Word: alberta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...royalties are deposited in a "Heritage" trust fund, which now totals $5 billion and is expected to reach as much as $34 billion by the end of the 1980s. The fund makes major loans to other provinces (at competitive rates), but its main purpose is to bankroll Alberta's economic future. The provincial government has acquired its own Pacific Western Airlines; set up a local company to invest in all forms of energy, including oil from the thick, gummy tar sands; and offers fat incentives to new firms willing to open up in smaller communities...
...quite possible that Alberta's energy bonanza will not give out for many decades. Expert estimates of conventional oil reserves range from 5 billion to 8 billion bbl. (The U.S. has proven reserves of 28.5 billion bbl., and Mexico has 16 billion bbl.) Most significant, Alberta has huge additional "unconventional" sources of energy that are not yet economical to tap but will become increasingly feasible -and necessary-as oil prices rise. The basic sources are heavy bitumen oil and the tar sands, which together could provide as much as 320 billion bbl., or enough to supply the entire world...
Natural gas also seems boundless in Alberta, and it provides a double benefit because sulfur is a byproduct of refining. The National Energy Board puts the province's gas reserves at 60 trillion cu. ft., equal to almost one-third the entire U.S. reserves. Energy developers argue that the real total is many tunes that size, and they are pressing to sell more to the U.S. Canada exports about 1 trillion cu. ft. a year, notably to the Northern Plains states; producers would like this increased threefold...
...Canada will soon raise its net oil sales to the U.S., now a rather modest 100,000 bbl. a day, (vs. 425,000 bbl. from Mexico). Dedicated to energy independence and fearful that conventional oil will decline in spite of the recent finds, Canada is not even fully exploiting Alberta's capacity of 1.8 million bbl. a day. Says Mitchell Sharp, the commissioner of Canada's Northern Pipeline Agency: "The U.S. should drop any ideas it might have about a North American energy common market...
...example, overheating could be prevented in summer as the sun beat down on the dome. Tigan shrugged off the criticism, pointing out that domes had been successfully used to cover part of the U.S. base at the South Pole, airplane hangars in Saudi Arabia, and a housing development in Alberta, Canada. By his reckoning, the dome could reduce residential heating bills alone by as much as 90%, a saving of $3.5 million...