Yet when the No. 5 Tar Heels arrived, they found a crowd nearly 2, 000 short of capacity.

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GTL, tar sands, ethanol and other alternatives will become more economic by the day (see chart 2).

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Separately, Canadian oil company TransCanada has proposed building a 1, 700-mile (2, 735km) pipeline called Keystone XL to carry crude from Alberta, Canada's tar sands region to refineries in Texas.

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