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FORT McMURRAY, Alberta -- Any serious effort to ease America's addiction to Middle East oil starts near this Alberta boomtown cut out of Canada's great boreal forest.

 

By conservative estimates, the underground deposits around Fort McMurray hold 1.6 trillion -- with a "t" -- barrels of oil, making them the largest lode of hydrocarbons on Earth. Up to 330 billion barrels of the crude here in Canada's oil sands region are recoverable, geologists say. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, possesses 262 billion barrels of proven reserves.

 

With oil prices bounding to nearly $50 a barrel this summer, both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have been talking up the Canadian option. Both extol a U.S. energy policy that draws more supply from friendly, familiar Canada and less from the volatile Middle East.

 

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Don't kid yourself with the new technology hopes. Oil sands extraction will continue to rely on open pit and other high impact techniques. More importantly, it takes a shitload of BTUs of natural gas to extract each barrel of oil. Although the efficiency is getting better every year, the ratio is still close to one.

 

The cheapest option for safeguarding US energy supplies will continue to be lowering overall consumption.

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The amount of fresh water used is astronomical as well. I think that it has been figured out that they will extract the last bit of oil from the tar sands at the same time the last molecule of O2 disappears.

Posted
Don't kid yourself with the new technology hopes. Oil sands extraction will continue to rely on open pit and other high impact techniques. More importantly, it takes a shitload of BTUs of natural gas to extract each barrel of oil. Although the efficiency is getting better every year, the ratio is still close to one.

 

The cheapest option for safeguarding US energy supplies will continue to be lowering overall consumption.

 

I completely agree with these statements.

 

Remember, the problem isn't just energy supply: it's the byproducts produced from burning fossil fuels. It's a damn good thing we don't have an unlimited supply of oil, or we'd all be fucked for sure.

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