Alberta’s Dirty Secret is Out…
> by Matt Badiali
>
> 54,360 square miles.
>
> That is the extent of the Alberta Tar Sands in Western Canada.
>
>
> It’s comparable to the total land area of Florida… but there’s
> much more oil in the
> Alberta Tar Sands than in Florida. In fact, more oil is locked
> in this deposit than
> in all of the Middle Eastern countries combined.
>
> However, Tar Sands oil is very different from what the sheiks
> pump out of the ground…
> it’s dirty, literally. But that dirty oil is one of the most
> important petroleum deposits
> in the world… a deposit that will make investors very wealthy
> over the next few decades.
> Let me explain.
>
> The oil in the Tar Sands is like soda that has gone flat.
> Imagine a normal oil deposit is
> like a regular bottle of soda. The oil is mixed with gas and
> under pressure. If the bottle
> cap leaks, then the gas escapes and the soda goes flat.
>
> Leave a glass of soda in your car in the summer, and the soda
> will evaporate into thick
> syrup. That’s essentially what happened to the oil that became
> the Tar Sands. It leaked
> into an ocean and all the light fractions were lost. The heavy
> oil mixed with the bottom
> sediments. The remaining material, called bitumen, is similar
> to molasses mixed with water,
> sand, and clay. Dirty oil!
>
> There are two processes to get the oil out of the dirt.
>
> The first is pit mining. Large excavators load the tar sand
> into even larger dump trucks.
> It’s the ultimate economy of scale. These trucks are so big
> that their tires are the biggest
> expense out there. Really! The tires cost so much money that
> production is often reported in
> terms of tread wear.
>
> CBS aired a 60 Minutes special on the Tar Sands project last
> Sunday. They interviewed the driver
> of one of these humongous dump trucks. There are 14 steps to
> get up to the cab of the truck.
> That’s like driving from the second floor of your house.
>
> Mining is only the first step, however. Once out of the
> ground, the oil must be separated from
> the dirt and muck.
>
> They use a process similar to a washing machine. The sand
> falls to the bottom, and the oil rises
> to the top of the water. The oil is skimmed off the top and
> sent away for processing.
>
> The second way to get the oil out of the ground is a process
> called SAGD – steam assisted gravity
> drainage.
>
> With this method, two wells are drilled into the Tar Sands,
> one above the other. The upper well
> uses steam to heat the sediment in place. The hot oil collects
> in the lower pipe and gets pumped
> to the surface, sand free.
>
> Once the oil is treated, the end product is one of the best
> light, sweet crude oils on the market.
> Best of all, this sweet crude is coming from Canada… and the
> last time I checked, nobody was lobbing
> missiles near the Tar Sands.
>
> Since the 60 Minutes clip aired, a few of the main oil sands
> companies like Suncor (SU) jumped in
> price. Suncor is up over 20% in less than a month.
>
> My advice is to wait for a cool off… wait for a healthy
> correction in price… and then make a long-term
> investment in “dirty” oil. Suncor is a great way to do this.

At the time we’ll need cheap and plentiful oil most, while suffering from the crisis that Lovelock believes we’re to endure (me too, for what that’s worth), we’ll be bereft of the single most important energy source with which to power possible interventions to ameliorate the effects of the crisis.

In any case, why make one crisis rise in stature over another? Whatever effects the Greenhouse may bring, the jury is still out and I think it’s safe to say we won’t like it, there is one indisputable fact: oil will cease.

Every aspect of our way of life has assumed a cheap and plentiful energy source. What happens to the fabric of our World when we have North America pitted against China for control of the last remaining barrels? Can you feel the ghosts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wailing? I think I can.

jimbo

Its unfortunate that the famines and plagues of global warming and global drought effect the economically powerless first – who sadly must do all the dying in the name of progress.

Meanwhile no changes will be made to greenhouse emissions because China and the United States are battling for control of the hothouse, like frogs boiling slowly …

Daniel

If Global Warming follows the worst-case scenario, James Howard Kunstler’s predictions will be small potatoes compared with the RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE EFFECT where at some point conditions speed up exponetially and become irreversible.

This is why the Kyoto Treaty is so important, some serious environmentalists even believe Kyoto is inadequate. The next Century is make-or-break // live or die for the whole planet if you prefer more dramatic language, many assert. Got your attention yet??? Then again, John Bolton could start thermonuclear WWIII or we could get hit by a stealthy killer asteroid out there with Earth’s name on it. Apart from these two, Global Warming is the single greatest threat to us all.

The single best book I’ve come across is “The Next Hundred Years: Shaping The Fate Of Our Living Earth” by Jonathan Weiner. He won a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for another one of his books and currently teaches at Princeton University. Written in 1990, it brings together most of the pieces in a comprehensible way and introduces James Locklock and his Gaia Theory.