"It takes a lot of energy to extract heavy, viscous and valuable bitumen from Canada's oil sands and refine it into gasoline and oil. Companies mine some of the sands with multi-story excavators, separate out the bitumen, and process it further to ease the flow of the crude oil down pipelines. About 1.8 million barrels of oil per day in 2010 were produced from the bitumen of the Canadian oil sands -- and the production of those fossil fuels requires the burning of fossil fuels." (Quoted from article)