[Baketech]

Canada drips with oil, but it's tough to get at
Tue Sep 7, 6:46 AM ET
By James Cox, USA TODAY

Any serious effort to ease America's addiction to Middle East oil starts near this Alberta boomtown cut out of Canada's great boreal forest.

By conservative estimates, the underground deposits around Fort McMurray hold 1.6 trillion - with a "t" - barrels of oil, making them the largest lode of hydrocarbons on Earth. Up to 330 billion barrels of the crude here in Canada's oil sands region are recoverable, geologists say. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, possesses 262 billion barrels of proven reserves.

With oil prices bounding to nearly $50 a barrel this summer, both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have been talking up the Canadian option. Both extol a U.S. energy policy that draws more supply from friendly, familiar Canada and less from the volatile Middle East.

Despite the region's promise, not even the most giddy Canadian oil executive is ready to declare that the sands will break the USA's reliance on Middle East supplies anytime soon. Since 1967, the industry has spent $21 billion opening mines, drilling wells and constructing processing plants in the oil sands. Over the next decade, nearly two dozen companies plan to spend $24 billion more to expand existing operations or open new ones. Fresh investment could rise to as much as $40 billion by 2025, an amount equivalent to the combined spending of American companies in China over the past 25 years.
[TRIMMED]

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Does beer qualify as WMD's?