Alberta Tar Sands: A North American Overview
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 01.28.06
Alberta's internationally recognised "tar sand" reserves are now put at the equivalent of more than 175 billion barrels of crude oil. To extract bitumen from the surface deposits of tar sand, which make up about 20% of reserves, huge excavators scrape away the topsoil and the underlying tar sands are lifted into huge dump trucks. The surficial tar sands are trucked to extraction processes, where they are steamed to extract the heavy, bitumenous oil. The resulting oil is piped to refineries. This first step of tar sand extraction is estimated to result in gasoline that carries a burden of "at least five times more carbon dioxide" then would conventional "sweet crude" oil production. According to the Canada National Energy Board engineering break throughs are anticipated to reduce this carbon dioxide emission burden.
Because the remaining 80 percent of the sands are too deep to be mined, steam is injected into these deeper oil sands, loosening the bitumen and allowing producers to draw it upward, as indicated in the graphic. The process was known as "steam-assisted gravity drainage." It is said to be more efficient than the "truck and steam" process.
Although producers recycle much of their water, about one barrel of water is lost for every barrel of oil culled, according to the Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental group.
Developers are required to restore oil sand mining sites to at least the equivalent of their previous biological productivity, which involves revegetation and drainage restoration. None of this has yet been done on a large scale, however.
It may be decades before large scale production becomes a commercial realilty. Huge amounts of infrastructure will have to be added in the midst of a wilderness setting. And, of course, the trees have a stake: according to the Pembina website ""The proposed tar sand developments will tear a hole in Canada's lungs - our vital boreal forest ecosystem," says the Sierra Club of Canada's Lindsay Telfer".
We have to say that large scale tar sand extraction has all the earmarks of being Un-TreeHugger. As they are supporting brand new, expensive technologies, investor attitudes toward Kyoto committments are naturally cynical if not outright hostile. How could they compete with carbon trades as a hedge with a 5X carbon dioxide handicap? It would take a great deal of wind turbine investment to offset those extra emissions. Which helps us to understand this.
If Canada has North America's lungs, auto owners in US are it's mouth, gobbling supersize meal after oil meal to keep the wheels rolling, which keeps the trucks driving and steam flowing underground. Reducing our gasoline consumption sounds like the best thing we can do to protect the Arboreal Forests of the northcountry.
This process is very expensive, but is finally worth doing because cost per barrel is so high.
There is a major threat that the oil, once heated to it's liquid state will seep into the water table. They claim that they can stop this by also pumping in cold underneath to create a frozen layer to provent water table seepage.
They had a guy on NPR months ago, explaining all of this. Personally, I find it all a little scary. Because the oil is locked into the rock, there's no barrier to keep it from the water table. The heating process is slow and takes years, and so is the cooling process. All if this relies heavily on machinery, which inevitably will fail. My worry would be that the “frozen” layer would thaw faster (w/ help from the hot oil above, and the lava in the earth below) than the oil would cool, and the oil would still leak into the water table.
tar sands are a shell game, the energy it takes to produce the actual oil makes ethanol look cost-effective.
if it werent for the $5Bn in tax credits that companes like syncrude get(get it sin crude?) (thats $5Bn for them , not for the industry) it woudln't even seem doable on the wasteful scale it already is...
adn if you think that companies being told to clean up afterwards makes it really happen, look at our boreal ex-forests from alberta to BC if you fly over it, you will puke, its' so sad how much has been clearcut and then (some) replaced by weak monoculture treefarms that dont even survive...
great! so we can have more bowren valleys (clearcut so huge you can see it from space)... it's not just you guys to the south tho... Canada esp. the new gove. want to be the saudis of the north, the oil sand purveyors for the world.
...cant wait to see taht Sundance electric car movie... (and the Al Gore one, sure, but really wanna see who killed the electric car)
Canadians, unwittingly, have already endorsed this environmental disaster-in-the-making.
The Canadian economy has benefited, and will continue to do so, from the rising value of natural resources, predominantly oil. Governments enjoying the increased revenues, decreased deficits, and their longevity associated with oil revenues - notably, in Alberta - continue to promote policies favourable to this end. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that another 4 trillion barrels of oil might be extracted worldwide through emerging technologies, more oil than presently exists in the entire proven global petroleum reserves {from http://www.manyworlds.com/ article "Ending the End of Oil" by Matthew Maier). With the profits oil companies and governments stand to gain, environmental concerns will continue to be assuaged with token wind-farms while oil consumption increases enormously in countries like China and India.
Harper's new Conservative government has achieved their victory not only in gaining power, but in timing their reign with Canada's booming oil-rich economy. How much easier to achieve the Conservative agenda and secure a future majority government than by spending these growing profits, buying their support? No surprise that Harper's policy is to pull Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol and to align himself with American oil interests. Canadians can look to increasing oil extraction initiatives predominating over less profitable resource uses under the new Conservative government, with the resulting environmental damages. For example, I predict a quick demise to the moratoria on west coast seabed drilling {more info at http://www.oilfreecoast.org/) under these non-conserving Conservatives.
Canada's new greed-oriented government is short-sighted of course; they don't have much to say on how Canada will fare under the global warming they're helping to create, hoping someone will find a way to deal with all the CO2. How naive to think that oil-profits can ameliorate this impending disaster, and how morally dispicable to bequeath their children such a legacy.
=== author's response follows ====
Thank you for the insightful comments.
One of the truely scary things about the tar sands is the amount of water that will be required to produce the oil. As mentioned, one barrel is lost, destroyed, gone forever for every barrel of oil produced. There is a morality question here. Also, if the tar sands are to supply the ever growing appetite for oil in the US, Canada and China, it is likely it will require a tailings pond the size of Lake Ontario.
Guys - I'm down here in the USA, and this is the first detailed explanation of this I've ever heard - AND I AM SCARED FOR ALL OF YOU who live anywhere near this likely-to-be-a-disaster site.
I advice you to move to Mexico. Or Texas. You'll love it - it's nice and warm, and predicted to get much, much warmer in the future. Heh.
Guys - I'm down here in the USA, and this is the first detailed explanation of this I've ever heard - AND I AM SCARED FOR ALL OF YOU who live anywhere near this likely-to-be-a-disaster site.
I advice you to move to Mexico. Or Texas. You'll love it - it's nice and warm, and predicted to get much, much warmer in the future. Heh.
Unfortunately, this great "new" source of oil will be harvested and consumed by US drivers. All the while delaying measures truly aimed at providing alternative sources of energy.
No Borders,
Despite our little disagreement in the other thread, I wanted to thank you for the well formulated and stated argument in this thread. I do agree that one of the issues that my fellow conservatives are loathe to understand is true long term return on investments.
All of these projects should look at the costs involved ebfore moving forward. Whould more energy be yeilded were the same effort, energy, and capital in other solar or wind? Now, maybe not in Canada, but here in Southern California, the state, even during a Democratic governorship, spent way too much money to buy energy from other states, and re-opened heavily poluting power plants when the electricty deficit could have been met with far less money using solar power on government buildings (including schools). My calculations at the time were based on standard solar electric panel and installation costs. Granted, I did not look at the possible cost of reinforcing buildings for the extra weight of the installation, but I saw no serious effort to even consider this option.
I am very conservative in most ways, but even most "liberals" in federal and state governments all too often spend money blindly to get a quick result and have more energy in the way we are used to getting it. Even without considering global warming, the financial benefit of providing clean green electricity just in terms of reducing sick days, improving nation, and worldwide, productivity by reducint health impacts of generating electricity would be phenominal. Additionaly, the high cost associated with green power is often start up cost. Long term costs are often much lower then other methods of generating electricity.
Back on topic, the potential cost of additional water purification needed due to this project polluting the water sources should be factored into the overall cost of this project before moving forward, at the very least. Ideally, broader environmental impacts should be considered because having nothing but diseased, poluted, or non-existat forrests to visit also reduces quality of life, not just lack of cheap energy.
Canada's environment minister: "No environment miister in the world could stop alberta's oil sands development."
In defense of its enviro impact--they pour lots of money into reclamation research, have initiated voluntary climate change programs (long before other oil companies would admit that global warming is a reality), hardly anybody lives up there (if you could choose to locate the oil sands somewhere where it would have the least impact, where it is now would be a prime choice), there are much worse places where the world gets it's oil (Niger delta, ecuador.....)......the list could go on.
From an Albertan
Mexico and Texas arent warm, theyre extremely hot, and if theyre expected to get warmer, why would anyone want to live there. That comment was stupid.
This is very interesting in context of the "fight" to prevent BP expanding further into Lake Michigan from Whiting, IN, as part of their $4B expansion to switch to refining Canadian tar-sands.
what can be done with the oil sands
For the love of god! Does anybody know who is actually doing anything about this?
We're all just going to sit here while this goes down?
This needs to be stopped!!
It's a monumental disaster!!
People in remote Alberta Communities are dying of cancer due to oilsands pollution!!!
Oil seeping into the water table? The Athabaska river runs right through the oil sands.
Oil causing cancer if mined? The oil sands have been there forever. Thousands of square kilometers of the stuff. Clay
does tar sands belong to the USA or Canada,,i don't want Americans to take over our country, as their trying to do in Irag,,just for their Gas,we don't need Americans to snoop into our country,but they sure need us, smart asses,your truly Ross ,,in Canada,
Hahaha, I'm a process operator/power engineer at a SAGD plant here in Fort Mac, the oil sands capital of the world.
It's about the dingiest shithole you've ever seen, a real mineing community, and the gold rush effect is tottally going down. 5 years ago the town was half the size it is now, and had half the companies, and I'm sure 5 years from now, the population will have doubled again, as will the company sizes.
Right now, production is very small compared to what its going to be, these oil company's pay HUUUGE money, and thats pulling people from all over the world into there hands.
Nothing except the very most drastic is going to slow down the progess here, the average starting wage for somebody in my profession is 45 bucks an hour, and you could easily have that raised to 60 an hour within a year.
if you work as a freelance contractor down here, you can make upwards of 90 bucks an hour.
personally, -IM- gettin the fuck out, because pollution, oil, technology, and all the bull that comes with it, aint my thing, and I'll preach good and hard against coming here. but progress isnt going to slow unless somebody throws an awful lot of weight into it.
Woo woo flower power! TIME FOR ME TO GO, checkin on my oil treaters to make sure we've got the cleanest water possible, blahaha, I wrote this from the plant!
Well as a staunch environmentalist I am becoming more aware of the problems that President Harper has presented us with. Mainly, allowing more american companies to extract oil faster and with greater numbers. I understand after years of frustration that the world cannot live without oil or minerals etc etc. Since the dawn of President Harper Canadians have been quite content to tell the americans to fuck off when they wanted to get more oil out of our soil at a faster rate. Now since all of Alberta has voted the PCs into power we are bowing to the yanks, HELL Albertans even think they are yanks...morons.
An old Premier [Lougheed] from Alberta enlightened me on this by saying, "just take a little oil at a time, keeps people employed longer and doesn't reek havok on the environment." Well too late for that, you've sold your soul to the devil, Harper, and his council of demons (and I'm not even religious) Insight is priceless and without malice, yet I love using profanity *w*
Fort McMurray Tar Sands...
Rock n' Roll!
Alberta drives the Canadian economy and will continue to ride her resources until they go dry.
It's time to forget Eastern pressures and take back and expose what is rightfully ours!
the tar sands are the heaviest pollutants.
if you want to create a world of poisonous gasses,carbon dioxide, and other harmful illnesses. keep mining that oil. why burn good clean oil, to mine dirty unclean oil. if oils cost is so high then why don't you sell the clean oil you are using up to mine that stupid dirty oil
blo blo blo blo blo. i love tree hugging