This is a guest post by Chris Nelder. It was originally written for Friday's Energy and Capital. Part II will be available next Friday.

For this week's article, I collaborated with energy journalist Roel Mayer, a freelance writer on earth, energy and economy, based in Canada. Roel is a keen observer on energy, and the Canadian tar sands in particular, so he was a natural research partner for this short study on the state of oil production from tar sands.

He was also the one who coined "The Law of Receding Horizons." For those who missed my previous articles on receding horizons, it is a simple concept: as the cost of energy rises, the cost of everything else made with energy (like building materials) also rises. So an energy project which was expected to be profitable when energy costs were x amount higher than today, turns out to still be uneconomical when you get there.

_{Shallow oil sand deposits in open pit mining: yes, this was a boreal forest from time immemorial.}