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To: Eric who wrote (70981)	8/30/2006 12:56:48 AM
From: Eric	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

OT The oil boom in Alberta: CALGARY, Alberta -- In this Canadian city flush with new oil riches, residents drive 600 miles west to Vancouver to purchase Ferraris and Maseratis. At the upscale Living Room restaurant, patrons who two years ago ordered $80 bottles of wine have traded up to $300 vintages. This month, a two-bedroom house in the pastoral southwest part of town went on the market for $12 million -- by far the highest price ever sought for a home in the Calgary city limits. But the oil boom is overwhelming Calgary, a city of one million famous for hosting the 1988 Winter Olympics. Amid an extreme labor shortage, a lack of affordable housing has increased the homeless population to about 3,500 -- a 32% jump in just two years. Companies are elbowing each other out of the way for office space. Developers, stung by higher costs, are planning few new buildings to ease the crunch. Josh White, president of Calgary Urban Initiative, an advocacy group, notes that while plenty of laborers have moved here to find work, some are forced into hotels and tents. "We're a prosperous city but we're growing shanty towns around us like a third-world country," he says. Peter Blair lost his apartment lease in June, he says, when his landlord cashed out of her rental property investment after just one year. Mr. Blair, a busy 43-year-old painter and construction foreman, ended up homeless. Eventually, he pitched a tent at the KOA Kampground on Calgary's west side. "Money isn't the problem," said Mr. Blair recently, showing off the $1,800 Canadian he carried around in hopes of finding a new lease. "Getting the place is the problem." In the past year, 25,000 people moved here -- about 70 people a day. Demand for property, both residential and commercial, has far outstripped supply. But even with all the newcomers streaming in, the city still doesn't have all the workers that it needs -- and won't for many years to come. The Conference Board of Canada recently estimated that Alberta will face a shortfall of 332,000 workers by 2025. As the front-office headquarters for Canada's oil and gas industry, Calgary is the gateway to one of the world's greatest petroleum troves: the tar sands of Alberta Province. Companies have only recently begun to tap these oil-rich mineral deposits in earnest, as the tripling of crude to above $70 a barrel in recent years has set off a black-gold rush here. The city is being swept up in what is expected to be one of the energy industry's largest capital-investment blitzes ever, joining the likes of Moscow and Riyadh. online.wsj.com