Earth Equity News

The Sands Of Canada: Oil Supply Salvation or Sinkhole? By Richard Read, Oregonian, 12/4/10. “In vast strip mines north of this Alberta boomtown, shovel machines bigger than five-story buildings rip out tar-soaked sand, dumping 400-ton loads in trucks that feed the voracious U.S. appetite for oil. Factories in Canada's ‘oil sands,’ site of the world's largest single oil deposit, use super-heated water to purify the rich black glop. Much of the petroleum is piped to U.S. refineries, making Canada -- not Saudi Arabia or Venezuela -- America's top oil supplier. A century and a half into the petroleum age, oil companies have depleted many accessible, politically friendly reserves. Rising energy prices might be expected to encourage investment in solar, wind and other alternatives, and to some extent they do. Yet if the $200 billion poured into the oil sands so far is any indication, bigger money will flow worldwide to ever more expensive fossil fuels…

“Alberta's oil deposits, formed from tiny creatures left by an ancient sea, cover an area more than half the size of Oregon. They contain perhaps 2 trillion barrels, equal to the entire world's remaining recoverable reserves of conventional oil. But because of bitumen's gluey nature, it's difficult to extract. Only about 170 billion barrels are considered recoverable with today's technology. More than 80 projects in Canada's oil patch already produce about 1.5 million barrels a day, more than Texas or Qatar. Production will triple if all proposed and announced projects are completed -- as they probably will be, given current oil prices at $87 a barrel, well above the threshold for profits.”