The Secret of the Dump-Truck Tires

By Tom Dyson

"Does anyone want a tire?"

Everyone chuckled. Beside our tour bus was a pile of used dump-truck tires. Each one was the size of a garage door and as thick as a car.

"Anyone who wants one can have one," repeated our tour guide, with a smile. "As long as you take it away."

I toured Syncrude's property in Fort McMurray last month. Syncrude is the largest oil company in Athabasca. It's really a syndicate of eight oil companies, all joined together in one massive venture to mine the oil sands in a big way.

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It turns out, you can't do much with an old dump-truck tire.

Syncrude uses a few of them to line the roadways in its mine; farmers use a few of them as cattle feedlots. Some get used in playgrounds. The rest – some 600 tires annually – pile up on Syncrude's property, where tourists can gawk at them.

Syncrude uses the dump trucks to mine the oil sands. These dump trucks are the biggest in the world. They carry 400 tons of oil sand to the top of a mine. A monument overlooks one of the mines. It's a dump-truck tire with a plaque from the Michelin Tire Company underneath. The plaque says, "This is the largest truck tire ever made."

Since Syncrude started using dump trucks in the mid-1990s, its crude oil output has quadrupled and its stock price has gone up 1,500%.

Now Fort McMurray oil-sand miners face a severe shortage of dump-truck tires. A new dump-truck tire runs about $60,000. Tires last about 12 months. Each truck uses six tires at a time. That's more than $360,000 in tire expenses per truck every year. Syncrude owns 90 trucks.

Here's the thing: The tire's cost isn't the main concern of a mining company. It's availability. Oil-sand mines cannot operate without a supply of brand new dump-truck tires. Without dump-truck tires, they'd have to close their operations... and lose billions of dollars. So I bet the oil companies in Athabasca would pay $100,000 for new tires... if it meant keeping their mines open.

Today, I recommend you look into another critical Athabasca supply line, natural gas. Like tires, natural gas is an essential resource for the oil companies. You simply cannot produce oil without it.

In several DailyWealth columns, I explained why the natural gas market is heading into a supply crunch and why Alberta natural gas stocks will benefit. These natural gas producers not only have a bright future ahead of them, they're also deeply depressed right now.

Gas prices were soaring across North America in 2005, thanks to strong demand for clean electricity and accelerating production in the Canadian tar sands. Then Hurricane Katrina propelled gas to more than $15 per mcf. Money rushed into the western Canadian gas sector. In 2005, the number of drill rigs in the region increased by 25%.

But in 2006, the market reversed. The weather behaved, production was plentiful, and storage inventories in the U.S. turned into large surpluses. The price of gas collapsed more than 60%... and Alberta's gas stocks got knocked to the ground... and stayed there. Take a look at these gas plays:

Company Market Cap (C$) Down from 52-week high West Energy $254 million 40% Gentry Resources $100 million 54% Vero Energy $142 million 32% Ember Resources $74 million 49% Berens Energy $73 million 59%

Please keep in mind... I've only compiled this table to show you how far the fall has been. More than a hundred players operate in Alberta, and many are great values. But I encourage you to get familiar with Alberta's gas companies... they won't stay depressed for much longer.

Good investing, Tom

P.S. The small stocks I've listed above are extremely risky... and only a speculator with a good knowledge of them will succeed.

I prefer to play it safe. In the September issue of The 12% Letter - out yesterday - I recommended one of the largest owners of natural gas assets in Alberta. It pays you an enormous 14.8% dividend. Click here to learn more about The 12% Letter.