Canada new OIL capital, page 1

There is enough oil in the sands to last approximately a century (Not sure if that estimate takes into account an increasingly oil-driven China/India). The only reason we are driven to this oil sand, though, is that all the other oil is gone. Resource gathering picks out the easiest bits first, and then is slowly forced to get at the less economic options.
This is oil, and sweet light crude. But it comes at a premium.

Creating energy from oil sands requires so much energy that the oil companies wind up spiking greenhouse gas emissions.

"And they do it in volumes that exceed any other production of oil crude anywhere on the planet," says Elizabeth May, the director of the Sierra Club of Canada.

Allegedy,, refining four barrels requires a fifth in waste

She takes issue not only with what the oil sands are doing to the atmosphere, but to the land. The oil companies, environmentalists say, are digging up an entire province. Take a helicopter ride over the mines and you’ll think you’re flying over the moon after a moonquake.

I would hate to see Alberta resemble the rutted hill tops and stripped surface mines of America.
Envriomental laws are stringent, and the article goes on to say that backfilling and replanting is
required for these operations. One company went so far as to reintroduce Bison to an area backfilled.

Does Pickens think the days of cheap oil are gone?

"They’re gone," he says. "From what we knew as cheap oil, when I pumped gasoline in Ray Smith’s Sinclair station on Hinkley Street in Holdenvale, Oklahoma, 11 cents a gallon, that’s gone."

Will we ever again see $1.50 a gallon? "We won’t ever see $1.50 a gallon. No, that’s gone," says Pickens.

I worry that the exploitation of these oil sands will be another setback for alternative energy.
However, this will still be expensive oil. There is the possibility that Alternate energies will gain a niche market and work to become less expensive than this sand oil. If anything, I am glad that this will keep us going for a little while longer.
I also think it will be a setback for "Peak Oil is a hoax"ers. If there is relatively cheap oil to be found in vast abundances, why are going after this incredibly expensive and harmful operation to quench our thirst? Even if petroleum is organic, this is all we will have for a long time. The earth operates in thousands of years, not decades.

he bonus for Canadians, aside from the treasure, is the notion that Americans might have to start treating them with a little less condescension.

The worst cost of them all.....