If you’re gonna call me a yankee, you’d better put a damn in front of that.
I wonder if Space Cadet was not actually Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, blowing off some steam after a bad phone call from GWB?
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={E5798FF3-0208-4887-8C98-D4D2D9DF448B}
[http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={E5798FF3-0208-4887-8C98-D4D2D9DF448B}](REAL Working LINK)
See! Not only are you dependant on them for oil, but they’ve got you over a barrel for Hockey too.
If I were you I’d give up quickly, and throw yourself at the mercy of your new overlords.
Well shit. Here I was, all ready to talk about why Americans suck at math. Carry on, gentlemen, I’ll show myself out.
Though I’m not Canadian, I’m embarrassed on behalf of Canada for people like Space Cadet. I’ve always thought that Canada was a more intelligently governed country than my own home country, the USA. Sad to see that that intelligence doesn’t extend to all of Canada’s citizens.
Space Cadet, perhaps you are unaware of this, but the energy intensity of recovering oil from the sands is about a 0.7 to a 0.85 ratio, depending on where they try to recover it and what level of overburden there is. Also, differences in the volatile levels in the tar sands at different sites make converting much of the hydrocarbons more difficult in terms of gasoline produciton. My friends at Syncrude Canada are going to get a big laugh out of your post when I mail it to them on Monday…
Let me put this in numbers for you: at the energy recovery levels above, the tar sands deposits quickly reduce from the mythical 1.7 trillion barrels number (total possible amount, and the best estimates are actually 1.1 trillion, not 1.7) down to about 280-330 billion barrels (economically recoverable - agrees with later numbers you quote), but at a ratio of 0.7 to 0.85, this reduces to an actual reserves of 99 billion (high) to 42 billion (low).
You must mine about 1800-2300 kg of sands to produce 1 barrel of oil, and a large amount of the sands are under a huge overburden of rock, glacial tills, etc - sometimes hundreds of feet thick. Plus, the coking processes they use to refine the oil require a bit of energy as well. Thus, there are many different things that make the deposits interesting, but far from a cure-all.
In other words - it takes a lot of energy to mine the sands and process the oil. See Venezuela and its bitumen deposits for other examples of “huge amounts of low-yield energy”. Of course, there is Orimulsion, but you cannot use the same process to make Orimulsion on the tar sands.
Of course, this completely ignores the devastating impact that the tar sands recovery has on the environment. I would have thought that you would have admitted that, since you are all about that whole honesty thing in your OP, but I guess you forgot that strip-mining enormous amounts of land, and disposing of all that toxic overburden (yes, the tailings are filled with loads of bitumen, oil, nickel, vanadium, and all sorts of things that Canadian wildlife doesn’t need to be munching on or drinking)…in other words, it’s like coal strip-mining, but worse. Oh, the small-scale operations are clean enough, relatively speaking. But scaling them up to any appreciable level is not going to yield the same result.
In other words, to use your vernacular - you don’t know what you’re talking about. You seem to have no actual scientific knowledge, nor math knowledge, but you know how to use Google. I’m guessing you are a journalism student who just got pumped full of piss and vinegar from a campus “walkout” protest, and wanted to act like a big man on an Internet message board.
Maybe you should be the one taking night classes, because since you seem to have run away, I guess I won’t be educating you any further.
Shades of the new poster crop of December, '02 - is there some sort of school holiday in Canada in mid-February?
As informative as ever Anth. I really look forward to Cadet trying to reply to this.
Irrelevant. We know what it is. You quoted an advertising/investor relations piece as a source?
This link also says that by 2005, oil from the sands will make up “half of Alberta’s crude oil production”. However, the Canadian Energy people say that in 2000, Alberta only produced about 1.5 million barrels per day, and the graphs I’ve seen shows this total rate being flat, with tar sands increasing their percentage contribution from 607,000 bbl per day to maybe 800,000 bbl to day. (Note that in 2000, the entirety of Canada produced about 2,763,000 bbl per day).
800,000 bbl per day. Sounds like a lot? Nope.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/tableg2.html
See this table. The US produces 9,058,000 bbl per day in 2000. In total, the World Crude Oil, NGPL, Other Liquids, and Refinery Processing Gain in 2000 was 76,640,000 bbl per day.
800,000 bbl per day / 76,640,000 bbl per day = squat
So what was that about math again?
A lengthy quote which is also irrelevant. The numbers look big, but don’t tell the whole story - or even half of it.
You know, I hate it when people do this. Part of my job shifted in the last year to encouraging people to look at low-grade or “niche” energy sources (Orimulsion, coalbed methane, biomass, refinery waste, TDF, RDF, MDF, etc.). I want to encourage people to consider and look for ways to utilize sources like the tar sands. But openly misleading or lying by omission about the level of resources is something I won’t stand for either. And your OP, and subsequent posts, read like the typical “Investor Opportunity” crap that comes across my desk each day.
I’ll quote what a friend at Exxon told me: “Una, if there was anything worth a damn up there from an economic standpoint, we would have gone up and bought the whole fucking province.”
Go ahead. Tell old aunt Una a story about energy…
That actually made me laugh out loud.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Cerowyn *
**Folks, do us all a favour and don’t be as fucking stupid as Space Cadet with the intolerance, okay? chula et. al., you’re demonstrating that you’re just as prejudiced as SD, rather than exhibiting any shred of wit. And I’m sure that’s not what you intend.
At the risk of introducing some facts:[ul][li]U.S. / Canada energy trade is $38 billion a year[]Canada is the U.S.'s largest oil supplier[]Canada is the world’s fifth largest energy producer[]Canada provides about 16% of U.S. oil imports[]Canada provides about 14% of U.S. natural gas imports[/ul](I trust that the U.S State Department is a believable source for this sort of information.) **[/li][/QUOTE]
Lets talk some other facts - from the US EIA:
- Canada is the principal export market for United States coal.
- Canada imported 496 TBtu of coal in 1999, compared to their annual consumption of 1,478 TBtu of coal, this makes up 33.6% of their consumption. Of course, they exported 969 TBtu worth, so it’s more fair to compare imports with production (1,907 TBtu) - in that case, US coal exports to Canada make up 26% of consumption. However, since Canada’s coal exports are primarily for metallurgical purposes (coking coals - Anthracite and semi-Anthracite), there is not really much overlap at all. So the 33.6% number may be much more accurate when talking energy use.
I wonder what Space Cadet will say about that level of coal imports? I wonder if he’ll even return?
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/northamerica/enginfr3.htm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/table55.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/canada.html
(To be factual and honest - the EIA disagrees with my numbers of 1.1 trillion bbl for total deposits of oil in tar sands. My number came from SynCrude sources, and is obviously on a different basis. The EIA actually gives a possibility of 2.5 trillion bbl. But the basic facts of mining, energy use in mining, production, waste and tailing, contamination, destruction of the environment, and extremely low production rates on any scale measured are still completely valid.)
I [heart] Anthracite. 
Somehow, after your last few postings, I get the feeling we’ll never see the lad again. What’s that saying about entering a battle of wits…?
december, that was goddamn funny! LOL!
Damn it, Space Cadet, it should be “Americans suck at maths.”
Aside from that, your stupidity and recalcitrance in this thread has been quite delicious. And you’re not doing your fellow Canadians any favors by trumpeting your location. Morons rarely make the best spokespersons for a country (no dubya jokes, please )
I think Space Cadet was confusing oil with Maple Syrup. Yep, that’s got to be it.
You must be a drug dealer…d’oh!
I sometimes have to deal with parakeet seed, and I use the metric system for that…
(the above is an extremely obscure reference to a certain comic… if anyone gets it they have my admiration)
:dubious:
Very well then:
I gladly welcome our Canadian Overlords. May their reign be merciful.
Well, I’m going to move to Montreal now. See you all around.