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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (111115)8/12/2003 6:33:46 PM
From: Noel de Leon  Read Replies (2) of 281500
 
"The supply of oil in the ground is effectively infinite."

I doubt that the supply of oil is effectively infinite.

from GeoDestinies, by Walter Youngquist PhD & Chair Emeritus,
Department of Geology, University of Oregon;
National Book Company, 1997; ISBN 0894202995

"Myth: Canada's oilsands with 1.7 trillion barrels of oil will be a major world oil supply
It appears to be true that in the Athabasca oilsands and nearby related heavy oil and bitumen deposits of northern Alberta there is more oil than in all of the Persian Gulf deposits put together.
Reality:
The impressive figure of 1.7 trillion barrels of oil is deceiving. It is likely that only a relatively small amount of that total can be economically recovered. The oil is true crude oil but it cannot be recovered by conventional well drilling. Almost all of it is now recovered by strip mining. The overburden is removed and the oilsand is dug up and hauled to a processing plant. There the oil is removed by a water floatation process. The waste sand has to be disposed of.
Much of the oilsand is too deep to be reached by strip mining. Other methods are being tried to recover this deeper oil, but the economics are marginal. With the strip mining and refining process now in use, it takes the energy equivalent of two barrels of oil to produce one barrel. To expand the strip mining operation to the extent which could, for example, produce the 18 million barrels of oft used each day in the United States would involve the world's biggest mining operation, on a scale which is simply not possible in the foreseeable future, if ever. Canada will probably gradually increase the oil production from these deposits, but until the conventional oil of the world is largely depleted these Canadian deposits are likely to represent only a very small fraction of world production. The production will always be insignificant relative to potential demand. Oilsands are now and will be important to Canada as a long-term source of energy and income. But they will not be a source of oil as are the world's oil wells today."
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