Much of Canada's oil (I'm thinking of the Alberta tar sands) hasn't historically been economical to produce, because it's harder to get out of the ground and refine. In the Middle East, by contrast, they dig a hole and it comes bubbling out like in the Beverly Hillbillies. (One interesting consequence of that is that petroleum economics haven't been widely practiced in the Middle East.) Anyway, with the price of oil having gone up so much there is now huge investment going on in northern Alberta to develop this stuff.