Alberta Oil Supply?

Question

In Alberta, a province in Canada, there lays an Oil supply estimated currently at 175-300 billion retrievable barrels, with still vast amounts unknown and currently unretrievable. Currently public awareness about this is relatively low. Only 4 percent of Americans believe that Canada's the US's largest supplier of Oil (true fact). If public awareness of this is raised, and obstacles to the building of new pipelines between Canada and the US are removed, what effects might it have on America's economy, view towards fossil fuels, etc?

Answer 1

"If public awareness of this is raised, and obstacles to the building of new pipelines between Canada and the US are removed, what effects might it have on America's economy, view towards fossil fuels, etc?"

The resources are enormous, and the amount of oil that can be produced is about 1-3 million barrels a day; the main impact would be to keep global oil prices from going higher and make us less dependent on middle-east oil. So it is a good thing on many levels.

How distressing that we could be North American energy-independent with such resources, yet people (in previous replies) are insisting we not use this great resource. This kind of muddle-headded thinking has led us to deny ourselves use of ANWR oil, deny ourselves the ability to obtain natural gas off california coast, and have prevented drilling in many other areas.

In ALL cases, this does NOT reduce our consumption, all it does is increase our trade deficit and dependence on unreliable regimes for energy. Bad idea!

Let's put it in perspective:
America is consuming 20 million barrels a day of oil, or about 7 billion barrels a year. The oil in ANWR (about 15 billion barrels) is worth $1 trillion, and could be extracted by impacting only 2000 acres of frozen tundra.
The 300 billion barrels in the Alberta tar sands is worth $20 billion, and can, once it gets going, produce over 3 million barrels a day for many many decades.

The 1 trillion barrels in potentially recoverable resources in oil shale in our Rocky mountains amounts to $70 trillion worth of energy at today's prices... that is greater that the total value of all US assets combined! Our own oil shale deposits, if they can be made economically recoverable, could have drastic impact on our energy trade balance. Shell Oil has an in-situ process that they claim can extract the oil at a price point of under $30/barrel.

The best way to raise awareness of this would be to create a plan for North American energy independence: To raise North American oil production and reduce US oil consumption.
A combination of oil import tarrifs (and excluding Mexico and Canada). A necessary part of this would be to dramatically increase the use of 'non-conventional' fossil fuels (in addition to turning towards other energy sources such as economical and environmentally-friendly nuclear power).

Yes, we COULD give our assets to countries like Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuala and buy their oil ... OR, we could decide to aim for energy independence. Claims that oil shale or tar sands is 'dirty' is hype. For tar sands, you dig it out, you process it, you return the remainder... This is no different from other mining operations, and the cost is now about $20/barrel, so at current prices, it is quite economical.

Answer 2

As with most of the world, petroleum reserves have been mapped extensively in Canada. The presence of this resource was widely known for those of us in the industry, but is considered more expensive to extract because of the geology.

However, the willingness of oil companies to invest in the development of new fields depends simply on math......higher price for oil means more that can feasibly be invested in the development of less desireable resources such as tar sands.

But....for oil companies to invest all that money and set the profit/loss timeframe out several years, they put themselves at risk that the price will drop in the future, making the investment a loss.

Politically, the same can be said. Lawmakers rattle thier sabers about fuel prices only when they are high. There is little talk about the use of alternative fuels or the development of existing resources when the price for gasoline is acceptable to the majority of consumers.

Therefore, the big question is how do you plan long term solutions to a societal problem when the decision making is usually based on economics?

The answer is a federally mandated oil commodities price. This would allow companies the safety to develop alternative energy sources without fear of changing economic conditions, and thus, it would begin to pull us in the right direction with respect to national and global energy planning.

Answer 3

I'm a New Yorker who is an environmentalist. I would be absolutely opposed to increasing the oil supply from Canada's beautiful Alberta. I'm unaware of any political/trade obstacles that actually bars us from doing exactly that. Alberta is "rich" with oil sands. The method used to extract the oil is considered to be "dirty" and impacts the environment detrimentally. Two tons of sand yield a single barrel -- 42 gallons -- of oil.

Both Americans and Canadians should be made aware of THIS inefficient process and its long-term environmental impact to Alberta! The New York Times have reported on this issue, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle (see link)...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/22/MNG46CMUPL60.DTL

Have you ever been hiking or skiing in Alberta? Have you ever dogsled on to Lake Victoria and built an ice hut? It should be about alternative clean fuels or $4 a gallon gasoline!

Answer 4

You are talking about the Tar Sands. It is estimated that there are 2.3 trillion barrels of oil in total, but most is difficult to recover.
Similarly, the U.S. has reserves of equal size in shale deposits in an area known as the Colorado Plateau. In the short term, developing and using these reserves would indeed make a dramatic impact on both the Canadian and US economy. Unfortunatly, this would prolong our depencence on fossil fuels, and place less of an emphasis on developing other re-newable fuel sources.

Answer 5

No. Too speculative. If oil is going under $fifty 5 those components are money-losers. the money is in oil centers - settlement drilling and such, actual now deep sea (Transocean, ticker RIG) yet in time land too.