Trying To Come To Grips With Environmental Effects Of Tar Sands - NYT

FORT McMURRAY, Alberta - Just north of this boomtown of saloons and strip malls, a moonscape is expanding along with the price of oil. Deep craters wider than football fields are being dug out of the pine and spruce forests and muskeg swamps by many of the largest multinational oil companies. Huge refineries that burn natural gas to refine the excavated gooey sands into synthetic oil are spreading where wolves and coyotes once roamed. Beside the mining pits, propane cannons and scarecrows installed by the companies shoo away migrating birds from giant toxic lakes filled with water that was used in the process that separates oil sands from clay and dirt.

About 82,000 acres of forest and wetlands have been cleared or otherwise disturbed since development of oil sands began in earnest here in the late 1960's, and that is just the start. It is estimated that the current daily production of just over one million barrels of oil - the equivalent of Texas' daily production, and 5 percent of the United States' daily consumption - will triple by 2015 and sextuple by 2030. The pockets of oil sands in northern Alberta - which all together equal the size of Florida - are only beginning to be developed.

Because the oil sands region is so remote, the environmental damage receives little attention from the Canadian news media or public comment from Prime Minister Paul Martin's government. But industry leaders acknowledge that they face an enormous challenge because refining oil sands is several times more energy intensive than conventional oil production. In addition, the process is a major source of heat-trapping gases and far more destructive to the landscape than traditional drilling.

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In a neighboring and politically stable country, the oil sands are destined to become an increasingly important source of energy for the United States market for decades. The industry and government say the northern Alberta sands hold proven reserves of 175 billion barrels, a claim some experts dispute. But if it is true, only Saudi Arabia may have more oil. But environmentalists have a list of warnings, starting with the energy costs of extracting the oil.

"What bugs me about oil sands is that it is a resource that is being inefficiently used," said Marlo Raynolds, executive director of the Pembina Institute, an environmental research group based in Calgary. "We're using natural gas, which is the cleanest fossil fuel, to wash sand and make a dirtier fuel. It's like using caviar to make fake crabmeat." The environmentalists also warn that the growing oil sands industry threatens to tear up a huge stretch of Canada's boreal forest, which is a nursery for hundreds of bird species and where bogs filter water and store carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. They say the enormous volume of water the industry needs threatens fish in the Athabasca River, the principal water source. They predict that increases in emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide will increase levels of acid rain and destroy lake fish across northern Canada.

They also say that Canada, already behind in its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, will not be able to reach its Kyoto targets if production of oil sands keeps rising at the current rate.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/international/americas/09canada.html

to our energy problems is both depressing and terrifying. We haven't learned a damned thing. As you said, it's like switching from opium to heroin and calling it "progress."

Best description I've seen yet.

I wonder if it even makes sense from a thermodynamic perspective. Are they getting a net energy return from this?

Even massive economies of scale (which is the only way you can do this) haven't changed that balance.

Plus, what happens when the cheap local gas runs out?

about the greenhouse gas problem, and the damage that the extraction itself will do, and I really don't see why anybody would waste their time on it.

If we're going to undertake vast, expensive projects, let's choose some that will end our dependence on fossil fuels forever.