$70 Oil is a Show-Stopper for Canadian Oil Sands -- Personal Observation

Link here. I believe some of these links break after a short period at which time you will need a subscription. I post just enough to let you know the gist of the story but you want to read the entire story if this is interest.

This is a nice, fairly in-depth story that looks at the options Canada has with regard to their heavy sands oil.

Ever since an oil well near Leduc, Alberta, made Canada a significant oil producer in 1947, the energy export business here has relied almost entirely on the United States.

Thanks to the massive oil sands of northern Alberta, Canada is now the United States' top supplier of foreign oil. But that may be changing.

China's growing energy needs and the prospect that an environmental backlash in the United States against the oil sands might hinder access to Canada's traditional market are making the idea of a trans-Pacific market for Canadian oil increasingly attractive.

Change is about the only constant in the rapidly shifting global energy business. And one of the most significant changes is the seeming role reversal between what was once considered the periphery of energy production and consumption and what was considered the center.

That change is starkly visible in the relationship between China and Canada.

While Canada - and the United States, for that matter - have long been major energy producers, the largest role that the West has played in the global energy market has been as leading consumers.

Under the old paradigm, the nations of the Middle East were the chief producers. Institutions like the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and the International Energy Agency, over time, entrenched that dynamic.

But just as the institutions of Bretton Woods, byproducts of a U.S.-dominated postwar economic order, are being challenged, so are OPEC and the I.E.A., their relevance questioned in a new era marked by the ascendence of Brazil, China, India and Russia and the relative stagnation of the West.

One certainly gets the feeling that $70-oil is a show stopper for the Canadian oil sands. That is a personal observation and not stated in the article.