Debt Free Thanks to Oil Sands

The Canadian province of Alberta contains massive amounts of oil sands. But extracting the petroleum contained in them is costly and harmful to the environment. Still, the sands are a temptation oil companies can’t resist. They’re investing billions in order to secure the abundant source of energy.

You would have to be a firm believer that a boom is coming to stick around for long in Fort McMurray, high up in the wilderness of northern Canada. On bad days you’ll wait 45 minutes for your coffee at Starbucks, and foul-smelling smog clouds begin darkening the sky every afternoon, long before sunset. On the better days you can at least find a place to sleep. But if you want to live here, it’s a different story: A couch in the basement will set you back at least 500 Canadian dollars a month.

Fort McMurray is hailing itself as the new Klondike, the capital of the late-19th century gold rush. The city’s inhabitants proudly proclaim themselves to be solving the world’s energy problems. And despite the inhospitable living conditions in the northern part of the Canadian province of Alberta in winter, the statistics show that the city’s population — currently at 61,000 — rises by 100 newcomers every week. Many of the soldiers of fortune who arrive here are attracted by high wages, but it’s mainly oil workers who are drawn to Fort McMurray. The draw? The lands surrounding this former Hudson Bay Company trading post contain oil — and lots of it.

It may not be the cheap, easily extracted stuff found in Saudi Arabia — but geologists claim that Alberta could well match the Middle Eastern oil exporter as far as quantity is concerned. Experts believe the accessible oil reserves here could total as much as a whopping 174.5 billion barrels — a volume greater than supplies in Iran and Libya combined. If the calculation is accurate, then Canada is number two in the global ranking for oil reserves.

Spiegel