Petroleum products are found in nearly everything we use today. Petroleum products include transportation fuels, fuel oils for heating and electricity generation, asphalt and road oil, and the feedstocks used to make chemicals, plastics, and synthetic materials. The United States is the world’s third largest crude oil producer. We produce oil in 31 states and offshore. The top three oil-producing states are Texas, Alaska, and California. About 76% of the 6.97 billion barrels of petroleum products that were consumed in the United States in 2014 were gasoline (47% of total petroleum consumption; includes biofuels), heating oil and diesel fuel (21%), and jet fuel (8%). Petroleum also referred to as crude oil, a resource that is drilled for throughout the world. Petroleum and natural gases are formed from the remains of plants and animals trapped in or between layers of fine-grained sediment laid in oceans and large lakes millions of years …show more content…
Oil sand is a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay or other minerals. Oil sand can be found in several locations around the globe, including Venezuela, the United States and Russia, but the Athabasca deposit in Alberta is the largest, most developed and utilizes the most technologically advanced production processes. Alberta is a the western province of Canada, which is the fourth largest province after Quebec, about the same size as the state of Texas and twice the size of Japan. The Rocky Mountains/Canadian Rockies run down the border of Alberta and British Columbia and extend into the United States rising over 14,000 feet. The Mackenzie and Selwyn mountains farther north along the border between the Northwest and Yukon territories are often included in the Canadian Rockies. North of this region, the surface of the province is of the most fertile soil, with ordinary rainfall sufficing for agriculture. Alberta is one of Canada’s prairie provinces, and is a fertile one because of vast expanses of treeless plains. Fertile soil is rich in trace elements of minerals such as chlorine, copper, iron, zinc, boron, cobalt, manganese, sulfur and magnesium. With Alberta being located in North America it makes it very simple, to construct an oil pipeline that will transfer natural resources faster and easier to the