Oilmen finally tap Alberta's tar sands.

The article reports that a consortium called Syncrude Canada will be exploring deposits of tar sands along the Athabasca River in northern Alberta. Syncrude is run by the Canadian affiliates of Atlantic Richfield, Cities Service, Standard Oil and Gulf Oil. Their goal is to acquire 125,000 barrels of oil daily from the strip-mining and processing facility to be build near Fort McMurray. Syncrude's plans to use strip-mining draglines instead of bucket wheel excavators in the project are also discussed.