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Canada produces more oil than it needs, and most of the excess is sold to the US. It turns out that Canada is sitting on a gold mine (?). It's estimated that Canada has one of the biggest oil reserves in the world, with most of it in the form of oil sands.'
Gold mine' is a poor choice here, since we are already talking about another mineral, oil. Metaphors when too close to their source context, become lame (much as did '
bottom facing'-- wasn't that your phrase also, New2 ?). If you were very adept, you could turn the lame metaphor into an appropriate and much more effective pun by writing that '
Canada is sitting on a black gold mine'-- since '
black gold' is an epithet for '
oil'.
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