This is from the Athabasca Oil sands deposti site where the deposit can be reached from the surface:
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 ...
Best I recall they use steam to seperate the oil from the sand. In the past this was to expensive but with oil over $60.00 a barrel I would think it would be profitable!
Expensive at $30/barrel of oil, but at $50, $60 and up, companies are getting in line to invest.
I saw this on 60 Minutes last week. I wish I saved it, but was struck by the softball questions because it is Canada, not the US which is extracting the oil. Apparantly, there were no "environmental activists" trying to stop it unlike ANWR, and the interviewer actually asked isn't it true that the US is exploiting Canada's find?
Another biased report: Canada ripping up the landscape for oil to help the country = good; the US wanting to drill in ANWR (and exploiting poor Canada) = bad.
Since the majors are all multi nationals you would be blocking the most capable players. It would be counter productive. The one oil company that should be blocked however is Citgo.
For the oil shale, typically they drill down, inject steam to liberate the oil from the rock and them pump the oil out.
The oil sands are mined with huge surface mining equipmnet to a central facility for thermal extraction.
That is my undertanding, I may not be 100% right, but I have studied these some.
When the investing public discovers this, oil sand stocks will be most profitable....
I think that we are finally getting to a point where all the talk about oil shale and oil sands is either going to be proven true, or exposed as junk science. If you can't make a profit exploiting those resources at $100 a barrel, or more, then they really aren't much use.
You'd need a bloody big pot :)
Or one hell of a lot of small ones.
you pretty much hit it on the button...I was working in Fort Mac prior to 9/11 for 4 years.
"I think that we are finally getting to a point where all the talk about oil shale and oil sands is either going to be proven true, or exposed as junk science..."
ummm...i was in Fortmcmurray...and the fact that bitumen is being extracted from the sand is a truth...not junk science.
The thing is, for all the genious minds and tons of dollars we might be ready to invest in it, I'm almost thinking we should turn the project over to some mid schoolers, 7th and 8th graders, for a science fair project.
I GUARANTEE they come up with some ideas that are totally different from the mainstream.
And some of them possibly fantastically profitable.
Well, since they're already extracting hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily from Canada's tar sands I would hardly call it junk science. In fact I wouldn't call it science at all. More like a huge engineering project.
This is from the Athabasca Oil sands deposti site where the deposit can be reached from the surface:
Congrats on electing a conservative, you hosers.
Don't worry, the Democrats in Congress will capitulate to the US "Greens" and render both oil sands and coal "off-limits" due to "environmental considerations"---exactly as they have done for EVERY OTHER SOURCE OF ENERGY--including nuclear, hydroelectric (bother salmon migration, don't y'know), wind power (kills birds, esthetically unpleasing to "rich Irish whose last names begin with "K").
I wonder, if the US completely quit buying oil from foreign counties, what effect it would have on the rest of the world? (exepting Canada and Mexico)
I never saw pictures. Thanks.
Look at how black the stuff is! Black gold!!!
They run 24 hour operations, right? Nust be a bitch working at night in -30f weather. Is fire a big risk?
Bet it stinks nasty, too.
Shell Oil has figured out how to do it. The process is somewhat similar to the Frasch process for mining sulfur. Simplistically, the process goes something like---drill two wells, pump hot water or steam down one well, and the heat and pressure pushes the liquified oil to and out of the other well.
Must be hard at night to excavate with everything the same color. Artifiial lighting is never adequate for night ops, in my experience.
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