Saw a news item yesterday about a huge find of sand oil in Northern Canada. Said there was enough oil to keep U.S. and Canada supplied for a couple of hundred years!

 

That's obviously good news. From what I hear, Canada gets most of their oil (which makes them a terrific exporter of oil) from "oil sands". From what I hear, it's fairly easy to get to and process, although not as easy as just pumping it from the ground like in Texas or Saudi Arabia.

Interestingly, geologists say that the U.S. has over 2 TRILLION recoverable barrels of oil locked up in "oil shale", which is a bit harder to get and process than the Canadian oil sands. The technology is there, however, but as usual, environmentalists are against spoiling the view of the Rockies (it would run from Southern Idaho to Utah). There is something to that, but that WOULD be enough (during full production) to supply all our needs.

(Not to mention "ANWR" and offshore fields in the Atlantic off of the Carolinas).

So in the meantime, pissant countries like Venezuela and Iran (the governments anyway) threaten to cut off our supply of oil and the speculators go crazy and the price remains high---with the tendency to inch higher every time an OPEC nation farts.

Summary: Build more nuclear plants. Invest in opening up our own original sources in the U.S. and Canada. Increase refining. Support more widespread diesel usage in cars and trucks (like in Europe). Increase efficiency and cleanliness.....

 

watching the history channel about a month back and the oil shale is a huge deposit, but there is more than triple that in montana. but it is over 4,500 feet down. the deepest ones in iran only go 900 feet.

 

Lazy , did you just awaken ?

We have been producing the oil sands for some 30 years

I have posted numerous posts about this on FTE!

My 2 nephews are engineers in Fort Mac doing their part to extract the oil for syncrude.

 

This is impressive. let me know when they start processing it and delivering to fuel suppliers near me.

 

Just be aware that all these sources of "unconventional" petroleum aren't going to make the price at the pump go down any. Oil sands, Oil shales and much of the offshore stuff is very costly to produce. The cheap oil comes from those "pissant" countries you mentioned who were blessed with easily recoverable reserves. I'm a petroleum engineer and trust me, we'll run out of money to produce it before we run out of oil reserves.

 

Yes I`ve heard of shale oil. About 300 years of oil reserves in shale but would need oil to be about $100/barrel to be viable. All this talk about oil running out is for oil at $30. I think that has run out already!

 

The part on 60 minutes I saw said that the oil sands have only now become fesible because oil is steadily over 60 dollars a barrel. It is easy to get to, but very hard to process. I don't know about the Oil schades.

 

The current problem with oil sands recovery at this time is the copious amounts of water required to get it out. This is causing a problem with environmentalists and people in the area who are concerned with diminishing water supplies. Nuclear fired heaters etc. are being considered but that is another problem. It has been said if all the oil could be recovered there is more there than in the rest of the world outside the middle east.

 

The oil in the Oil sands ISN'T any good for Gasoline.

It is good for Diesel fuel & Heating oil.

Sweet crude like in Venezuela and SA is best for Gasoline.

 

It's a matter of refining and it will be expensive.
Wayne

 

Hey seventyseven250. Vey true about the cost. I mentioned it in original post, but "pissant" referred to the people in charge of those countries only. How expensive is recovery from "ANWR"? Offshore is more expensive, but that tech is mostly established and shouldn't be too prohibitive. Changing from OPEC petroleum to oil shale and oil sands overnight IS cost prohibitive, but who's talking overnight? When something is fairly new and/or rare, it IS at first expensive (I can remember $800.00 VCRs in the '80s), but don't things generally come down in price after mass production and initial startups? (i.e. oil-shale mining and refining in the Rockies). I'm not necessarily referring to bringing the cost of gas at the pump down as soon as possible, but I AM referring to the U.S. having their own supply of petrol when some nation (or nations) gets pissed at us and decides that they'll sell to China only. THAT'S national security, which is my main concern. And I DO believe in not only exploring and/or exploiting sources of energy not related to petroleum and/or making petroleum-reliant machines more efficient.

 

You are right about economies of scale. That's the only way oil sands and oil shales can ever make money.

For anyone interested, here's a great article on the Alberta oil sands. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/oil.html
Fun Fact: It takes two tons of oil sand to make one barrel of oil.

 

The oil sand development is really starting to take off. Embridge Inc. is in the process of extending into Canada and reversing a pipe line that ran from Cushing, Ok to Chicago, IL . This is to bring Canadian oil sand crude to midwest-western inland refineries. A lot of money is being spend to develope these North American resources.

 

Trucks carrying a 400 ton payload. Now that is a super duty truck. And at $5 million each what a deal. Imagine changing one of those giant $13,000 tires. Do you suppose Caterpillar have a buy back pollicy on warranty complaints?

Hurry up Ethanol and soy diesel.