Canada's Tar Sands, America's Problem
by David Sassoon - Sep 4th, 2007
You've got to read Canadian newspapers to get the dirt on one of the filthiest sources of fuel in North America: the tar sands of Alberta. Never mind that they like to call them "oil sands" up there, as if the name would make the stuff cleaner. This op-ed in the Edmonton Journal by Mindy Lubber of CERES makes for sobering reading.
Well, oil prices are definitely high. But instead of sparking a clean
tech revolution, those prices have sparked an even dirtier industry:
Extracting oil from a sticky mud-like substance known as oilsands
underneath millions of acres of Canada's pristine boreal forest in
Alberta.
The tar sands area is the size of Florida. Now it's become worth it to Big Oil to squeeze out the tar and convert it to crude.
It requires enormous amounts of water and energy to make the extraction since 85% of the raw material is sand, and only 10% is the tar-like substance called bitumen. It's an industrial recipe for environmental havoc. The process also produces three times more carbon emissions than traditional oil production.
But with 1.7 trillion barrels of crude tar locked up in them sands, it's hard to walk away, especially when there's no price tag on the carbon emissions.
Over the next ten years, production is expected to triple thanks to $100 billion in investments, a lot of it from US-based companies. Where does all that tar fuel end up? Most of it comes to the US, and is triggering an expansion of refineries in Indiana, Colorado and Michigan to handle this dubious gift of tar.
And guess what? The Chinese are now buying up tar sands leases too.
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