Recognizing the tarsands

…There is a certain strain of millenarian thought — encapsulated most famously in the currently faddish “peak oil” theory — that simply cannot accept the old human story of innovation acting on natural resource supplies to bring more and more of them into practical use while allowing us to consume them ever more efficiently. People of this world view tend to regard the Alberta oilsands as some science fiction fantasy, instead of a real and thriving million-barrel-a-day business; unaware of the industry’s long history of progress against high extraction costs, they assume that its product will forever remain a pathetic second-best to cheap, sweet Middle Eastern oil.


But second-best was quite comfortable when benchmark oil prices were around $25, and at $100 it is a very powerful position indeed. The truth of the matter is literally that the surface of the sands has barely been scratched. Most of us can only hope that the businesses we work for, or invest in, can remain such a confidently “proven” viable source of economic growth in the coming decades as Alberta bitumen.

National Post