FW: Ecofacts V.6 n.36 Bitumen, bitter men
Bob Miller
FYI for those who are not aware of this. The simplified version.
Bob
From: Barbara Hirsch [mailto:hir...@library.ucsb.edu]
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 2:31 PM
To: Barbara Hirsch
Subject: Ecofacts V.6 n.36 Bitumen, bitter men
Bitumen is a thick black tarry substance that has been around since before early humans used it to seal things like tools and boats. It is also the stuff of the infamous tar sands in Alberta, Canada which soon could be diluted and pumped down a pipeline to our Gulf Coast for further refinement. This is the Keystone XL project currently being protested.
Canada’s tar sands (they prefer to call it oil sands) are dirty fuel for a nasty battle that won’t be ending soon. On one side: those who will profit - the oil companies, the Canadian Government - and governments of countries like ours who want the oil. On the other: environmentalists, regular people, including those who live in Canada and along that potentially leaking pipeline, and possibly the other living creatures who don’t have a vote, like the 1600 migrating ducks who landed in “tailings ponds” in one recent spring and didn’t live to warn others.
After the boreal forests and other types of ecosystems are razed, in order to extract 1 barrel of this low grade oil from the ground, 2 to 5 barrels of water are used, and approximately 123 barrels of natural gas.* This seems unimaginable, but economically, it apparently works. Water and natural gas are still cheap. As far as emissions go, if the final burning of the fuel is not included, one barrel of the stuff generates three times more greenhouse gases than that of oil pumped from a well. The toxic dredge from the process is kept in tailings ponds, which now amount to the size of the city of Vancouver. More good news to come....
(*The National Energy Board of Canada predicts that in 2015 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas will be used to produce 2.2 million barrels of oil from oil sands.)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2010/10/26/edmonton-more-ducks-tailings-pond.html