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I have been hammering my readers to get on the SU wagon ASAP and ride with confidence. The stock has a rich, rich option chain, and there are 100 ways to make money off of this excellent company. Earnings announced Thursday, and I am looking for a pop higher. So why not read this:
Canada's oil sands show big potential
WORLD BRIEFINGS
By Fred Langan
LONDON TELEGRAPH
May 2, 2006
FORT McMURRAY, Alberta
High in northern Canada, a company called Syncrude is mining oil
from a black pit that measures 35,000 acres. Giant trucks, the
largest in the world, take three loads of oil sands from a huge
shovel then deliver the material to a crusher on its way to becoming
oil.
"Each truck carries about 400 tons of material and we get about
200 barrels of oil from that," said Jim Carter, president and chief
operating officer of Syncrude, the largest oil-sands operator in the
world. The Fort McMurray company is a consortium owned by seven
firms, including Canadian Oil Sands Trust, Imperial Oil, which is
the Canadian arm of Exxon Mobil, and Petro Canada.
Mr. Carter comes from a mining background, not an oil
background. He pushed for the use of giant shovels and trucks, which
are more flexible than giant moving scoops and draglines, the last
of which were retired last month. He said the mine site is barely
touched.
"We will be mining here for another 45 years," Mr. Carter
said. "Last year our production was 250,000 barrels a day. We will
have that to 350,000 by the end of this year."
That is on this one site. Alberta, about the size of Ireland,
has 30,888 square miles of oil sands. Huge swaths of the boreal
forest and a light layer of topsoil cover the oil sands. The
deposits come in three locations: Peace River to the west of here,
Cold Lake to the east on the Saskatchewan border, and by far the
largest deposit in the Athabasca region surrounding Fort McMurray.
About 6,500 people are working on the Syncrude site, in the open-
pit mine and the plant that upgrades the heavy oil to light
synthetic crude. Canadian Indians, a group with some of the highest
rates of unemployment in the country, comprise more than 10 percent
of the work force.
Billions of barrels
The Indians once used the gooey tar to waterproof the seams of
their birch-bark canoes. The oil was pushed to the surface eons ago
from deep underground by the same geological forces that formed the
Rocky Mountains just to the west.
The oil sands of Alberta contain 175 billion barrels of oil.
Only Saudi Arabia has larger reserves at 259 billion barrels.
Optimists such as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
(CAPP) say the reserves could be 10 times that if technology
succeeds in separating the oil from the sand in the underground
deposits that are difficult to access.
Using just conventional technology will vault Canada to one of
the world's leading sources of petroleum, with all the oil safely
connected by pipeline to refineries in the United States. Just this
month an unused pipeline running south to north in the United States
reversed direction to take Alberta oil south.
"Right now, Canada is the eighth-largest producer in the world,
just below Norway. By 2015, we will be No. 5, moving to just below
Iran or maybe past it," said Greg Stringham, vice president of CAPP
in Calgary.
I have been hammering my readers to get on the SU wagon ASAP and ride with confidence. The stock has a rich, rich option chain, and there are 100 ways to make money off of this excellent company. Earnings announced Thursday, and I am looking for a pop higher. So why not read this:
Canada's oil sands show big potential
WORLD BRIEFINGS
By Fred Langan
LONDON TELEGRAPH
May 2, 2006
FORT McMURRAY, Alberta
High in northern Canada, a company called Syncrude is mining oil
from a black pit that measures 35,000 acres. Giant trucks, the
largest in the world, take three loads of oil sands from a huge
shovel then deliver the material to a crusher on its way to becoming
oil.
"Each truck carries about 400 tons of material and we get about
200 barrels of oil from that," said Jim Carter, president and chief
operating officer of Syncrude, the largest oil-sands operator in the
world. The Fort McMurray company is a consortium owned by seven
firms, including Canadian Oil Sands Trust, Imperial Oil, which is
the Canadian arm of Exxon Mobil, and Petro Canada.
Mr. Carter comes from a mining background, not an oil
background. He pushed for the use of giant shovels and trucks, which
are more flexible than giant moving scoops and draglines, the last
of which were retired last month. He said the mine site is barely
touched.
"We will be mining here for another 45 years," Mr. Carter
said. "Last year our production was 250,000 barrels a day. We will
have that to 350,000 by the end of this year."
That is on this one site. Alberta, about the size of Ireland,
has 30,888 square miles of oil sands. Huge swaths of the boreal
forest and a light layer of topsoil cover the oil sands. The
deposits come in three locations: Peace River to the west of here,
Cold Lake to the east on the Saskatchewan border, and by far the
largest deposit in the Athabasca region surrounding Fort McMurray.
About 6,500 people are working on the Syncrude site, in the open-
pit mine and the plant that upgrades the heavy oil to light
synthetic crude. Canadian Indians, a group with some of the highest
rates of unemployment in the country, comprise more than 10 percent
of the work force.
Billions of barrels
The Indians once used the gooey tar to waterproof the seams of
their birch-bark canoes. The oil was pushed to the surface eons ago
from deep underground by the same geological forces that formed the
Rocky Mountains just to the west.
The oil sands of Alberta contain 175 billion barrels of oil.
Only Saudi Arabia has larger reserves at 259 billion barrels.
Optimists such as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
(CAPP) say the reserves could be 10 times that if technology
succeeds in separating the oil from the sand in the underground
deposits that are difficult to access.
Using just conventional technology will vault Canada to one of
the world's leading sources of petroleum, with all the oil safely
connected by pipeline to refineries in the United States. Just this
month an unused pipeline running south to north in the United States
reversed direction to take Alberta oil south.
"Right now, Canada is the eighth-largest producer in the world,
just below Norway. By 2015, we will be No. 5, moving to just below
Iran or maybe past it," said Greg Stringham, vice president of CAPP
in Calgary.
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