Jeffrey M's List: Oil sands

• This first step of tar sand extraction is estimated to result in gasoline that  carries a burden of "at least five times more carbon dioxide" then would  conventional "sweet crude" oil production
• Although producers recycle much of their water, about one barrel of water is  lost for every barrel of oil culled
• required to restore oil sand mining sites to at least the equivalent of their  previous biological productivity, which involves revegetation and drainage  restoration. None of this has yet been done on a large scale, however.

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• across important salmon-bearing rivers, coastal rainforests, and sensitive  marine waters in British Columbia

• Sour gas contains hydrogen sulphide (H₂S). In high concentrations  H₂S is toxic to humans and animals.

• being accused of abandoning its "green sheen" by investing nearly 1.5bn to  extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists  say are part of the "biggest global warming crime" in history.
• "oil sands" that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the  world's second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.
• Producing crude oil from the tar sands a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand  and clay found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern  Alberta an area the size of England and Wales combined generates up to four  times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional  drilling.
• 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK's entire annual  emissions) a year by 2012
• targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.
• millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit  mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers up to five  barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process  requires huge amounts of natural gas
• Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two  tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will  use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will  increase its carbon footprint
• "It takes about 29kg of CO2 to produce a barrel of oil conventionally. That  figure can be as much 125kg for tar sands oil. It also has the potential to kill  off or damage the vast forest wilderness, greater than the size of England and  Wales, which forms part of the world's biggest carbon sinks
• The companies will invest $5.5bn (2.7) in the project, making BP one of the  biggest players in tar sands extraction.
• Canada claims that it has 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Alberta,  making the province second only to Saudi Arabia in proved oil riches and  sparking a 50bn "oil rush"
• Canadian province expects to be pumping five million barrels of crude a day by  2030.

• BP said it will be using a technology that pumps steam heated  by natural gas into vertical wells to liquefy the solidified oil sands and pump  it to the surface in a way that is less damaging than open cast mining. But  campaigners said this method requires 1,000 cubic feet of gas to produce one  barrel of unrefined bitumen the same required to heat an average British home  for 5.5 days.

• Licenses have been issued by the Albertan government to  extract 350 million cubic metres of water from the Athabasca River every year.  But the water used in the extraction process, say campaigners, is so  contaminated that it cannot be returned to the eco-system and must instead be  stored in vast "tailings ponds" that cover up to 20 square miles and there is  evidence of increased rates of cancer and multiple sclerosis in down-river  communities.

• Experts say a pledge to restore all open cast tar sand mines  to their previous pristine condition has proved sadly lacking. David Schindler,  professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, said: "Right now the big  pressure is to get that money out of the ground, not to reclaim the landscape. I  wouldn't be surprised if you could see these pits from a satellite 1,000 years  from now."

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• all Canadians are affected by the tar sands, no matter where they live.
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  all Canadians are affected by the tar sands, no  matter where they live.

   

   
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  Canadians are affected by the tar sands, no matter  where they live.

   

   
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  all Canadians are affected by the tar sands, no  matter where they live.

   

   
• The tar sands are the fastest growing source of global warming pollution in  Canada. Yet, the federal government has no plan to curb their emissions
• Global warming isn't the only environmental  problem made worse by the tar sands. Toxic waste ponds, air and water pollution,  habitat and species destruction are all legacies of the enormous operations in  northern Alberta.
• There are ways to curb the damage being done by the tar sands. Yet the federal  government has so far failed to get industry to clean up.
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  Because of their sheer scale, all Canadians are  affected by the tar sands, no matter where they live.

   

   

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