For hundreds of years, people have known about the huge reserves of oil trapped in a black tarry sand in the north of Alberta: a wilderness of oil stretching for miles.

For decades it's been too expensive to get at, but now the rising global price of crude oil means that companies are scrambling to get their hands on it, creating what many describe as an 'oil rush'.

Peter Day reports.

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	Canada's Black Gold Rush

First broadcast: Friday, 17 February, 2006 at 0906 GMT