Quote:
Originally Posted by jyl
There is so much shale oil there in the US (and elsewhere), that future is a long time away, many decades. There is also very little oil storage capacity compared to consumption, so the US govt couldn't store enough reserves to make a real difference. Anyway, if oil were only used for chemicals, plastics, etc, the consumption would then be so low, the supply would last many centuries.
I think there is a huge amount of "unconventional" oil yet to be extracted, it is just a question of cost, technology, and environmental damage. Tar sands - expensive and lays waste to big swathes of Canada. Shale oil - expensive and (debatable) contamination from fracking. Ultra deep ocean - expensive and needs lots of technology. At $50-60/bbl, much unconventional oil is not profitable to produce. At $100+/bbl, lots of it is. So in the medium term, seems to me oil should tend to stay in the $60-100/bbl range. Problem is, that is a very wide range . . .
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Generally agree with your statement except....fact is...the oil sands mined area is about 150 square miles.... .004% out of the about 3.9 million square miles of Canada's land mass. There are other areas that are mined in situ where there is no visible activity on the surface.
Total area of the oil sands including all types, most of which is not active at this point, is about 54,000 square miles or about 1.3% of Canada's land mass, and the vast majority of the 54,000 is too deep to be mined, it needs in-situ.
The oil sands mines are similar in nature to those used for coal, iron ore, copper and so forth....I think your open pit mined area (for all minerals) is considerably larger than the oil sands.
...and them's the facts...
Dennis