Canadians in Afghanistan six times more likely to die than Americans in Iraq

[Asher]

The Athabasca oilsands alone have ~100B barrels worth of economically recoverable (via in-situ methods), last I checked.

I think your information is way out of date.

It's also well understood that these numbers are extremely conservative. New technology, of which my father was part of the project in deploying, uses steam-assisted methods w/ gravity to triple the recoverable oil from bitumen.

(The technology behind this was developed at the University of Calgary, BTW)

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Now compare the recoverable reserves. Yes, Alberta has a very large amount of oil and that's a good thing but Alberta also has a problem in that most of its reserves are difficult to get to due to the nature of the geology and the relative immaturity of the hydrocarbons themselves.

I think his number is recoverable reserves.
It's in the trillions if you don't count the stuff that is not technically recoverable at this time.

[Asher]

Let's fork this thread, Oerdin. I wouldn't mind pwning you in your own field.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Canada

Ignorant Americans dissing Canada

Who are you, and what have you done with Drake?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Arrian
Sample size and bad lucky. I'm sorry Canadians are dying in Afganistan. I'm particularly sorry about the ones killed by American "friendly fire." But the OP is pretty much meaningless, isn't it?

edit: Sloww - one could argue the training in question is the training of US reservists (who bombed a bunch of Canadians in Afganistan not too long back).

No, I think it's just sample size/luck.

-Arrian

Quite likely the average Canadian in Afghanistan is also involved in more intense warfare than is the average American in Iraq.

The Canadians just got done leading an offensive against an area in Afghanistan which had been allowed to fester as a Taliban stronghold. Since they're a relatively smaller contingent it's possible for them, on average, to see far more action than the average American in Iraq. They claimed something like 800 total Taliban guerillas killed. When was the last time the US army in Iraq killed 50 000 guerillas in 4 weeks (an equivalent scale)?

[Tingkai]

Canada needs to review their tactics. First off, is to keep the U.S. Air Force out of our combat zones. The American pilots are proving more deadly than the enemy.

The Forces also need to do a complete review of our ground tactics. It's all very nice to talk about what we did in the past, or how great we are at war games; it is another thing to fight in Afghanistan. I suspect that there are reviews going on right know about what is going right and wrong (the deployment of tanks reflects such reviews). But someone should be checking to make sure it happens.

The other thing to realize is that the Canadians are in a hot spot where the Taliban are attacking in strength.

The NDP is quite justified in questioning what we are doign there, rather than the Conservatives sheeps blindly following the lead set by the Liberals.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Dis
I wouldn't say they are better trained than U.S. troops, but I do believe they are less likely to have "bad" troops. Because of the large numbers of U.S. troops, we are more succeptible to getting bad elements in our system. Either they do friendly fire accidents, sabatage our own gear, or torture/committ crimes and/or atrocities on the local population.

This is generally true, but there are notable exceptions.

[Drake Tungsten]

Who are you, and what have you done with Drake?

I only tease Canada, and I tease because I love...

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Canada needs to review their tactics. First off, is to keep the U.S. Air Force out of our combat zones. The American pilots are proving more deadly than the enemy.

No, they aren't. And I'm glad for the air support. I'm also much more understanding of the latest friendly-fire incident than the first one. In this case, there was enemy about. The pilot simply mistook one group for the other. The first incident was completely unacceptable.

The NDP is quite justified in questioning what we are doign there, rather than the Conservatives sheeps blindly following the lead set by the Liberals.

The NDP is clucking like a bunch of old hens on this.

Canada in Afghanistan until the job's done.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Asher

It's a lot more advanced than geologists need to know.

As the son of somebody who's been working on the stuff since 1979 and the SO of a chemical engineer working in the field on the processes, I do have some understanding of how the process works.

I also understand that geologists are not involved after the very very early stages. And they don't get paid much relative to the other people.

Tell that to my friend who just got hired at ExxonMobile for just over $100k per year.

Any good uni geology program includes course work on petroleum geology and most also include optional courses on reservoir modeling and maturation. I took both so, while not specifically a petroleum geologist, I think I do have a better understanding of the subject then the average bear. Geologists are involved in all steps of the oil fields life from discovery to eventual shut down and a good geologist who is willing to travel can make a lot of money.

[Asher]

Any good uni geology program includes course work on petroleum geology and most also include optional courses on reservoir modeling and maturation.

That's nice, dear, but that's oldschool. We're talking oilsands here.

I don't think you know **** about oilsands, which are very different from traditional oil.

And geologists are not involved end-to-end...they do early work on the stripmines and then they go home.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Asher
The Athabasca oilsands alone have ~100B barrels worth of economically recoverable (via in-situ methods), last I checked.

I think your information is way out of date.

It's also well understood that these numbers are extremely conservative. New technology, of which my father was part of the project in deploying, uses steam-assisted methods w/ gravity to triple the recoverable oil from bitumen.

(The technology behind this was developed at the University of Calgary, BTW)

Term definition for the nongeologist:

Bitumen - Any of various flammable mixtures of hydrocarbons and other substances, occurring naturally or obtained by distillation from coal or petroleum.

Bitumin is the raw organic matter which via a comination of heat, pressure, and time gets broken down to shorter and shorter hydrocarbon chains. The specifics depend on the exact composition of the bitumen (and the chemical reactions can quickly get extremely complex) but depending on the temperature and pressure conditions it can be formed into coal or broken down into oil (and if the oil sits long enough in a high enough temperature and pressure it can be turned into natural gas).

Traditionally Bitumen wasn't considered very valuable because it is a solid and had to be physically dug out of the ground but you wanted to know all about the bitumen in a given field because it could tell you a lot about the field and the hydrocarbons in the field. Much of Alberta's hydrocarbon reserves (which are bigger then Saudi Arabia's) are made up of immature bitumen which must be physically dug up or a heat source must be inject into the ground to melt the bitumen so the resulting liquids could be pumped out.

[Asher]

Now that you've looked it up and summarized what can easily be found on the internet, how does it apply?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Asher


That's nice, dear, but that's oldschool. We're talking oilsands here.

Asher my lad, the oil sands (just like the oil shale in Utah and Wyoming) are just bitumen rich formations. See my previous post. What makes Alberta's oil sands more valuable then Utah/Wyomings oil shale is that sandstone has much, much, much more pore space then shale (since the shale is smaller grained and can be packed tighter) thus if you can find a way to liquify the butimen then you can actually pump the liquid out to the surface (unlike shale where the permiability and porosity are pretty close to tombstone so it would have to physically be dug out of the ground).

You're a good tech guy, Asher. I'll trust you on tech and you trust me in my field.

[TCO]

This was an issue that my customer raised with me (over lunch and beers). I had no idea that this was such a big deal.