As of Jan.01,2002 the total Canadian oil reserves were somewhere between 4.9 - 5.4 billion barrels, depending on the source of the data. Today is Apr.23, 2003 and nearly 1.5 years has passed. According to Canadian oil consumption averaging about 2 million barrels per day, we have consumed 1.095 billion barrels of oil since Jan.01, 2002, leaving between 3.8 - 4.3 billion barrels of reserves. At the historical rate of consumption total reserves will last about 5.2 - 5.9 years from today.

Why is it longer than I said? Because Canadian oil companies have plans to mix up to 70% tar sand and shale oil with their production, skewing the results. They say they are just scratching the surface of the oil trapped in tar sands... well, not to be too leftist, but this photo of strip mining in progress hardly suggests mere "scratching" of the surface!

Excerpt:

"The most common way to excavate bitumen is to strip-mine large volumes of sand. Processing plants add hot water and chemicals to the sand to create slurries; bitumen floats to the surface while sand settles out.'"

"An electric shovel loads a haul truck with oil sands mined from the surface of the Athabasca Oil Sands Deposit in Alberta, Canada. Syncrude Canada Ltd., the world’s largest producer of crude oil from oil sands, typically mines 155 million tons of sand each year. Photo courtesy of Syncrude Canada, Ltd."