Asleep at the Switch

While billions of barrels will be recovered by surface mining, the vast bulk is buried too deep and can be extracted only by so-called in situ mining. Steam is injected into underground shafts, melting the oil and allowing it to be pumped to the surface. This is even more sophisticated than open-pit mining. But Canada is ready for this next phase too. For years, AOSTRA underwrote research to develop the technology. In the beginning, Alberta got little help from the oil companies because the payoff appeared too remote to justify the expense. So AOSTRA bankrolled most of the early work, including the building of tunnels for the first experiments. Eventually, as the tests made headway, the industry was won over and began to fund research with AOSTRA. Result: a process called steam-assisted gravity drainage, which will extract billions of barrels of oil.

In part because that technology has been developed, oil companies plan to invest billions of dollars in new Canadian plants in coming years. This could lead to as many as two dozen oil-sands operations by 2010, compared with four today. However many come online, U.S. consumers will benefit. President George W. Bush took note of this during a visit to Quebec in 2001: "There is some very good news in our hemisphere, at least as far as Americans are concerned, and that is that because of technologies — the Canadians have developed vast crude-oil resources ... in what they call tar pits ... That's good for our national security; it's good for our economy."