Alberta oil sands may eventually be a North American asset - under Canadian control...

This story was originally posted at WritingUp, but because of their technical problems I recycled it to Blogfeast. I have now posted it here for your interest.

Alberta Oil Sands may be the saviour for future North American oil reserves!

The days of cheap oil are most likely over for the West, but there may be alternatives to Middle East oil closer to home!

Up in Alberta, Canada's sub-Arctic north where temperatures plummet to over 40 degrees below zero, lies their oil sands which could produce billions of barrels of high grade oil in the future.

The basic concept will be to heat the sands, and seperate the oil from them. But a shortage of labour - another 100,000 workers are needed plus huge investment to extricate the high grade oil product.

Workers could be earning well over US$120,000 a year once the industry is created. The conditions would be extremely difficult in the new land of opportunity in North America.

Americans will have to learn to treat their Canadian cousins with a little less of a condescending attitude, and will have to learn to share the vast returns from the huge potential that exists.

Environmental considerations will also have to be met long before the dollars start rolling in to the coffers of the investers.

But the one thing that will definately happen in the future is a few more news bulletins on this subject! The rising cost at the pump will undoubtably speed up this process.

This could be both future oil reserves and employment opportunities.

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I've got pc problems. We have oil shale reserves under lush past

Submitted by huttriver12 on Sun, 2007-07-01 19:44.

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The Kiwi Riverman

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We have mostly gas reserves around NZ...

Submitted by huttriver12 on Sun, 2007-07-01 19:43.

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The Kiwi Riverman

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Well at least we know...

Submitted by huttriver12 on Sun, 2007-07-01 19:40.

there is life after the middle east APEC oil reserves.
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The Kiwi Riverman

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Oil Sands are also found in Colorado

Submitted by Airnavigator on Sun, 2007-07-01 00:11.

Good article. Oil sands are also found in Colorado and the potential oil is probably as great as that in the Alberta sands. In fact one estimate that I read stated that the Colorado (and, again the same could be true for Alberta) sands could easily match the current known reserves of oil from conventional sources of oil that is drilled and pumped from the ground.

The point is not to downplay the significance of the Alberta oil but to remind the Chicken Littles who are always worrying about either the world running out of oil or the fact that we use too much oil from abroad that there is still plenty of oil right here in North America.

However, the problem with both the Alberta and Colorado deposits is the fact that current extraction methods from oil sands are far more expensive than oil imported from abroad. Neither the Alberta nor Colorado oil will be economically viable until either new technology reduces the cost of extracting it or the price of oil continues to rise thereby making it profitable to extract oil from these sands. There is no oil shortage as the market will always provide more when the time and price are right.

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