In th[is] University of Alberta site ...it says that Athabaska's 1.7 trillion barrels is 1/3 of all known oil reserves worldwide. A staggering fact that is not really widely known in Canada, let alone the US.Oh, we know. Weeee know.
All silliness aside, Mr. Kahn sent along some interesting links and comments when I was posting earlier about the "oil weapon myth". In addition to the University of Alberta link above, he provided a link to the Oil Sands Discovery Centre, sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, and these comments:
Note that in the Syncrude site(So you see, all that stuff you hear from anti-war
...they quote their recovery cost as $18 a barrel, which sounds kinda steep
and must be Canadian "pesodollars", which converts to $12 US. A major paper
up here in a business article some weeks back quoted 9$ a barrel (US funds)
as the current production cost for the 300 billion barrels that can be dug
up with shovels today (by comparison Mideast oil costs $5). The other stuff
would have to be mined with other methods when the surface stuff runs out
in several decades. Mining oil sands used to be barely worth the effort
until the production cost of synthetic crude dropped sharply in recent years
after one of the lead companies got rid of their mondo bucket wheels and
simply started digging the stuff up and trucking it out (the CEO responsible
for that was a woman I believe). [...] Canada may have its problems (mainly
related to the lack of a strong federal political opposition because of the
splintering of conservative forces in the 90s, which will resolve itself
eventually), but hey, we're only 30 million people sitting on all that oil
and we have America for a neighbour. Can't complain!