You might not have heard about Canada's Oil
Sands before but this massive energy project
is causing a lot of concern in environmental
circles. One organisation has even labelled
it the most destructive project on Earth.
So what exactly is it? Oil Sand or Tar Sand
depending on who you speak to is a naturally
occurring mixture of sand, clay, or other
minerals, water and most importantly bitumen.
This is what a grain of the mixture looks
like. Bitumen which is found on the outside
of the grain is an extremely thick and sticky
oil which must be treated before it can be
used by refinery's to produce usable fuels
like gasoline, or petrol if you live in the
UK, and diesel.
This sand mixture can be found in several
locations around the globe including Venezuela,
the United States and Russia but it's Canada's
deposits of the stuff that has really got
people talking.
Even the name of Canada's deposits is controversial.
While environmentalists prefer to refer to
them as Tar Sands, the Canadian government
has officially named the deposits Oil Sands
and says the sand mixture doesn't actually
contain any tar.
It's popularly believe that Tar Sands are
much dirtier and threatening than oil and
who uses which term has become a massive source
of debate.
To keep things easy we'll refer to the deposits
by their official name but let's get back
on track. Located below 140,200 square kilometers
of land in the country's Alberta province
Canada's oil sands is the third largest proven
crude oil reserve in the world behind Saudi
Arabia and Venezuela. In 2011 it was believe
the reserve amounted to 170.2 billion barrels
of oil or about 11% of the world's total global
oil reserves. In other words, a lot of oil.
In 2012 production at the oil sands reserve
was averaging 1.9 million barrels of oil a
day with the Alberta government saying it
expects this to increase to 3 million barrels
per day by 2018 in order to "keep pace with
demand". And this expansion is being financed
by $19 billion a year in investments.
Only 20% of the oil sands deposits lie near
to the service where they can be easily mined
and this is around the Athabasca River. The
rest of the deposits are buried more than
75 meters below ground. These images from
NASA's land satellite shows the growth of
the surface mines around the Athabasca River
between 1984 and 2011. Much of the demand
for Canadian oil is coming from the US, the
world's largest consumer of oil. Canada is
the biggest supplier of oil to the US and
in August 2013 they were sending their neighbour
an average 2.6 million barrels of the stuff
every single day.
The Alberta based company TransCanada Corp.
even wants to build a pipeline linking the
oil sands to refineries on the US's Gulf Coast.
The keystone excel pipeline would transport
800,000 barrels of oil per day across a distance
of 1,179 miles. And the development of Canada's
oil sands is concerning environmentalists
for several reasons. For starters, producing
oil from oil sand or tar sand releases three
times the volume of green gases as producing
conventional oil. Everyday 600 million cubic
feet of natural gas, a greenhouse gas omitting
fossil fuel, is used to produce oil from the
oil sands. According to the Pembina Institute,
a non-profit environmental organisation, that's
enough gas to heat more than 3 million Canadian
homes, and if all the oil in the oil sands
reserve was extracted the former NASA climate
scientist Professor James Hansen believes
it would be game over for the climate, but
that's not all. The extraction of oil from
the oil sands has also led to huge swats of
forest being destroyed and then there's the
contaminated water that's a by-product of
the process used to turn the Bitumen into
usable fuel. This water contains leftover
Bitumen as well as solvents used to separate
Bitumen from the sand mixture and is known
as tailings. Energy companies store tailings
in open man-made lakes known as tailing ponds.
At present there are more than 170 square
kilometers of tailing ponds in the Alberta
province which are considered to be the largest
human made structure in the world. In fact
the ponds are so large that they can be seen
from space. According to the Canadian association
of petroleum producers, these ponds present
a number of what they call challenges. This
includes the fact that seepage from the ground
water can occur as well as the fact that the
water contains chemicals that are toxic to
fish and that residual oil can float to the
surface of ponds and pose a risk to water
fowl.
In 2010 the energy company Syncrude was fined
$3 million Canadian dollars after a flock
of 1,606 birds died after landing on its tailings
ponds back in 2008. And according to a 2008
report by the non-profit social movement organisation,
the Pilaris Institute, there had been an unusually
high rate of illnesses amongst the tiny community
of Fort Chipewyan located on the Athabasca
lake into which the Athabasca River flows.
This included unusual rates of a bile duct
cancer that is very rare and the community
believes the source of their sickness is the
water and in October 2013 communities bordering
the Athabasca River were warned not to drink
from the waterway after a breach in a tailing
storage pond dumped one billion liters of
contaminated water.
If development of the oil sands reserve continues
to expand at current rates, then according
to the Pembina Institute by 2022 so much fuel
will be being produced that just a months
output of this contaminated waste water could
turn an area the size of New York's Central
Park into a toxic reservoir 11 feet deep.
But despite the ongoing expansion of development
of oil sands there are signs that the tide
is beginning to turn against the project.
A European Union intention to designate oil
from sands as 25% more polluting than the
conventional oil would effectively seek imports
of oil from the oil sands banned.
Naturally the Canadian government isn't all
that happy about this however and has even
threatened a trade war with the EU over the
proposal. Only time will well who will win
out but in the meantime we'd love to hear
your thoughts on this so leave a comment and
we'll see you again next time.
