Canadian Wilderness Is The Next Oil Gold Mine
By, James Brooke
Ten building high cranes looming over North America's largest energy construction project are the visible peaks of a $22 billion mountain range of oil investments that are quietly transforming this patch of Canadian wilderness into what may soon be the continent's leading oil producing area north of the Gulf of Mexico. Within five years. Oil flowing south from Alberta's oil sands is expected to surpass the current production of 1 million barrels a day from Alaska's North Slope. By the end of the decade, 2 million barrels a day, the current oil production of Nigeria, is to be pumped from here into a North American pipeline network that stretches from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, helping fuel a market in the United States that now consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day.
By 2010, 75 percent of oil sands production will go down to the United States, predicted William Almdal, regional coordinator for Athabasca Oil Sands Developers, a private planning group here. After many lean years, Almdal says, the strong oil prices of the last 18 months have unleashed such a torrent of investment that today the major development obstacle is not a lack of money or overcoming objections from environmental groups, but a growing shortage of skilled labor.
While debate in the United States swirls over President Bush's support for opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, little attention has been paid to Alberta's oil sands, which have recoverable reserves 40 times larger than the estimated supply of the Alaska refuge. Although oil has been produced here for three decades, companies have barely scratched the surface, extracting less than 1 percent of supply. Almost ever since the 18th century fur traders watched Indians caulk their canoes with bitumen, a form of heavy oil oozing from the banks of the Athabasca River, dreamers and developers have debated how to exploit the massive deposits of sands here impregnated with oil. According to Canada's National Energy Board, there are at least 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil within a 250-mile radius of this northern city, about 15 percent more than the proven oil supply in Saudi Arabia. For years, mining Canada's oil sands was dismissed as a costly, roundabout way to produce oil. Multibillion-dollar "energy independence" fiascos-like the U.S. government-subsidized failure in the early 1980s to mine Colorado's oil shale deposits soured investors on most "synthetic oil" projects, or oil not from wells.
But now, Canada long the largest foreign supplier of natural gas and electricity to the United States-is becoming important in oil as well. During the first 10 months of 2000, Canada edges out Saudi Arabia as America's largest foreign source of oil and petroleum products. They are shipping 1.3 million barrels/day to the US.
For the United States, where domestic production has dropped by 40 percent since 1970, increased Canadian oil production means increased energy security; trade treaties lock Canada and United States into a continental energy market. Last year, the United States imported foreign oil to meet 57 percent of its needs, up from 37 percent in 1975. With Canada in the midst of an energy boom involving natural gas, oil and hydroelectric power production to feed the growing appetite in the United States, mining shovels here in northern Alberta are digging at a faster pace into oil-soaked sand and loading it onto massive trucks. After passing through crushers, the sand is mixed with hot water and moved by slurry pipeline to a plant where the bitumen is extracted. The basic separation process dates back to 1920, when Karl Clark, an Alberta scientist, shoveled oil sand into his family washing machine, where it was mixed with hot water and caustic soda, causing the bitumen to float to the surface.
In recent years, investors negative views of oil from tar sands have largely faded as technological improvements have pushed production costs down sharply. When the construction cranes come down next summer from the upgrading units of the Millennium Project of Suncor Energy, costs will be around $9 a barrel, roughly 1/4 the 1970 levels, according to Rick George, Suncor's hard-driving, Colorado-raised chief executive. George has set a goal of $5.50/barrel, aiming to make his company the lowest-cost oil producer in North America. ET Note: maybe we can also use this technology again in Colorado.
Source:
The Bend Bulletin
Jan 23, 2001
NY Times Service
http://www.electrifyingtimes.com
hmmm......
Industry association projects growth in Canadian oil production
by: OilOnline
Friday, July 16, 2004
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) recently has projected significant potential growth in crude oil production by 2015. Details of the association's forecast were outlined in its study, 2004 Canadian Crude Oil Production and Supply Forecast.
Total Canadian production, including Atlantic Canada, is projected to increase from the current 2.6 million barrels per day to reach 3.6 million barrels per day (b/d) by 2015. The growth in production of one million b/d represents an increase of about 40 per cent over the annual average level of production recorded in 2003. This growing production will serve Canada’s strong domestic market and our important export markets in the US and will help meet growing global oil demand.
Yeah...I think instead of being all invlolved with those Arab Nations....they are so sketchy....we could just take over Canada......I evan know tha platoon that could do it......
http://students.washington.edu/greenbam/humor/veryspecial.html
