It avoided substituting Venezuelan heavy-tar oil used in Gulf Coast refineries with a similar product from near-by Canadian friends.

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Light sweet crude is depleting quickly, and now the industry is going after heavy crude and tar sands and thermally enhanced oil.

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The company is spending billions and hiring thousands to upgrade its remaining "northern tier" refineries in Indiana, Ohio and Washington state to handle a gush of heavy crude from Canada's tar sands.

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It issued a press release in January trumpeting new technology that cheaply upgrades the kind of heavy oil found in Venezuela and mined out of Canada's tar sands with rapid applications of heat using sand as the heat carrier.

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Crude oil, or its substitutes, will be produced for decades, but at an increasingly expensive tariff, both in terms of cost and energy, as it is sourced in the form of a heavy, sour (high-sulphur) material, or in synthetic form from tar-sands, shale and coal.

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