Tar Sands
ZNet Commentary
November 29, 2007
By Yves Engler
This is an edited excerpt from a forthcoming book by
Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler, tentatively titled
"Stop Signs: A road trip through the USA to explore
the culture, politics and economics of the car"
Across the globe, sprawling auto-dependent development is
pushing oil extraction into increasingly sensitive
environments. Far from the "light sweet crude"
of the Niger Delta, the heavy oil trapped in Alberta's
tar sands is amongst the filthiest source in the world;
with up to three fourths of the final product destined
for the US market, tar sands oil extraction has been
labeled the most destructive process known to mankind.
Viewed from above, the tar sands are as picturesque as a
pair of dirty lungs and the stench of gasoline can be
smelled for miles. Amidst a tangle of pipes, waste ponds
and smoke, an environmental demolition derby of 50 ft,
300-tonne monster trucks roam a wasteland riddled with
200ft deep open pits. Gauged out with dinosaur-sized
claws, Athabascan oil is mined not pumped.
Describing the tar sands as "hideous marvels,"
Globe and Mail columnist, Jeffrey Simpson writes:
"they are terrible to look at, from the air or from
the ground. They tear the earth, create polluted
mini-lakes called tailing ponds that can be seen from
space, spew forth air pollutants such as sulfur-dioxide
and nitrogen oxide, and emit greenhouse gases such as
carbon dioxide."
"They are voracious users of freshwater,"
continues Simpson. Extracting the bitumen (crude oil)
from the thick and sticky mix of clay, sand, and water is
no easy feat and for every barrel of oil extracted,
somewhere between two and four and a half times as much
water is needed to thin out the mixture and separate the
bitumen from the sand. To obtain this staggering volume
of water, whole streams and rivers in the region have
been drained and diverted. We don't need Erin Brockovich
to tell us something is wrong with the water; sucked out
for the extraction process and then spat out again, most
of it ends up contaminated with acids, mercury and other
toxins. This wastewater has left northern Alberta studded
with toxic dumping pools, better known as 'tailing
ponds.' Not only are the tar sands being blamed for
Western Canada's first ever bout of acid rain, the
residues pumped into the Athabasca River have increased
cancer rates downstream, particularly among First Nations
communities dependent upon the waterway. The history of
oil extraction has always been the history of suffering
and the tar sands are no exception.
To produce a single barrel of oil, the tar sands
extraction process requires two tonnes of sand. In 2003,
Alberta's environment ministry reported that 430 square
kilometers of land had been "disturbed" for the
oil sands. By summer 2006, that number had reached 2,000
square kilometers, nearly a five-fold increase in three
years (even though only 2% of the oil sands - now hailed
as one of the world's largest reserves - had been
developed).
Thousands of acres of trees have already been clear-cut
to make way for tar sands mining and if current plans
unfold, a forest the size of Maryland and Virginia will
be eliminated. The decline in forests has led to a major
reduction in both the region's grizzly bear and moose
populations, with oil exploration also harming prairie
birds and other animal life.
The environmental mayhem so far described is the scant
tip of the iceberg. The tar sands represent the biggest
increase in Canadian carbon emissions, with every barrel
of synthetic oil produced releasing 188 pounds of
carbon dioxide equivalent into the
atmosphere. Comparing the greenhouse emissions of a
conventional barrel of crude to a barrel of tar sands
oil, a New York Times article noted that, "a gallon
of gas from oil sands, because of the energy-intensive
production methods releases three times as much carbon
overall as conventionally produced gasoline." The
oil sands are located in and around Fort McMurray (aka
Fort McMoney), a region, with a population of 61,000. By
2015, Fort McMurray is expected to emit more greenhouse
gases than all of Denmark.
Describing "the rush into the oil sands" a Wall
Street Journal analyst writes: "For years,
environmentalists have argued that higher gasoline prices
would be good for the earth because paying more at the
pump would promote conservation. Instead, higher energy
prices have unleashed a bevy of heavy oil projects that
will increase emissions of carbon dioxide." Rather
than deter exploration, however, rising prices have led
to increasingly unconventional and hazardous oil
exploration exemplified by the Alberta Tar sands.
The tremendous energy required to bring the sand to the
surface for separation is largely provided by natural
gas. (Oil sands consume about 500 million cubic feet of
natural gas a day, an amount likely to increase to 1.25
billion cubic feet daily by 2016. The process is so
inefficient that the natural gas required to produce one
barrel of tar sands oil could heat a family home for 2 to
4 days. This process uses a relatively clean fuel to
assist in the production of a dirtier one, prompting oil
analyst Matt Simmons to describes the process as
"making gold into lead."
With over a hundred billion dollars projected in
oil sands investments between 2006 and 2016, the industry
is looking for a long-term, cost-effective energy source.
High natural gas costs have the tar sands companies
thinking big and looking north. Not everyone is happy
about this increasingly sticky situation. "Don't
ruin our land to fuel the U.S. gas tank," demanded
Grand Chief of the Deh Cho in response to the proposed
Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline, which if built
would ship natural gas almost exclusively for use in
northern Alberta oil extraction.
The natural gas pipeline seems almost benign compared to
some of the ideas being floated by some oil companies who
are described in the National Post as "warming to
the idea of nuclear power as a source for their massive
energy needs." This is not the first time nuclear
power has been proposed to liberate crude oil from the
tar sands. In 1959 California's Richfield Oil drew a plan
approved by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to separate
bitumen from sand by detonating a 9-kiloton atomic bomb.
It was argued that the heat and energy created by an
underground explosion would free the oil from the sand,
but after the success of initial tests in Nevada, the
idea was shelved due to concern among Canadian officials
over the use of the A-bomb.
For more information on the tar sands check out www.dominionpaper.ca
special issue on the topic.
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