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08 Oct 08

Oil sands will pollute Great Lakes, report warns

I was already opposed to the oil sands project on several levels (it seems inefficient, for one thing), but this really clinches it: exploiting the oil sands in Alberta will lead to a build up of refineries along the Great Lakes, which will raise pollution and environmental degradation levels exponentially in that region.

The article references a report by UofT's Munk Centre, which calls the pipeline network for transporting the fuel a "pollution delivery system."

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www.theglobeandmail.com/...National - Preview

pollution oil_sands canada great_lakes environment water

The environmental impacts of Alberta's oil sands will not be restricted to Western Canada, researchers say, but will extend thousands of kilometres away to the Great Lakes, threatening water and air quality around the world's largest body of fresh water.
In a new report, the University of Toronto's Munk Centre says the massive refinery expansions needed to process tar sands crude, and the new pipeline networks for transporting the fuel, amount to a “pollution delivery system” connecting Alberta to the Great Lakes region of Canada and the U.S.
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- the refineries will be using the Great Lakes “as a cheap supply” source for their copious water needs
- The report, which is being released today at a conference at the university, says that as many as 17 major refinery expansions around the lakes are being considered for turning the tar-like Alberta bitumen into gasoline and other petroleum products.
- Proposed pipeline and refinery projects around the lakes are expected to lead to total investments of more than $31-billion (U.S.) by 2015, spending similar in scale to expenditures at many oil sands projects. For this reason, the report says the various projects, when taken together, threaten to “wipe out many of the pollution control gains” achieved around the lakes since the 1970s.
  
  The massive expenditures are needed because typical refineries can't process heavy crude derived from tar sands without costly upgrades.
- Most of the projected spending is on the U.S. side of the lakes. Only one major refinery project has been announced for the Canadian side, but that expansion, at a Shell refinery in Sarnia, was put on hold in July because of surging costs.
- However, two big Canadian companies, TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. with its Keystone project, and Enbridge Inc., with its Alberta Clipper project, are vying to build pipelines to bring crude from the tar sands to U.S. refineries around the lakes.
- Policy makers around the lakes, in both Canada and the U.S., are largely unaware that the tar sands will lead to massive industrial development in their region, and consequently have no strategy to minimize the environmental impacts, it says.
- Some of the harshest criticism is for the Ontario government, which it characterizes as “remarkably unengaged” over how tar sands oil will affect the province and “doesn't seem to even be asking the key questions, let alone contemplating the possible policy answers.”
- There has been one major dispute in the U.S. over a tar sands-related refinery expansion, at a British Petroleum facility at Whiting, Ind. The company proposed a $3-billion refinery modernization that would raise discharges of two pollutants by about 35 per cent and 54 per cent respectively. But it backed down and pledged not to increase the pollutants after a public outcry.
- How the Oil Sands Got To The Great Lakes Basin

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Oil sands will pollute Great Lakes, report warns

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