HilldwellerGary North's Daily Reckoning email (Agora Publishing)...

Hilldweller
Gary North's Daily Reckoning email (Agora Publishing) carried an investment journal infomercial on 27/12/03 on the subject.
Below are a few paras:

"Right now, in Alberta, Canada, there's a natural resource that contains 300-plus billion barrels of oil. It's called oil sands -- a tar-like substance that's mined from the ground and turned into oil.

It's very cheap to find. There's no drilling dry holes. No exploration costs. No risk that you'll come up empty -- wasting time and money. Oil sands are a sure thing.

But up until now, the problem has been getting the oil out.

In 1984 it cost more than $25 to squeeze each barrel of oil from Alberta's oil sands. Back then oil was selling for $15 a barrel. So it's not hard to see why oil sands were considered a joke.

Two decades later, everything's changed.

Now oil is bouncing between $25 and $30 a barrel. And technological breakthroughs have brought extraction costs below $12 a barrel. Even better, they're falling rapidly towards $10 a barrel. Here's why.

Scientists at Stanford University and research facilities sponsored by the Canadian government have unlocked a powerful new oil extraction technique that is three to four times more efficient than previous methods -- dramatically reducing the cost of extracting oil from oil sands. This technology is proven... and working now.

Here's how it works: Two horizontal wells are drilled... one on top of the other. Steam is pumped into the top well. It heats up the oil... then it's pumped to the surface. This is much simpler and more efficient than previous methods. And it's the breakthrough that changes everything about the value of the oil sands.

To the point where they now account for one-third of Canada's oil production. And the reserves are so viable, the U.S. Energy Information Administration boosted Canada's proven oil reserves from 4.9 billion barrels to 180 billion barrels.

And as extraction techniques improve, that number could continue to grow... and Canada's reserves might one day outshine the Saudis'!

Oil companies are racing for the bounty. So far over $23 billion has been spent on oil sands development and extraction projects... and another $30 billion has been forecasted over the next 10 years.

As production increases and larger facilities are built, the economies of scale will work to reduce costs even further. "

There are several more pages of breathless touting...but you get the idea.
Hope this helps,
Best wishes, Newz.