# Environmental impact of extracting oil from Alberta's tar sands **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 26, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831 "2008-03-26T20:41:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/1 "2008-03-26T20:41:20Z")
[_In These Times_](http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3568/beyond_propaganda/) accuses British Petroleum of “greenwashing” its plan to mine the tar sands of Alberta: > [@](#): > > The process of extracting and refining tar sands—also known as Canadian crude—involves strip-mining a 50,000-square-mile span of forest (approximately the size of Florida) located in the western Canadian province of Alberta. The region contains an estimated 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil. > > BP’s decision to tap into the Canadian wilderness is “based on addiction, not reality,” says Ann Alexander, senior attorney at the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), a nonprofit environmental group. “Tar sands crude oil is dirty from start to finish. It’s bad enough that [BP is] fouling our natural resources here in the Midwest, but it’s completely destroying them up in Canada. There are good sources of energy we can turn to that don’t involve turning entire forests into a moonscape.” > > \ > > In Alberta’s case, nearly 80 percent of the oil lays so deep underground that it needs to be either injected with steam or put through a “fireflood” process, which introduces compressed air to the bitumen and burns the oil for better flow. To extract a single barrel of bitumen from tar sands requires an energy input of 250 cubic feet of natural gas. > > The first step, then, involves razing vast amounts of wilderness for open-pit mining—meaning that small plants, trees and topsoil must be extracted by the ton. And because five barrels of water are typically needed to produce a single barrel of crude, surrounding rivers must be routed to the pits, then re-routed to man-made lakes of toxic sludge. > > But the leveling of the Canadian wilderness is only the beginning. Once the forest and wildlife are out of the way and the pits have been dug, the raw process of extraction requires substantial manpower, heavy machinery (some of which can be up to three stories tall and weigh as much as a jetliner) and an incredible amount of energy. And that’s to produce only a single barrel of unrefined crude oil from two tons of tar sands. > > Also, because of the machinery involved, tar sand extraction generates up to four times more carbon dioxide than conventional drilling. Over the next seven years, global warming pollutants released into the atmosphere from tar sands oil production are projected to quintuple to 126 megatons, up from 25 megatons in 2003, according to the Pembina Institute, a nonprofit environmental group based in Canada. Can anyone make a case that the environmental impact as described above is exaggerated? Or that this is worth doing anyhow? ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Dave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/46a35a/32.png) [@Great\_Dave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Dave)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/2 "2008-03-27T00:56:57Z")
Well, the plan is to pipe the crude to Detroit for refining, which means more of those blessed jobs that we so desperately need. There is nothing more important than job creation. :removes tongue from cheek: ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/3 "2008-03-27T01:50:09Z")
It obviously is generating revenue for the oil companies involved. It obviously has a customer base willing to pay the price. It obviously is lucrative. The environmental impacts are worth mentioning, but we’re talking about vast tracts of uninhabited land. You want oil? We have some. In perhaps 100 years we won’t. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/4 "2008-03-27T04:27:24Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] [_In These Times_](http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3568/beyond_propaganda/) accuses British Petroleum of “greenwashing” its plan to mine the tar sands of Alberta: Can anyone make a case that the environmental impact as described above is exaggerated? Or that this is worth doing anyhow? [/QUOTE] Wow, that’s some tendentious language. Yes, the oil sands tear up a lot of land, and use more CO2 to extract the oil than do other supplies. That’s the nature of the beast. We Albertans have pretty much decided that we’re okay with that. Now, the CO2 is to me, another matter. I don’t think we necessarily have the right to just decide to emit that much, because there are externalities. That’s why I strongly advocate building a nuclear reactor in northern Alberta to power the fuel sands projects. If we can bring our CO2 emissions down to the levels of other energy sources, then we’re choosing to chew up our own land and sell our resources. That’s really our business. And that land isn’t exactly rainforest. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/5 "2008-03-27T05:10:57Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] That’s why I strongly advocate building a nuclear reactor in northern Alberta to power the fuel sands projects. [/QUOTE] Looks like it is getting closer to happening. [Bruce Power hoping to build 4 Nuclear Power Plants in Northern Alberta](http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/346023) [Nuclear Power Plans Unveiled for Alberta](http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?k=89094&id=71a9324b-5972-4b44-a24b-73e859942cec) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/6 "2008-03-27T05:31:14Z")
[QUOTE=Leaffan] The environmental impacts are worth mentioning, but we’re talking about vast tracts of uninhabited land. [/quote] Yes. Most of the Earth’s land on which significant anthropogenic environmental impacts could still fall is uninhabited land. What is your point? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/7 "2008-03-27T05:34:28Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] Yes, the oil sands tear up a lot of land, and use more CO2 to extract the oil than do other supplies. That’s the nature of the beast. We Albertans have pretty much decided that we’re okay with that. Now, the CO2 is to me, another matter. I don’t think we necessarily have the right to just decide to emit that much, because there are externalities. That’s why I strongly advocate building a nuclear reactor in northern Alberta to power the fuel sands projects. [/QUOTE] That’s a step forward, but it still leaves another problem (OP article): > [@](#): > > Once crude is extracted from the tar sands, it still needs to be refined before it can be used. For the most part, that refinement takes place in the United States—and creates another set of environmental hazards in the process. > > In Whiting, Ind., where one of BP’s refineries is perched along Lake Michigan’s shores, the company is undergoing a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow it to refine crude oil originating from Canadian tar sands. The expansion, which will be completed by 2011, will allow BP to refine 260,000 barrels of Canadian crude per day, triple its current capacity. > > Canadian crude contains more sulfur and carbon than traditional oil. According to Simon Dyer, oil sands program director and policy director for the Pembina Institute, this means that the process of refining heavier oil has the potential to release up to four times more greenhouse gases. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/8 "2008-03-27T13:40:25Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] If we can bring our CO2 emissions down to the levels of other energy sources, then we’re choosing to chew up our own land and sell our resources. That’s really our business. And that land isn’t exactly rainforest. [/QUOTE] Waitaminnit – are you seriously contending that? That if the people of a given country or province collectively decide to “chew up” their “own land,” that’s between them and the relevant corporation and, absent larger impact on the global environment, nobody else has any grounds to object? Because that’s a thesis I’ve honestly **never** encountered before (in express rather than implied form) on this Board . . . or anywhere else, ever. (Certainly it often comes up WRT what a **private** landowner can do with his/her property, but that’s a different matter.) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/9 "2008-03-27T14:04:22Z")
You’ve never encountered the thesis that, so long as there are no externalities, property owners have a right to decide what to do with their property? I don’t recall Canada being consulted when the U.S. decided to build the Hoover Dam, and if the U.S. decides to drill in ANWR, they will. They’re not going to ask anyone else’s permission, because it’s U.S. land. In any event, your article didn’t mention the large amounts of money being spent on land reclamation. The tar sands are not located in old growth forests - the land in the area is generally muskeg, bushland, sprinked with small stands of trees. Syncrude spends millions of dollars cleaning up each finished pit, planting new seedlings, etc. 20 years from now, the land will look like it hasn’t been touched. But once again, so long as the environmental effects don’t spill over onto others, this is really Alberta’s business. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Dave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/46a35a/32.png) [@Great\_Dave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Dave)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/10 "2008-03-27T14:05:29Z")
One part I’m unclear about is how piping the crude to Detroit and Indiana for refining is cheaper/easier than shipping the finish products from Alberta. I guess that’s the dominant model in the petroleum industry already, and that it’s easier to expand existing facilities and build a pipeline than to build a refinery onsite. But we’re talking about a pipeline 3 or 4 times longer than the one in Alaska, and 4! nuclear power plants. Why not build those nuclear plants (something I’m still on the fence about) closer to population centers to minimize transmission loss, and take the rest of the money to further develop alternatives rather than buy another 5 or ten decades of a dubious energy source, while tearing up a bunch of land in the process. It might be tundra and taiga now, but in a century or two, it might be farm land. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/11 "2008-03-27T14:14:14Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] You’ve never encountered the thesis that, so long as there are no externalities, property owners have a right to decide what to do with their property? [/quote] Indeed I have, but only in connection with the property rights of, you know, property **owners.** You seem to be saying there’s also a corresponding collective right vested in the people/government of Alberta (or wherever) WRT environmental impacts on land within the province (regardless of whether said land is owned by the provincial government or somebody else) – which is undeniably true in legal/political/constitutional terms, but you seem to be making a “None of your business!” assertion even broader than that. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] Syncrude spends millions of dollars cleaning up each finished pit, planting new seedlings, etc. 20 years from now, the land will look like it hasn’t been touched. [/QUOTE] Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/12 "2008-03-27T14:16:16Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Waitaminnit – are you seriously contending that? That if the people of a given country or province collectively decide to “chew up” their “own land,” that’s between them and the relevant corporation and, absent larger impact on the global environment, nobody else has any grounds to object? Because that’s a thesis I’ve honestly **never** encountered before (in express rather than implied form) on this Board . . . or anywhere else, ever. (Certainly it often comes up WRT what a **private** landowner can do with his/her property, but that’s a different matter.) [/QUOTE] Are you serious about this? Really serious? Do you really think that countries and states don’t have the right to develop their resources as they see fit? Seriously? _boggled_ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/13 "2008-03-27T14:21:45Z")
[QUOTE=Weirddave] Are you serious about this? Really serious? Do you really think that countries and states don’t have the right to develop their resources as they see fit? Seriously? _boggled_ [/QUOTE] That’s not the question. The question is whether any foreigner can object because they’re destroying a beautiful or otherwise valuable part of the common heritage of the world, or something like that. Certainly such objections have no legal significance, control over such decisions being an element of a state’s sovereignty. But **Sam** sees to be saying there are no legitimate grounds on which such objections can even be **raised.** ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/14 "2008-03-27T14:28:26Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] That’s not the question. The question is whether any foreigner can object because they’re destroying a beautiful or otherwise valuable part of the common heritage of the world, or something like that. Certainly such objections have no legal significance, control over such decisions being an element of a state’s sovereignty. But **Sam** sees to be saying there are no legitimate grounds on which such objections can even be **raised.** [/QUOTE] I think Sam is saying that there are no legitimate grounds on which such objections actually **matter.** Alberta’s tar sands, Alberta’s decision. I know my own fairly liberal Canadian wife is incensed by environmentalists and “animal rights” activists down here in the U.S. attempting to force Canada to enact a ban on Polar Bear hunting, because they do not belong meddling the internal affairs of the sovereign nation of Canada. It’s an argument I’ve read you make about the war in Iraq, the U.S. had no right to overthrow Saddam Hussein on those grounds, why is this different? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/15 "2008-03-27T14:35:32Z")
Put it this way: If the state of Arizona wants to build an economically important new dam that will flood a scenic vista and destroy the breeding environment of the rare Peabody’s Utterly Useless Disgustingly Inedible Mega-Ugly Horned Toad, environmental activists from other states and even other countries may try to rally opposition to the project, write letters, stage sit-ins, etc. Many are annoyed by this or worse, but nobody tells them, “None of your business!” We generally accept, at least in the U.S. – and I would have **thought** in Canada too – that it’s as much their business as anybody’s, at least in the sphere of trying to sway public opinion. Only Arizonans, of course, get to vote for the legislators who will make the decision, and we accept that too. (Well, of course, the federal government might have a legal say under the Endangered Species Act, but I’m trying to avoid complicating the hypothetical.) ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/16 "2008-03-27T14:58:12Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Put it this way: If the state of Arizona wants to build an economically important new dam that will flood a scenic vista and destroy the breeding environment of the rare Peabody’s Utterly Useless Disgustingly Inedible Mega-Ugly Horned Toad, environmental activists from other states and even other countries may try to rally opposition to the project, write letters, stage sit-ins, etc. Many are annoyed by this or worse, but nobody tells them, “None of your business!” We generally accept, at least in the U.S. – and I would have **thought** in Canada too – that it’s as much their business as anybody’s, at least in the sphere of trying to sway public opinion. Only Arizonans, of course, get to vote for the legislators who will make the decision, and we accept that too. [/QUOTE] I think the flaw in your reasoning is that “we generally accept” such interference. You might feel that such interference is acceptable, but I uncategorically don’t, in fact, I think it’s a huge problem in America. It **IS** none of their business (not to say they don’t have the right to make their feelings known). ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/17 "2008-03-27T16:31:06Z")
[QUOTE=Great Dave] One part I’m unclear about is how piping the crude to Detroit and Indiana for refining is cheaper/easier than shipping the finish products from Alberta. I guess that’s the dominant model in the petroleum industry already, and that it’s easier to expand existing facilities and build a pipeline than to build a refinery onsite. But we’re talking about a pipeline 3 or 4 times longer than the one in Alaska, and 4! nuclear power plants. [/quote] Each state in the US can have it’s own gasoline formula. (California has two, IIRC, one for winter, the other for summer.) It would be easier to let the customer refine the crude into whatever they want to use it for. (As well as diesel, jet fuel, home heating oil, and so forth.) > [@](#): > > Why not build those nuclear plants (something I’m still on the fence about) closer to population centers to minimize transmission loss, and take the rest of the money to further develop alternatives rather than buy another 5 or ten decades of a dubious energy source, while tearing up a bunch of land in the process. It might be tundra and taiga now, but in a century or two, it might be farm land. It’s not just electricity type energy that they need. The energy being harvested (oil) is useful for many applications (vehicle fuel/lubricating oil, plastics, etc.), not just generating electricty. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/18 "2008-03-27T16:38:24Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Put it this way: If the state of Arizona wants to build an economically important new dam that will flood a scenic vista and destroy the breeding environment of the rare Peabody’s Utterly Useless Disgustingly Inedible Mega-Ugly Horned Toad, environmental activists from other states and even other countries may try to rally opposition to the project, write letters, stage sit-ins, etc. Many are annoyed by this or worse, but nobody tells them, “None of your business!” We generally accept, at least in the U.S. – and I would have **thought** in Canada too – that it’s as much their business as anybody’s, at least in the sphere of trying to sway public opinion. Only Arizonans, of course, get to vote for the legislators who will make the decision, and we accept that too. (Well, of course, the federal government might have a legal say under the Endangered Species Act, but I’m trying to avoid complicating the hypothetical.) [/QUOTE] That’s only because, in the U.S./Canada/Europe, those activists actually get treated with some respect. I’ve seen some complaints over China’s Yangzte (?) Dam project, and China’s & India’s exemption from the Kyoto treaty as legitimate concern’s, and Brazil’s cutting down the rain forest. I haven’t seen much “_Well how dare they! Damn them!_”, but more “_Well, whatcha gonna do?_ _shrug_”. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/19 "2008-03-27T17:05:04Z")
> [@](#): > > We generally accept, at least in the U.S. – and I would have thought in Canada too – that it’s as much their business as anybody’s, at least in the sphere of trying to sway public opinion. They can certainly try to sway public opinion, but in your hypothetical, no one but Arizona is being directly affected. Therefore, “it’s none of your business” is a perfectly legitimate response. There is no special duty to take environmental activists seriously. “I have decided X is worth the cost, it doesn’t affect you, therefore piss off” is, or should be, the default answer to any busybody. Or are we headed for the “rain forests are the lungs of the planet” stuff next? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831/20 "2008-03-27T17:19:11Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] Or are we headed for the “rain forests are the lungs of the planet” stuff next? [/QUOTE] That would be a different discussion; if the rainforests are the lungs of the planet (and I’m not saying they are), then their destruction undoubtedly **is** everybody’s business, not because of some abstract or esthetic value placed on the rainforests but because we all have to breathe the same air. But your argument about Albertans being the only properly interested parties WRT the environmental impact of tar-sand mining in Alberta is expressly based on the assumption that there is no such impact beyond the province’s borders. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/environmental-impact-of-extracting-oil-from-albertas-tar-sands/442831.md?page=2)