Chris,

You can't throw out numbers about ME cost of production because that is NOT the MARGINAL COST OF PRODUCTION of world supply. Instead, I would point you to a cost analysis of crude derived from tar sands in Canada to get a handle on what I'm talking about.

Demand is NOT falling as dramatically as you are suggesting--far from it. Remember--tar sands operations haven't ceased. WHY NOT? There is where you find the marginal cost of oil!

Recent Canadian news reports seem to suggest that Chris Skrebowski is probably more right than wrong. A November, 2007 Toronto Globe and Mail article titled High costs trim forecast for oil sands production suggests that the NEB (National Energy Board) is now projecting a maximum production level in 2015 of only 2.8 million b/d, 200,000b/d lower than their own commonly used 3-million, because of industry discomfort with capital and operating cost overruns of up to 100% on all current tar sands projects. Assuming that Chris Skrebowski is right about peaking in 2015-2020, that suggests tar sands production will never be ramped up beyond 3-million b/d.

What is the real situation with the tar sands? How can there be such a disparity in the estimates for future tar sands production?

In his interview with Julian Darley, Chris Skrebowski highlighted several challenges for the tar sands industry over the foreseeable future. Three that may or may not be soluble are;
* the availability of the high volumes of water needed for tar sands processing,
* the availability of gas or alternative means of heating the tar sands. Greg Stringham, a vice-president of CAPP (the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers), said the gas price used by the NEB for its main forecast – $7 per million BTU – is on the pessimistic side. "It would be too low to support investment in high-cost unconventional and tight gas projects and not high enough to reduce demand," he said.
* and; how vigorously the various levels of government choose to legislate and enforce environmental controls. Various parties, from the municipality of Fort MacMurray to a host of environmental organizations have called for a moratorium on new projects until environmental impact studies can be completed. Canadian governments have a dubious track record of allowing major projects to proceed before the required environmental assessments are completed only to find, when the studies are done, that they should have blocked the project. Having approved the go ahead they leave themselves with no option but to allow the project to continue.

The one challenge that Chris Skrebowski sees as insoluble, as it is a limit of geology, is that the tar sands have a wide variability in quality. Current operations are being conducted in the bitumen-rich central area of the tar sands deposits. Bitumen, not oil, is what the tar sands hold. It is a thick, tar-like substance which needs further, energy-intensive processing, after the energy-intensive extraction, to be converted into a synthetic liquid crude. In the central areas the tar sands contain about 12 percent bitumen, up to 14% in a few sweet spots. At that level of bitumen concentration tar sands oil production is economically profitable and also has a slightly positive EROEI for strip mining operations. Even in these areas, however, in situ production - which involves injecting steam into the tar sands to separate the bitumen from the sand so it can be pumped to the surface like crude oil - thus far has a negative EROEI because of the higher energy requirements and also because the bitumen concentrations, due to higher levels of biodegradation, are generally lower deeper in the tar sands deposits where in situ has to be used.

As the central areas currently being exploited are worked out, which Chris Skrebowski projects they will be by 2015-2020, operators will have to move out of these central areas into the periphery of the reserves. That is where the problem is. In these peripheral areas Skrebowski suggests the bitumen content drops off to about 8 percent. He sees an open question whether operations will continue to be profitable and have a positive EROEI at these much lower bitumen concentrations.

More here.

What's missing in this article is that tar sands are profitable at a certain threshold for the price of crude oil. What is that threshold? There's the bottom line.