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June 4, 2010 1:00 PM

Slideshow: The source and destination of Minnesota's oil

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Maintenance worker at Flint Hills — A maintenance employee works on a piece of equipment at the Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend Refinery in Rosemount, Minn. Wednesday, June 2, 2010. The Pine Bend operation, which was built in the 1950's, covers about 1,000 fenced acres and can process about 320,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
MPR Photo/Jeffrey Thompson

While off-shore oil drilling has received a lot of attention recently because of its potential environmental costs, most of Minnesota's oil comes from Canada, where oil sands production also carries environmental risks.

Crude oil arrives at the Flint Hills refinery in Rosemount, Minn. in a pipeline that runs more than 1,000 miles to Alberta, Canada.

Read more about the environmental cost of oil's journey to Minnesota.

Gallery

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Pine Bend covers over 1,000 fenced acres — The Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend Refinery is one of the largest refineries in the upper Midwest. The Pine Bend operation, which was built in the 1950's, covers about 1,000 fenced acres and can process about 320,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
Photo courtesy of Flint Hills Resources

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Syncrude processing facility — A Syncrude processing facility. Syncrude is one the largest producers of crude oil from Canada's oil sands.
Courtesy David Dodge, The Pembina Institute, oilsandswatch.org

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Waste pond — The Syncrude complex seen over tailing, or waste, ponds. A Canadian government scientist said it would be an environmental disaster if the earthen walls holding in a waste pond failed, but he says that's unlikely.
Courtesy David Dodge, The Pembina Institute, oilsandswatch.org

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