TAR-CROSSED: Plans call for the completion by 2013 of a tar-sands oil pipeline stretching from Canada to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. It will carry as much as 900,000 barrels of oil per day, passing through six states and possibly jeopardizing the integrity of farmland, public water sources and wildlife habitat. Pictured: A Rainforest Action Network protest against the project in front of the Canadian Consulate in Chicago.
Image: Rainforest Action Network
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Dear EarthTalk: What is “tar sands oil” and what is the controversy over possibly building a pipeline for it from Canada into the United States?—Bill Berkley, Omaha, Neb.
Tar sands oil (or “tar sands”) is slang for bituminous sand, a mixture of sand, clay, water and an extremely gooey form of petroleum known as bitumen, which resembles tar in appearance. Extracting commercially viable crude oil from tar sands is especially difficult because the thick and sticky mixture won’t flow unless it is heated or diluted with other hydrocarbons. Turning the extracted bitumen into liquid fuel requires large inputs of energy; the process also uses, pollutes and wastes large amounts of fresh water.
Research has shown that these processes alone generate as much as four times the amount of greenhouse gases per barrel of final product as the post-extraction production of conventional oil. Taking the entire life cycle of both final products into account, the extracting, processing and burning of liquid fuel from tar sands emits between 10 and 45 percent more greenhouse gases overall than conventional crude. Extraction of oil from tar sands also damages land to the point where it can no longer sustain forestry or farming.
Despite the environmental pitfalls of harvesting oil from tar sands, those countries that have them are making the most of them. More than half of Canada’s relative sizable oil production comes from the tar sands of Alberta and other areas, while Venezuela is also a big producer of tar sands oil.
Tar sands have been in the news of late because green groups and many U.S. public officials are worried that the construction of a new pipeline to transport tar sands crude from northeastern Alberta into the U.S. —TransCanada’s Keystone XL project—would greatly increase American consumption of this carbon-intensive fuel and jeopardize U.S. efforts to reduce its oil consumption and overall carbon footprint.
Plans call for running the 2,000-mile-long pipeline all the way from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. On the way it will carry as much as 900,000 barrels of oil per day, passing through six U.S. states and possibly jeopardizing the integrity of farmland, public water sources and wildlife habitat.
In June 2010, 50 members of Congress signed a letter asking Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to block approval of Keystone XL because it would “undermine America's clean energy future and international leadership on climate change.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency subsequently announced that the State Department’s draft environmental impact study for Keystone XL was in need of revision because it didn’t sufficiently take into account oil spill response plans, safety issues and greenhouse gas concerns.
In December 2010, several concerned U.S. nonprofits—including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club—launched the No Tar Sands Oil campaign to urge President Obama to halt Keystone XL, which is scheduled for completion by 2013. In March 2011 some two dozen U.S. mayors got into the act, asking Secretary Clinton to stop approval on Keystone XL as it could “undermine the good work being done in local communities across the country to fight climate change and reduce our dependence on oil.”
CONTACTS: TransCanada’s Keystone Project, www.transcanada.com/keystone.html; No Tar Sands Oil, www.dirtyoilsands.org.
EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.
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12 Comments
Add CommentTar sands will not, can not, undermine alternative energy development. What presently is a roadblock to such development and adoption is that almost all alternative energy is too expensive and only moderately reliable. When those issues are addressed and overcome, neither tar sands nor any other new finds of carbon-based energy will be much of a factor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do you address and overcome:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSolar: No sun at night, low watt density
Wind: Very variable, noise pollution, low watt density
Geothermal: requires deep drilling, no direct generation
These are all inherent physical limitations.
I vote for efficient power _usage_ development.
In particular, this pipeline would run above the Ogalala aquifer, the largest underground freshwater supply of North America. It indirectly feeds much of the farmland in the midwest and a pipeline leak could contaminate it. The original proposal I saw made only a one time payment to owners of land which the pipeline would cross - giving them no future incentive to house a pipeline that could rupture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering solar PV power, it has an exceptional watt density if you compare it to fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas are really just dead plants cooked underground for millions of years and under special circumstances. All those little dead plants had a very low watt density if you ask me, especially given the time it took to transform them into fossil fuels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWind is variable, but you can forecast wind conditions many hours to several days out anyway. Also, spreading out wind farms over a wide area and linking them together eliminates the risk of low power supply on calm days. Offshore wind turbines generate power much more consistently than even those onshore.
As for Geothermal, EVERY fossil fuel requires deep drilling anymore considering that humanity has extracted all the cheap and easy to get resources already. Now we're forced to pollute our groundwater with fracking to liberate natural gas trapped in rock thousands of feet below the surface.
You also forgot to throw false allegations at wave energy, biomass, waste heat recovery, solar thermal baseload and run-of-river hydroelectric.
What is it the anti-drilling crowd always says? Additional production here in the US will not affect prices. Well, then that same argument should apply to the tar sands of Alberta.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe prospects of alterantive energy sources always rise and fall on the price of current energy sources. Therefore, this pipeline will have absolutely no impact on development of alternatives.
Further, if the pipeline is not built this oil will be piped to the West coast of Canada where it will be shipped to Asia. It gets produced and burned either way. Therefore this pipeline will have absolutley no impact on carbon emissions.
So, absent some spurious argument about ground water, there is no reason not to build it.
As soon as I see the words" tar sands"..I know the writer is ignorant of the place, the process and the consequences of their production. They are properly called bituminous oil sands and it is NOT tar...Tar is in fact a product of wood and not of sedimentary oil. Further, I live not far from the production of Athabasca Oil and have absolutely NO financial connexion to its production, exportation or any other fiduciary advantage in my defending its mining. Having just returned from a trip that passed by Powder River Coal mining, I wonder really why Americans are so incensed by a well run operation in Canada other than some sort of ideological drum banging. Powder River is open pit mining on a vast scale and also seems well run by the way. The modern mining methodologies in Fr. MacMurry are NOT open pit as coal mines need to be but are in situ steam injection and extraction which does not disturb the surface fauna and flora more than modestly and can continue this way for hundreds of years. The pictures used over and over by the lunatic fringe who want as Luddites to return to the good old days of bicycles and living in tiny communities does not consider that the average American drives a four wheel drive SUV which is reliant still on oil based energy and will be so for another decade at least. One can thus buy one's oil from Middle East fascist states or Venezuela which is anti American to say the least and produces a thick bituminous oil of similar nature to that of the Oil Sands in any case or buy from a very friendly source such as Canada and Alberta within. It is a no brainer to me and likely to any rational American citizen but no...there are those naysayers who might very well be goaded on by those that want instead to endanger the Gulf further with deep sea drilling risks. I cannot say what the reason for this antipathy to our oil sands are other than such suspicions and I have no evidence one way or the other but one can see issues that abound on alternatives to safe bituminous oil extractions from Alberta to be sure. I can assure the US that other nations are vying for the oil from Athabasca/Fr. MacMurray and Canada has no reason not to sell to others if they are able and willing to invest in this resource. The US cannot afford to be choosy in this regard as otherwise, it will be dependent even further on international shipping, cartels, nasty sources of politically devisive nations and so forth. Takes your choice in this regard but realise that much of what is said about the oil sands are plain out and out...lies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a geologist in Alberta. How can oil fron tar sands be sent to the USA when there are no tar sands?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an piece of poor journalism written by an ignorant insdividual.
The article was in response to a question that used the phrase "tar sands" and the article also said the word was slang for bituminous sand. If you even read the article, you would know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason there is opposition to this pipeline is, according to the article, that the pipeline is "possibly jeopardizing the integrity of farmland, public water sources and wildlife habitat". Since the article also stated that a barrel of bituminous sand crude emits 10 - 45% more CO2 than conventional crude, building this pipeline would tarnish our legitimacy in arguing for carbon pollution cuts from other countries.
Just the natural gas used to extract and upgrade this crude is equal to 25% of the energy content in a barrel of crude. On top of that, you still have to pipe this product to a refinery and separate it into various products. You would get the same usable energy (or ability to do equivalent work) by burning the natural gas in an ICCGT power plant and charging an electric car with the output. This way, you'd save millions of gallons of clean water, prevent accumulation of toxic tailings ponds around the mining operations and the need to tear up whole swaths of boreal forest to access the sand in the first place.
The production of oil from bituminous oil sands does NOT take four times the energy of producing other oils. That is an absolute fabrication. The calculated cost in terms of energy must be applied in terms of overall carbon expense per delivered and refined barrel of oil or fuel and California crude as well as Venezuelan crude is comensurate with oil sands bitumin as there is also tankers that must carry fuel and be built for that matter to carry it as well as the environmental dangers in so doing or worse, drilling in the Gulf for conventional oil. If the US chooses not to build the pipeline, the oil will go to China and it matters not a tinker's damn to me who buys it but it will be sold but the US will be worse for not getting it and will have to go cap in hand to other nations to quench its need for oil. Those embeciles who are opposed to a simple pipeline are Luddites, fools and ignorant of the many products that the US must have to survive. This pipeline is one of the lifelines. It is my presumption that there are those opposed to building the pipeline as they want to develop Gulf oil or similar energy schemes rather than that there is something inherently distasteful with running a pipeline. Cut it at your own peril. Personally, I do not care either way. I do not have a stake in oil, bitumin or the needs of foreign nations but facts speak for themselves in this regard. As the Brits say, I'm all right, Jack. Come on over world, we are selling bitumin and we have a lot of it. signed Albertan citizen
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSA- bias and bs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm all for releasing more greenhouse gasses. As far as the concern about the pipeline crossing the Ogalla aquifer, it would just be one more out of several so why is this pipeline any different? If state and local officials are worried about leaks then put in place inspection requirements that would prevent that kind of problem. When alternatives compete with petro on an even basis I'll gladly switch. Until then forget it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs soon as I see the Sierra Club involved I hope the locals have deep pockets because the Sierra Club will empty them out for them in a hurry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd rather use ethical Canadian oil than the Blood Oil from Third World despots.
Besides, the oil sands operations save birds lives. Those abominable windmills are responsible for massive numbers of bird deaths. I read an article about a school principle in Canada who asked that a windmill be removed from near the school grounds as the dead birds lying around all the time were freaking out the kids.
The only reason offshore wind farms look better is that the sea swallows the victims.