This article is a little old (Nov 2007), but relevant nonetheless.
Elizabeth Kolbert, A Reporter at Large, "Unconventional Crude," The New Yorker, November 12, 2007, p. 46
A REPORTER AT LARGE about extracting oil from the Alberta tar sands. The most important resource in the town of Fort McMurray, in northern Alberta, is the Alberta tar sands. The tar sands begin near the border of Saskatchewan and extend north and west almost to British Columbia. All in all, they cover some fifty-seven thousand square miles, an area the size of Florida. They consist of quartzite, clay, water, and a hydrocarbon known as bitumen, which can be converted into a form of petroleum known as synthetic crude. It?s estimated that there?s enough bitumen in Alberta to yield 1.7 trillion barrels of synthetic crude. Assuming only ten per cent of this is recoverable, it still represents the second-largest oil reserve in the world, after Saudi Arabia?s. In Fort McMurray, what might be called the world?s first unconventional oil boom is under way. Since 2002, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, and Imperial Oil (which is primarily owned by ExxonMobil) have all received approval to construct major projects in the tar sands. Over the next five years, investment in the Fort McMurray area is expected to amount to over $75 billion. Thanks to what?s happening in the tar sands?output now tops $1 million barrels a day?Canada has become America?s No. 1 source of imported oil. By 2010, tar sands yield is expected to double, and by 2015 to triple. Depending on how you look at things, this is either a heartening prospect or a terrifying one. The company that?s been producing oil from the tar sands the longest is known as Suncor. The writer toured Suncor?s Millennium Mine, which opened in 2002, with Gloria Jackson and Darin Zandee. For every barrel of synthetic crude that Suncor eventually produces, forty-five hundred pounds of tar sands have to be dug up and separated. Describes the history of efforts to extract oil from the tar sands. Mentions Manley Natland. Describes Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). A great deal of energy is required. It?s estimated that by 2012 tar-sands operations will consume two billion cubic feet of natural gas a day. There are several reasons that oil companies are rushing to develop the tar sands. If the price of oil remains above $90, then these and other unconventional forms of fuel can be developed at a profit. With unconventional oil extraction, however, the damage to the environment tends to be higher all around?more land gets disturbed, more pollutants are produced, and then there are the greenhouse gases. ?All unconventional forms of oil are worse for greenhouse-gas emissions than petroleum,? said Alex Farrell, of the University of California at Berkeley. Farrell and Adam Brandt found that the shift to unconventional oil could add between fifty and four hundred gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere by 2100. There is a great deal of support in Washington for measures that would, in effect, subsidize high-carbon fuels. Mentions the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act (C.T.L.). In the village of Fort Chipewyan, opposition to new tar-sands projects is steadily growing. Meanwhile, development in northern Alberta continues unabated.
Link:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_kolbert
