Tar Sands: If You Have Tears, Prepare To Shed Them Now
by David Sassoon - Nov 9th, 2007
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The latest installment of Elizabeth Kolbert's field notes on climate change is in the current New Yorker (sub req'd). She visits Fort McMurray, ground zero of the tar sands boom in northern Alberta, and reports on one of the least recognized and fastest growing accelerators of global warming: oil from unconventional sources. Business as usual is not slowing down one iota in our own backyard.
The tar sands underlie a vast and pristine area of boreal forest the size of Florida (see Canada's Tar Sands, America's Problem). Most of the stuff -- 85% -- is sand, and only 10% is a substance that can be extracted (using a lot of water), heated (using a lot of energy) and turned into fuel. Kolbert documents in heartbreaking detail how this is done. Together with the accompanying photograph of the resulting wasteland, the report provoked in me a sense of moral repugnance. Who are the people behind this? How can they be so out of touch with the scale of the unfolding crime?
This is no new development. Kolbert explains:
Since 2002, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Imperial Oil, which is primarily owned by ExxonMobil, have all received approval to construct major project in the tar sands; Total has announced its intention to follow suit. Over the next five years, investment in the Fort McMurray area is expected to amount to more than seventy-five billion dollars.
And the result is surprising:
Canada has become America's No 1 source of imported oil; the country supplies the United States with more petroleum than all of the nations of the Persian Gulf combined.
When I was at the COP-11 meetings in Montreal in 2005, there was talk that Dick Cheney had paid a recent visit to the tar sands. I made a mental note. A friend told me to check flights on the Houston to Edmonton, Alberta corridor. Expedia returned more than 30 to choose from on any given day.
The extraction of fuel from the tar sands results in up to 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional sources of crude. It's only the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Shale oil, locked up in the Green River Formation in the Western US, and the coal-to-liquid process, which can exploit the nation's vast coal reserves, both increase emissions by 100% over traditional crude.
I imagine that these developments are not surprising to energy industry CEOs. They've probably long banked on these deposits to provide profits once the price of oil rose high enough. With oil knocking at $100 barrel, that time has come. Actually, the industry saw it coming since 2002. Hmm.....
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