Canadian oil sands stocks

Beneath the frozen tundra of Alberta lies the Canadian oil sands the biggest known reserve of oil in the world. An estimated 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil are trapped in a complex mixture of sand, water and clay. To put this in perspective, Saudi Arabia has “only” 261.9 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Since the Oil is frozen in the ground, extracting it is harder and more expensive than conventional methods. Production costs currently run at just over $15 per barrel. Operations are profitable if oil prices remain above $30 a barrel which seems likely in the current geopolitical climate.
The “oil sands” are heavy hydrocarbon deposits that mix bitumen, sand, water, and clay. Bitumen is a heavy, carbon-rich, hydrogen-poor hydrocarbon. The bitumen is upgraded to a cleaner, more fluid product called Syncrude Sweet Blend (SSB) by removing carbon and adding hydrogen. It is then transferred by pipeline to refineries throughout Canada and the United States.

Bitumen is upgraded into a high quality, light sweet crude oil
http://www.syncrude.ca

How to invest in Canadian Oil Sand stocks.
One way to get exposure is to invest in the major producers:

* Suncor Energy (NYSE: SU)

* Syncrude Canada Ltd. - a joint venture primarily owned by Canadian Oil Sands Limited, Imperial Oil (AMEX: IMO), and Petro-Canada (NYSE: PCZ).
* Canadian Oil Sands Trust (Toronto Stock Exchange COS.UN).

Another way is to invest in companies that operate or support strip-mining operations.

Strip-mining is the digging up of oil sands and trucking them to upgrading plants. Strip-mining employs drilling technology with steam injection to pump liquid bitumen directly out of the ground. More than half of all oil sands are currently recovered using strip-mining. A company with exposure to strip-mining is Joy Global (Nasdaq: JOYG).

Mining the Canadian Oil Sands is very energy intensive (more so than conventional oil extraction methods) and environmentally unfriendly because it results in a large increase in Carbon Dioxide emissions. One suggestion is to employ nuclear power (no emissions) to generate the energy to extract the Oil.

Regardless of hazards and complexities, the fact is, in contrast to some Middle Eastern countries Canada is politically friendly to the USA. This of itself makes investing in Canadian Oil Sands stocks a positive long-term investment.