Tar Sands: Blunting Oil

It can’t be said that the organizers of the November 2005 ASPO USA “peak oil” conference held in Denver weren’t willing to consider the role to be played by unconventional hydrocarbon reserves in replacing declining conventional oil production worldwide, including oil shale and tar sands, both of which are in abundant supply in North America. They asked Michael Ashar, an executive vice president with Suncor, one of the early Canadian tar sand pioneers, to talk about these rich, bitumen-laced deposits, which rival, by some estimates, the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.