"You just be that way Yanqui, I find another man take me to the dance."
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 ...
:D yup, last year working there i was in * camp *...the only bills i had was running my house in New-Brunswick and car insurance...:D
Near St John? I went to the 1880's club there once, had a great time. Jennifer Mac somnething from Ontario. Navy girl. Oh to be a young coastie again.
Maybe we should invite Alberta to join our Union. Canada could get Maine and Vermont in exchange.
bout an 1 1/2 hours from St-John...small french cajun fishing village...
The cutoff to profitably extract heavy oil from oil sand is $29/barrel.
The oil sands have been profitable for quite some time.
US burns 20 million barrels of oil a day, the rest of the world 60 million barrels a day. US imports 14 million barrels a day. If the US stopped importing 14 million barrels a day, that would drop needed world production outside the US from 74 to 60 mbl, which would move the world peak oil point from 2016 to 2018. That is, if it happens now. It won't happen until after 2016, so it won't matter at all.
http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2005/07/28/news/the_west/thuwes03.prt
January 24, 2006
Energy bill invites oil shale development
By JENNIFER TALHELM
Associated Press writer
WASHINGTON — Buried in this year's energy bill amid the provisions offering incentives for corn farm-ers and the coal and nuclear industries, is a plan to spur development of oil shale and tar sands that could have profound effects in Western states.
Advocates say Utah, Colorado and Wyoming have enough of the petroleum-filled rock and tarry gravel that the U.S. could one day go head-to-head with the Middle East in petroleum production. They just have to be able to get to it.
After years of virtually ignoring the vast deposits of oil shale and tar sands, the energy bill, which law-makers are expected to consider before they leave for their August recess, dramatically reverses the nation's approach to oil shale, opening the door within a few years to companies that want to tap deposits on public lands.
Enthusiasts point to successful tar sand operations in Canada as evidence that it could work here and say that if just the available oil shale and tar sand were used, the U.S. would no longer have to depend on foreign oil.
"We have more recoverable oil in Utah and Colorado than in the Middle East," Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican who has been a leading proponent of oil shale development, said in a statement. "Utah imports nearly one-fourth of its oil from Canada tar sands, even though we have a larger tar sands resource in the state that until now has remained undeveloped. This is a big win for Utah."
Others say they're afraid the bill moves development too fast — faster even than energy companies are ready for.
In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said he thought the bill "put the cart ahead of the horse."
"I frankly am disappointed," Salazar said of the oil shale provisions. "I think they created the potential for an oil shale boom where in fact we still have a lot to learn about whether oil shale is a viable resource."
Oil shale has been a sleeper issue in debates about the energy bill. Unlike issues such as nuclear fuel storage and oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, oil shale hasn't really been talked about.
It is estimated there are more than 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil from oil shale in the Western United States, the richest geographically concentrated oil shale and tar sands resource in the world.
Most is concentrated in the Green River Basin in northwestern Colorado, northeastern Utah and southern Wyoming.
Although proponents, including Hatch, are enthusiastic about the potential, many Colorado residents in particular are wary because of their experience with oil shale development in the 1970s.
In part because of the energy crisis then, the federal government leased tracts of land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and pre-empted local regulations to help oil shale companies that promised to create thou-sands of jobs and develop a new source of oil.
It all went bust, however, when the oil shale industry collapsed after the oil market went soft in the 1980s.
Advocates now are pushing the issue again. They say this time, the technologies have improved, the envi-ronmental regulations are tougher and — possibly most important — the price of oil is unlikely to bottom out again.
They point out that the bill requires a lengthy environmental impact study for the three states that are most affected. It requires the Interior Department to work with state and local officials.
It also would enable the federal government to start issuing commercial leases within a few years.
The commercial leasing provision worries Salazar, and it has environmentalists predicting problems for the future. They are concerned about what oil shale extraction will do to the water, air and land.
"I think the potential end result is we'll end up with large tracts of our public lands subjected to ill-conceived or only partially planned mining and development," said Steve Smith, the Denver-based assistant regional director for the Wilderness Society. "And we'll have to then go back and clean up the damage."
"In order to develop the small amount of oil sands heavy oil you will have to sell your resources to Canadian companies that know how to do it and you will have to buy that technology from Canadian producers."
I doubt it is a "small" amount.
Many US companies had pilot and demonstration projects, as per the article, and per my personal knowledge. Parachute Creek, Colorado, Union Oil, Dept. of Navy, etc.
I expect the US can get this job done, with minimal outside resources. I don't say that to in any way minimize the expertice of the Canadian companies.
Looks like the way goldminers in Fairbanks treated the 100' of frozen overburden before they sluiced it away with water giants. Driving steam points was high tech a century ago.
"You just be that way Yanqui, I find another man take me to the dance."
You're kidding, right? There isn't anything 600 miles north of Montana.
whoops - forgot to mention regarding the link I posted above that Halliburton Energy Services is up there and hiring.
It's called the Grand Staircase Escalante National Park - set up by Bill Clinton to force utilities to buy coal from Indonesia.
As far as the countries that support terrorism go, I won't be sad to see THEIR economies crash. Let them wallow in the mud until they become civil.
For all you Freepers looking for more info on the Canadian oil sands, go to this site:
http://www.oilsandsdiscovery.com
Yes, it's true. They even have a visitors center up in Fort McMurray.
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