Reserves are the measure of oil recoverable at a certain price. Raise
the price, raise the reserve. Cut the price and the amount of oil in the
ground drops. In other words, it's a fool's errand to measure the
"amount of oil we have left." It depends on the price. At $9 a barrel
(the price in 1998), we've peaked. It's over. All gone. But at $70 a
barrel (reached in the third year of the Iraq occupation), miracles
happen. Oil gushes forth like manna. How much more? If you are willing
to pay $70 a barrel-and apparently you are-it's worth it to melt sand
and drain out the petroleum. Indeed, the "tar sands" of Alberta, Canada,
hold 280 billion barrels of oil-for enough high octane to run our
Humvees for a century. Canada's tar oil reserves are, notably, about 15%
higher than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. It's not pie-in-the-sky
stuff. America is dependent on foreign oil-but not from Arabia. Our
biggest source of oil is Canada and half of the Canadian supply today
comes from tar sands. And that will grow. How could Hubbert have missed
all this oil? Answer: He didn't. On page 20 of his famous "Peak Oil"
study, he accepts that the planet can yield up 800 billion barrels of
oil from tar sands equal to all the "crude" (i.e., liquid) oil we are
using up.

http://www.gregpalast.com/why-palast...ou-to-know-it/