I have mentioned the oil sands before but it may not have been to the entire list. They estimate the "known" amount of oil sands to be sufficient to supply N. American needs for 500 years. I had tour of one of the plants back in 85 and at that point the plants (which have since grown significantly and they are currently building a 3rd) made money as long as the cost of a barrel of oil was over $23. There are also other by products of "cracking" the oil from the sands including sulpher, which back then was selling for $200 a ton. Of course, they don't add those extra profits when they estimate the cost of extracting the oil. There was an article in last nights paper about the nuclear plant proposed for the area. The govt is against it but willing to look into it. The reason being the huge amounts of fossil fuels the province has, oil, gas and coal. The province is working on a clean burning system using coal to generate power. The city of Fort McMurray has over 20,000 people in it the last I heard and with all the construction going on up there could be well over that mark too. One interesting tidbit. They use electric drap shovels to lift the sand out. In the pit that I toured they have 4 each scoop is the size of a 2 car garage. They use a full size pickup to move the power cord for these rigs. If all 4 of the shovels, which use more electricity than the entire city, were to lift at the same time, they would blow every circuit breaker from Edmonton to Ft Mac. Rob At 01:24 AM 4/29/2006 -0400, you wrote: > The Canadian oil sands will be worth extracting and have less sulpher than typical oil reserves. In fact there is a French based company that has requested a permit to build a nuclear power plant in the region, which currently has less than a 1000 population. >
