In the past year or so, there’s been a lot of discussion about the Alberta tar sands project and about the proposed XL Pipeline that would carry oil from that project to Texas. My wife Jane and I were concerned enough to travel to Washington D.C. to participate in two demonstrations aimed at stopping this pipeline.
News photo from Huffington Post
Why all the fuss over this project? Let me try to explain.
First, you have to understand the context in which this project occurs. The world is running out of oil. The icon of the Texas oil baron was created in the 1950s when the United States was producing 9 or 10 million barrels of oil per day. Even with the subsequent discovery and exploitation of the large Alaskan reserves, the U.S. as a whole is now producing only about half that amount.
With the high price of oil, believe me, if we could wring more oil out of U.S. oil fields, we would. It’s just not there. And if this isn’t bad enough, our energy demand is still increasing.
So when our neighbor to the north says they have an oil reserve that represents about 75% of North American oil reserves, everyone takes notice. But let’s put the size of this Canadian reserve in perspective. It’s projected that the Alberta tarsands can produce about 900,000 barrels of oil per day. Granted, this is a lot of oil, but it represents only about 1% of the world supply. It’s also very expensive to extract – much more expensive than the kind of oil that comes out of oil wells. If we weren’t running out of oil, we would never even consider mining this expensive-to-mine petroleum source. So we should first dispel any hope that this oil reserve is going to lower prices at the pump . Those prices are determined on an international market and by whatever executives in the oil industry decide they would like to have as a profit. The Alberta tar sands oil will have no effect on gas prices and will not significantly postpone the depletion of the world’s oil reserves.
Of course this is a North American oil supply, and at least some of that oil will flow directly to the U.S. This will be a great benefit to U.S. oil companies because that oil will be processed by refineries in Texas, but the intention is to send most of that Texas-refined oil to China. Again, not much benefit to consumers. Just a big revenue stream for oil companies.
So a small number of people in the oil industry will benefit from this project, and we as consumers will not. As a matter of fact, the people of both the United States and Canada are being asked to pay a very high price so that oil-industry profits can be protected. This is where the environmental connection comes in.
There are three major environmental issues related to the tarsands project. First, there is the environmental destruction at the site in Canada where the oil is extracted. Second, there is the environmental harm that will come from the proposed pipeline that will connect this site with the refineries in Texas. Third, there is the global harm that will come from releasing the carbon that is trapped in the sandstone of Alberta. The amount of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, that will be added to our atmosphere as a result of the tarsand operations will be significant. As a matter of fact, NASA’s chief climatologist, James Hansen, has argued that if this project goes online, it will “…make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.”
Although in this country we’ve focused our concerns on the pipeline and on the climate-change issues, I’d like to point out some of the environmental issues that are affecting communities, especially some of the communities of Native Americans, in Alberta.
To understand the environmental issue, you first have to understand what makes this Canadian oil different from the oil that is pumped from oil wells. Tar sands oil isn’t actually oil at all. It’s more like tar. In fact, Native Americans living in the area used to use the tar to seal their canoes. In its native state, this tar isn’t very useful to the oil industry. First of all, they need to be able to extract it in large amounts, so the first step in the process is to strip the land of those pesky trees that get in the way of mining operations. Next, the top layer of soil and rock needs to be removed and shoved aside, sometimes into nearby waterways. As a matter of fact, nowhere on Earth is more earth being moved. According to one of the managers at the site, the tarsands operation moves enough earth every 48 hours to fill Toronto’s 60,000 seat SkyDome stadium.
Once all of the trees, soil, and rock are removed, the tar is strip mined and then separated from the sand and sandstone to which it is attached. This separation process involves using vast amounts of steam as a wash. The energy used to create that steam is enough to power about four million American homes. Then another energy intensive process further processes the tar so that it is able to flow through a pipeline.
The amount of water used in the process is phenomenal. The tar sands operation has been taking about a hundred billion gallons of water per year from the Athabasca River. There are no legally binding restrictions on their water use – only suggestions, which the industry has been ignoring. And only about 10% of this water is returned to the river. Where does the rest go? It goes into large holding ponds that the companies create to receive the waste water. They have no idea what to do with this water, so it is just accumulating in ponds of toxic sludge that contain cadmium, lead, zinc, arsenic, naphtha, and other pollutants. These ponds are large enough to be visible from space. Last year a flock of more than 600 migrating ducks mistook one of these ponds for a real pond. They landed and died.
And these ponds are not confining the sludge. In some cases, they are open on one side, allowing the toxic soup to flow into the surrounding countryside. In other places, barriers that were meant to contain the sludge are leaking. The leaked and unrestrained toxins find their way into the streams and rivers of the area. Some of the most heavily affected communities are those of Native Americans. These are people with little political voice. They have been pleading with officials to stop the contamination of their rivers. This is not about aesthetics. The diet of these people is made up largely of fish. In addition, they have been noticing an increase in the local rates of cancer and other diseases and disorders, some of which they say they have never seen in the past. A doctor who flies in weekly to Fort Chipewyan, a remote village that takes its drinking water directly from the Athabasca River into which the artificial ponds are leaking, says that he diagnosed five cases of cholangiocarcinoma – a rare cancer of the bile duct that normally strikes one person in 100,000. There are only 1,000 people living in Fort Chipewyan. Two of those five cases have now been confirmed by biopsy. The other three patients died. When Jane and I were in Washington, residents of these communities spoke passionately to us about their personal tragedies. Alberta is far away, but by allowing the construction of a pipeline that enables the oil companies to increase their production, we are all a party to this injustice.
On Sunday, March 4, at the United Methodist Church in Lenox, Project Native and BEAT will be showing the film “White Water, Black Gold.” This film tells the story of the Alberta Tarsands from an investigative point-of view. It follows David Lavallee on his three-year journey across western Canada in search of answers about the activities of the tar sands sites in Alberta, Canada. This film addresses the first of the three problems associated with the Alberta tar sands; the environmental devastation at the tarsands site in Canada. I will address the related issues of the pipeline and of the effects of this project on climate change soon in this blog.