Well-Oiled Machine – TIME
Canada is poised to become Venezuela north–without the loopy President and the deadweight national oil 
company as unwanted partners–as the biggest oil boom in North American history hits terminal velocity. An estimated $124 billion will be invested from 2007 to 2012, according to the Athabasca Regional Issues Working Group, an industry association. Production in Alberta’s oil sands will more than quadruple, to about 5 million bbl. daily, by 2015; Canada currently exports an average of 1.9 million bbl. daily (from all sources) to the U.S., more than any country, including Saudi Arabia. That’s about 20% of total U.S. imports. Alberta’s oil sands deposits total 2.4 trillion barrels of oil, and established reserves are only second to Saudi Arabia’s 263 billion barrels at 175 billion barrels.
The mega-projects across Alberta’s oil sands rival some of humankind’s greatest engineering achievements, including the pyramids of Giza and the Great Wall of China. After thousands of years, those ancient projects still bear witness to history. Conservative estimates predict the tar sands will give out in just 70 years. Their legacy to Canada is yet to be written, but it may be a great deal bigger than expectations. With new deposits still being found and technologies improving, the sands could produce for a couple of hundred years more. Forget Venezuela. Canada may become the new Saudi Arabia, the last great oil kingdom, right on the U.S. border.