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Why Is Obama Restricting New Canadian Oil Supplies & Development

By Alex Rutherford


Few in the media seem to portray the whole giant "Athabasca Tar Sands" as little more than an irritant to Obama. After all why send good money to the middle east with all its political troubles when we can send it to our "neighbors to the north" and obtain a reliable source of energy. The former Liberal Party Prime Minister of Canada once explained to George Bush jr. If we can give you a reliable source of oil , without political strife at less cost than you could - why wouldn't you buy it ? Fort McMurray with the historic "Athabasca Tar Sands" has emerged as Alberta's and Canada's pot of gold in the energy dependency field that we all live in 2013/2014. Things can only get better and more prosperous both for Alberta , Fort Mc Murray and the Edmonton based economic hinterlands.

Famous for the reaches of the Athabsasca Tar Sandsas well as large pipeline sectors of natural gas, Fort McMurray also boasts of forestry, tourism, and retail business. At one time a Ford auto dealer from Gimli chanced upon the place after reading about it on the plane This was early on its early oil industry discovery. There was just something about a boom town in the air he noted years later. At that point in time the area was virtually just a dot on the map of what wast to come . The population of Fort Mc Murray Alberta is less than 65, 000 and is a multicultural community. Half of its population is made up by native Albertans while about 20% are settlers from Newfoundland and Labrador. The city is one of the major hubs in oil production and houses two of the largest oil sand mining organizations Suncor Energy and Syncrude.

Although now locals or even those bragging about the great potential of the place will tell you that "You can still get a house in McMurray for $ 600,000 real estate prices are staggering . You have to live somewhere so speak and that large outlay gets you little more than a matchbox. Some tradespeople knowing the boom and bust nature of oil towns - and without kids and a family to be had - drive up with a motor home in tow and purchase or rent a pad at a mobile home park. That being said even a trailer home park rental pad is not inexpensive either by any means. Fort McMurray Alberta has pleasant summers when the temperature ranges between 10 to 16 degrees centigrade but the winters can be quite cold with the temperatures reaching -18. 8 degrees centigrade and an average snowfall of up to 61. 3 inches. Situated in the boreal forest where the Clearwater River and the Athabasca River meet, it is at a distance of 37 miles (60 kms) on the Westside of Saskatchewan and about 270 miles (435 kms) northeast of Edmonton's highway 63.

The economy of Fort McMurray Alberta is largely based on the Athabasca Oil Sands and is considered a major oil production area. The Abasands Oil Company was the first to extract oil in 1930s from the oils sands of Fort McMurray Alberta using a process called "hot water extraction". However the commercial production began only by 1967 with the opening of Great Canadian Oil Sands and since then the district's economy has skyrocketed.

Fort McMurray is Alberta's new frontier. Its "gold" boom town so to speak based on the new black gold - oil that is relatively easy to extract and is profitable to process at today's high crude oil prices. The economy and the growth of the whole industry and whole area depends to a great extent on continued high oil crude oil prices. It is only profitable to extract the crude oil from the tar sands at a given crude oil price. A lot of energy , and water which is in short supply as well , in processing the crude from the oil sand base. New extraction processes could come into development and into play , which require less fuel to extract the crude oil. Other processes , techniques and procedures are being looked at , and are in the research phases to require less precious water in the extraction process and the whole manufacturing process and sequence. Only time will tell the long term viability of this special economy as a whole.



 
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