sands mine, Syncrude Mildred Lake, Alberta, Canada.

Suncor Millenium Mine, Alberta, Canada.

Mining Operations, Syncrude Mildred Lake, Alberta, Canada.

Enbridge Refinery, a storage and distribution point of tar sands oil, Hardisty, Alberta, Canada.

Welding Stations for Pipeline Assembly, Alberta, Canada.

Fertilizer and Oil Tanker Cars, Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada.

Refinery along the Houston, TX Ship Channel.

Refinery along the Houston, TX Ship Channel.

Houston, TX Ship Channel.

Loading rail cars with petroleum coke, a byproduct derived from tar sands, Motiva Enterprises Refinery, Port Arthur, TX 2014.

Construction of Exxon headquarters outside of Houston, TX.

Construction of Exxon headquarters outside of Houston, TX.

© Alex S. MacLean, posted with permission. See more of Alex’s work at www.Landslides.com

Shawn Drury is Senior Editor of BNR. He’s a vegetarian, UU and pulls for Bayern. Follow him on Twitter: @ShawnDrurySC.