Posted on 01/24/2006 5:21:01 AM PST by djf
The Oil Sands Of Alberta Jan. 22, 2005 (CBS)
(CBS) There’s an oil boom going on right now. Not in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or any of those places, but 600 miles north of Montana.
In Alberta, Canada, in a town called Fort McMurray where, this time of year, the temperature sometimes zooms up to zero.
The oilmen up there aren’t digging holes in the sand and hoping for a spout. They’re digging up dirt — dirt that is saturated with oil. They’re called oil sands, and if you’ve never heard of them then you’re in for a big surprise because the reserves are so vast in the province of Alberta that they will help solve America’s energy needs for the next century.
Within a few years, the oil sands are likely to become more important to the United States than all the oil that comes to us from Saudi Arabia.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Get ready! Stay calm!
Well over a trillion barrels of oil.
And here is another recent article posted on FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1498687/posts
(off to check google)
IIRC, Utah also has vast deposits of some of the highest grade - lowest sulfer coal in the world as well.
Except for the fact that it's expensive to extract and for the most part on govt land the oil tar sands and shale oil could keep us in oil indefinitely. Expect the Greens to raise hell about the environmental impact.
Nah, Hillary is introducing a bill to declare such areas as Natural/National Monuments--to be "saved" for posterity.....Sound familiar?..........
Oh, look! Canada is becoming relavent again!
I heard 8X the reserves as in the Middle East.
IIRC, the stuff in Utah is an oil shale formation. Extracton is quite a bit different.
We are not going to run out of oil any time soon, but it will get more costly to extract.
That paret south of the border is probably forever unrecoverable. There's a Spotted Snail Darter up there or something.
other related information
{Candian Oil} Sands in shake out year
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1561667/posts
I told a lib "No war for oil" type friend if it truly were a war about natural resources, we'd have taken over canada.
I don't know why people are always saying that. Seems to me, you take a big pot of water. Get it close to boiling. Chuck in the rocks and sand and oil.
Pour the oil off the top, and repeat.
Oil does, after all, float in water.
But rocks and sand don't.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)--The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday selected the first companies that are likely to earn a chance to start exploiting vast oil-shale reserves in Colorado and Utah for petroleum.
BLM Director Kathleen Clarke announced the bureau had narrowed a field of 16 contenders for experimental projects, choosing six companies that, subject to environmental reviews, could be awarded leases to work 160-acre parcels of federal land by summer.
Taking direction from President George W. Bush's Energy Act, Clarke heralded the first step in developing "a domestic resource with staggering potential." The reserves contain a 100-year domestic supply of oil, she said, although it's locked up in layers of hard rock and the technology for economically recovering it is still evolving.
Tuesday's announcement amounted to tentative approval for experimental works, but more significantly it put major oil companies and a few small players in line for leasing larger federal tracts for commercial operations that could start as early as mid-2007.
The front-runners that win approval for experimental works will get first rights to lease an additional 4,960 acres of land surrounding their 160-acre parcels - all chosen for their proximity to the richest or thickest oil shale deposits in western Colorado and eastern Utah.
The reserves overlap into a corner of Wyoming, which is expected to be part of the commercial leasing program, but the only application filed in Wyoming for experimental works was rejected by the BLM as incomplete.
In Colorado, Shell Frontier Oil & Gas Co. (RDSB.LN) won tentative approval to work three separate parcels of federal land, subject to environmental reviews. Shell is perfecting a method of baking shale oil from the ground using heating rods drilled into layers of rock, an alternative to mining.
The BLM advanced variations on that "in-situ" technique proposed by three other companies - Chevron Shale Oil Co (CVX); EGL Resources, Inc. (EAGL), and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM). Each of those companies won tentative approval to work a parcel of federal land that, like Shell's, are inside Colorado's Rio Blanco County.
In eastern Utah, Oil-Tech Inc. and Oil Shale Exploration LLC survived the elimination round with plans to bake shale oil out of rock using a retort, or stack of furnaces, each taking advantage of a supply of 30,000 tons of oil shale left outside the abandoned White River mine.
Tuesday's elimination round set back 10 other proposals, all rejected because they didn't advance oil-shale technology or promise economic viability or environmental safeguards, said Tom Lonnie, assistant BLM director for minerals, realty and resource protection.
In Colorado, the BLM turned back Kennecott Exploration Co.; Natural Soda Inc., and groups going by the names Independent Energy Partners and Phoenix Wyoming.
In Utah, the bureau rejected proposals submitted by Argyll Energy; Great Western Energy; Mountain West Energy; Syntec Energy, and Western Energy Partners.
http://www.thebusinessonline.com/DJStory.aspx?DJStoryID=20060118DN011235
Too bad out State Dept, stupid Congressmen, and others won't let us cut off the Arabs from the supply line once we start utilizing that resource ( in about 30 years ). In a perfect world we would be extracting in 2 years and totally quit buying overseas.
All the "One World Economy" jackasses will start clamoring about not fair to make the other countries economies tank.
It'll be labeled detremental to the 'Spirit of Kyoto'... and declared verbotten.
We also should block any foreign held company from getting leases.
About ten years ago, I saw a guy in PBS with this small machine. It had a door, and a nozzle coming out of it. He put oil shale in it, put a beaker under the nozzle, and turned it on.
Oil started dripping into the beaker until it was about 3/4 full.
He was using a modified microwave oven!!
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