Heavy stuff

This photo is what kicks off Canada's Highway to Hell, an excellent article I found yesterday while starting my research on Alberta's Tar Sands.

So, the picture saves me at least a thousand words concerning exactly what impact strip mining has on the boreal forest. But let me say a few things about Tar Sands in general just to get the facts straight in my own head as I research, and to highlight points of particular interest.

First of all, depending on who writes about the Tar Sands they are described very differently. The language used by the Alberta government, for instance, is sensitive - they prefer to call the resource 'Oil Sands', insisting that since the oil is naturally occuring and tar is, after all, a biproduct of human activities and not what the sands are truly comprised of, this is the correct term. Fair enough.

But there's a reason the sands were dubbed 'tar' sands - it's because the first people to come across them found the heavy-duty sludge reminiscent of the same stuff that gunked up their cities; the same tar used to make cement. It's heavy, black, and nasty. The sands weren't even recognized by the Canadian government as a viable option for petroleum extraction until oil prices began to spike, and even now the fuel derived from the fields is dubbed a 'nonconventional' petroleum product. The 'tar/oil' in the sand has a real name which is not under debate - bitumen, and in fact it only comprises 10-12% of the sands. Of this percentage, only 75% is really extractable as fuel when all is said and done. And the extraction process itself? Well, it's energy intensive. Which doesn't really make sense - so you spend energy to get energy, sure, but at what point are you actually cancelling out and perhaps even digging (literally) an energy deficit? I'm researching specificially how much energy the entire life cycle of, say, a barrel of bitumen-derived petroleum product provides vs. how much it takes to produce that barrel. All sources so far are in agreement: Oil Sands extraction is an expensive process, but I think expensive is really a nice way of saying desperate.

Of course, in a document concerning environmental impacts of the extraction (which Alberta commissioned June Warren Publishing 'Canada's Oil and Gas Publisher' to produce) the preferred descriptive term used to explain bitumen is 'molasses-like'. And technology, they say again and again, has really developed since the '90's and if Canada - the U.S.'s leading oil supplier, believe it or not - is given enough $$ towards research, they can make the whole process of extraction even more efficient. In fact, one of Alberta's many affiliated websites stated, 'strip' mining - the kind you see in the picture above where the top layer (ie the boreal forest) is stripped off to access shallow Sands, which are scooped into trucks that have 40 ft. wheels and haul 320 tons of sand per load, which haul them to processing facilities to stick the sands in a nice, hot bath (ie MUCH MORE ENERGY). Alberta, however, emphasized that this sort of mining takes place on a much smaller scale compared to 'in-situ' mining. In-Situ. That's latin for 'In-Place', and doesn't that sound nice? They use 'In-Situ Methods' when the bitumen isn't close enough to the surface. It involves injecting steam deep into the earth to heat up the 'molasses/tar' enough that a well can be tapped, and the stuff pumped out more like business-as-usual.

This uses up even more energy than strip mining.

In short:

Strip Mining:
- 250 cubic feet of natural gas
- 2-5 barrels of water
per barrel

In-Situ Mining:
- 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas
- 2 1/2-4 barrels of water
per barrel

And just to throw a political monkey wrench in there, here is a recent addition to the U.S.'s 2007 Energy Bill:

“EISA Section 526 states that: "No Federal agency shall enter into a contract for procurement of an alternative or synthetic fuel, including a fuel produced from nonconventional petroleum sources, for any mobility-related use, other than for research or testing, unless the contract specifies that the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and combustion of the fuel supplied under the contract must, on an ongoing basis, be less than or equal to such emissions from the equivalent conventional fuel produced from conventional petroleum sources."

Bummer for the U.S. Air Force, who had big plans to use this 'nonconventional petroleum source'. Potential energy hiccup for the U.S. who, as I mentioned before, relies on Canada for 20% of its oil product. However, great leverage for Canada, where they have already pre-emptively suggested that the U.S. bill disproportionately affects purchase of energy from their Sands...which may very well be in violation of WTO rules. Hmm. Excellent info on this whole debacle here.

Right, so this is my research so far. Later in the summer it will be much more comprehensive, more hard facts and numbers, and context as far as Alaska and its natural gas pipeline plans. Let the investigation continue...