OT: Gas Prices

[Captain Kwok]

I think it's even more sad when you consider that China also has more than 4x the population of the US...

Unfortunately it's almost as bad per capita north of the border...

[Fyron]

Of course, most of China is still a 3rd world country... The big cities are modernizing, but most of the people have no access to automobiles.

[Azselendor]

Give it time, China is industrializing.


But the paranoid thought in the back of my head is a scenario where gas prices drop to 60 dollars a barrel and china says "Nope, we'll give you 70 instead!".

But that's just a paranoid thought, the reality is that we americans preach conservation one hand and consume with the other.

[Renegade 13]

Wow...

I just did a bit of a search for information on the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada, since I know there's a tremendous amount of oil there. I just never knew how much oil...

According to estimates, there is 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil in the tar sands. That's 1,700,000,000,000 to 2,500,000,000,000 barrels! Enough to supply the US at its current rate of consumption for nearly 250 years!

The catch is that it is very expensive to recover the oil from the sands. Only about 10% of that oil is economically recoverable. Still, having an oil reserve of 170-250 billion barrels in just that one oil field (compared to the US having 21 billion barrels reserve) is quite something.

I wonder how many tons of living matter had to have died in that general area to have ended up as that amount of oil....

[Captain Kwok]

Wasn't that part of Alberta part of an inland sea back at the time of the dinosaurs?

[Morkilus]

Happy birthday, R13!

On the subject of tar sands, you're completely on the target there... if we want oil, we'll find a way to get it. People will see that there is a cheaper way soon enough; here in Utah, the Gov's been eager to set up new mining operations, and they're resuming uranium mining and exploration, not to mention tar sands. And they're finally starting to collect natural gas from current coal mines, which previously was simply vented into the atmosphere. And we complain about farting cows... :roll:

[Renegade 13]

Morkilus said:
Happy birthday, R13!

Thanks a lot Morkilus!

[Kamog]

I filled up my car with gas today. $1.195 per liter! It seems that once the price exceeded $1, it just keeps going higher.

[Atrocities]

You have to blame your governments excessively high tax on that one. You pay about the same per barrel of oil as we do but you have a very high gas tax.

[Renegade 13]

And we all have to blame the oil companies for gouging everyone.