The Most Dangerous Highway In Canada... Again!
By Tom Dyson
August 14, 2007

The first time I traveled the Athabasca Highway, I was on a Greyhound bus. I took the front seat so I could keep my eye on the driver... and make sure he didn't try any u-turns...

The story had been on the front page of all the newspapers at the bus station. The night before, a semi truck had struck a bus, after the bus driver had tried to pull a u-turn on the highway to Athabasca. Five people died.

The press was calling the highway to Athabasca "the most dangerous highway in Canada."

That was two years ago... in May 2005. Last week, I traveled that highway again... except this time I drove a rental car...

You can tell a lot about an area simply by traveling the highways and keeping your eyes open. For example, road works cropped up every 50 kilometers up the Athabasca Highway. These were pipeline crossings. The pipelines weren't completed yet, but I could tell they would be soon. Soon unrefined bitumen will be traveling through these pipes to upgrader plants in Edmonton. Who owns these upgrader plants and pipelines? Find out, and you'll make a killing...

Here's another clue: How do these giant truck-and-shovel oil companies get their heavy equipment to Fort McMurray? Answer: the Athabasca Highway. It's the only way in.

Sometimes you see the most extraordinary truckloads on the highway. I overtook a huge circular piece of metal that looked like it could be the core of a reactor or a turbine of some sort. It was being towed on two flatbed trailers tied together end-to-end.

Some equipment is so big, they close the highway in order to move it. They'll do it in the middle of the night and issue travel advisories on the radio, telling you not to travel while they move the load. I traveled the highway at dawn, just after they'd moved two giant pieces. I'd listened to the advisories all night on the radio. As I pulled into Fort McMurray, I spotted the loaded transporters at a special rest stop for huge equipment just outside the city.

Who's building the new plant, I wondered.

The Athabasca Highway is a single-lane highway. That's why it's so dangerous. Also, the speed limit is 100 kilometers an hour (roughly 60 mph), which is fast for such a narrow road. I found construction outside Fort McMurray. I'm pleased to report Alberta's road crews have started the project to widen the highway.

After the six-hour voyage up the Athabasca Highway, I hung around in Fort McMurray for a couple of days. Life's good for the people of Fort McMurray right now. They're at the center of an oil boom. News came out yesterday that the median house price in Fort McMurray is now nearly $600,000. That's comparable to London, the world's most expensive city for real estate, where the median house price is $625,000.

On the tour of Syncrude, the guide pointed out Syncrude's sulfur pile. They strip the sulfur from the crude oil during the refining process. Sulfuric crude oil is called sour crude. After they remove the sulfur, they call it sweet crude. Sweet crude sells for about $5 a barrel more than sour crude in international markets.

The oil companies have no use for this sulfur after they extract it. And they can't sell it... The market pays $50 a ton, but it costs Syncrude $75 just to transport it to market. So they stack it up in neat piles behind the refinery and ignore it. Currently, the sulfur pile is the size of an airport hanger, it's bright yellow, and anyone who wants it can have it.

Find a use for sulfur... or a way to transport it to market for less than $50 a ton... and you'll get rich.

Last week, Greenpeace got involved. It's mad about the environmental wreckage the oil companies create. So it has opened an office in Edmonton and called it the "Athabasca campaign headquarters."

I heard about it on the radio as I was driving back from Fort McMurray. I went to visit them the next day. My thought: Greenpeace is involved. This story is mature. Time to sell the big oil sand producers and buy the small service companies that supply them.

The Athabasca Highway proved once again to be an interesting experience. I got the inside scoop on the Athabasca oil sand developers... plus, it's extremely beautiful around there. I advise you to drive at dawn. You'll see the strangest fog formations by the side of the road. They're eerie, but gorgeous.

Good investing,

Editor's note: Tom Dyson is a regular contributor to DailyWealth, a free investment newsletter focused on the world's best contrarian opportunities. We write with a simple belief in mind: You don't have to take big risks to make big money with your investments.

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