oil sands
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The major deposits of oil sands in North America are in the western United States and northern Canada.
Extracting the oil from these sands is difficult and expensive.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Most of Canada’s crude oil comes from the oil sands, an unconventional but vast energy source.
From Barron's • Mar. 24, 2026
A new study by S&P Global finds greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands activities rose by less than 1% in 2024 even as total production grew 150,000 barrels a day.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 28, 2025
While statistics are fuzzy, a large percentage of the fly-in, fly-out workers in Alberta’s oil sands are Newfoundlanders.
From New York Times • Apr. 13, 2024
It said it would also end direct funding for any oil and gas projects in the Amazon or in the Arctic Circle, or which were aimed at extracting, processing or transporting oil from oil sands.
From BBC • Feb. 9, 2024
They work, my dear Blaine Asher, tapping upward into the oil sands; sands that are burial places of countless millions of generations of Petrolia; of lost races that once ruled supreme over these underground worlds.
From Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 by Bates, Harry
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
