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Ever checked out your own open pit coal mines, and the mountain topping mining you're doing in your own country?
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The wastewater is kept in tailing ponds to prevent having to use water from and then dump it back into the Athabasca river. They're highly effective at what they do and are cleaned during the reclamation process. They're also an older technology and will be used less in the future.
It's not like the water table in that area was great to begin with. The ground is full of tar and leaches oil into the water table naturally. They discovered the oil sands when the first explorers noticed the sheen of oil on the shores of the Athabasca river as they went down it for the first time. It was polluted naturally before man ever set foot there.
They use more fresh water and solvents for fracking gas and oil wells now with far less monitoring and oversight. With the number of fracking wells and the way they're spread out there's now way they can keep a handle on what they're doing to the water supply in much more populated areas and much closer to sensitive and critical watersheds that we rely on for our drinking water.
I know guys who work in the oil patch and have clients who are responsible for tailing pond maintenance. It's not like you're told by the environmental groups. It might have been 40-50 years ago when the oil sands were very small and we didn't have either the awareness or the technology in use today. Keeping the environment clean is just as important a job up there as getting the oil out of the sand. The oil companies know that if they slack off now they'll pay a higher price later, because they're on the hook to return the area to how it was before they got there. Just without all the oil stuck in the sand.
The actual amount of area that's been mined open pit style is about 715 square kilometers and so far about 71 square kilometers have been marked as reclaimed. There's more in process, but until many years have passed and the area checks out, the area isn't considered reclaimed.
Most maps only show the total area that the oil sands deposits cover. The actual area that's surface minable is quite small. Currently less than 1% of the oil sands have been surface mined and the area that's surface minable only accounts for 3.4% of the deposit.
I'm not touchy about it. I'm just tired of seeing so much wrong information being passed around about how it's the end of the world as we know it if it's developed. The actual emissions and pollution go down each year, but the expansion obviously creates more of it. The key is to manage it properly as it's developed and do what we can to reduce the impact. It's not like the big bad oil companies are sitting on their hands. The government won't let them. Believe me. We know the world is watching us. Much more than they're paying attention to their own back yard it seems.
Take a look at how bad Canada and the oil sands really are in comparison to the rest of the world when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions:
It is quite a thing and you guys are flush. So have you seen one?
Already a done deal.
It's all about perspective and balance. Maybe you can weave me a front fender out of switchgrass and find a way to ship it to me without burning a drop of oil.
Mining is an ugly business. Whether it's coal, nickle, uranium, gold, copper or oil sands. Should we shut everything down? Do you think that the oil sands are like the wild west with no oversight or regulation where everybody just drains their used motor oil down the kitchen sink and the favorite pastime is puppy torture?
The fact is we need the oil. The argument should be, how can we do it better, or reduce our need for it. Not, it's bad, so shut it down. The areas being fracked in the US are just as large as the oil sands, and the process is just as dirty and it is much closer to areas densely populated and is having a greater affect on the water table for more people. Do we boycott fracked natural gas and oil? Why not? Where's the outrage? Why the focus on one project?
There's lots of crappy things we're doing to the planet, and the oils sands have somehow become the sole focus of people's anger. Look at your own backyard and see what Ontario has done to the Sudbury region. Where's the calls to shut down the mining and the smelters that have turned the region into a moonscape and polluted thousands of lakes and rivers?
An industrialized society is a dirty business. Unless we want to go back to an agrarian society, the best we can hope to do is manage our impact as best as possible. Maybe more focus on stewardship is what's required. Is it bad, yeah. Is it as bad as it could be? No. Is it as bad as it's made out to be? Not from what I've seen and heard. We're doing the best job that we can to manage the resource and reduce the impact.
I'm just a realist who understands that our society depends on oil and our country's economy is based on resource extraction. Whether it's the oil sands in Alberta, mining and smelting in Ontario, offshore oil and smelting in Newfoundland, lumber in B.C., hydroelectric in Quebecor or coal in the maritimes.
There's many ways we could all personally sacrifice and things we could change that could eliminate the impact of extracting oil from the sands in Alberta. Stop burning coal for electric power. Stop building cars with internal combustion engines. Use geothermal heat for our homes. These are all things we can do now that would have a massive impact, but they require additional expense and personal sacrifice. And not one of them will address the fact that even if we stopped using oil to power our cars and trains and other stuff, we'd still need it for things like fertilizer and plastics and chemicals and we don't have enough to go around.
If you have a better way, then by all means tell the world about it. Put your money and manpower behind it. Right now, we're doing the best we can. There's cleaner methods being developed all the time. For the time being though, we have a resource that we require and we're running out of the traditionally (somewhat) cleaner sources of it. Maybe in the future we'll all be bitching about the iron mining and steel manufacturing we're doing to build windmills and the toll the windmills are taking on the local birds. There will always be something to bitch about. Just use a little reason and perspective and think about your own impact. We're all part of the problem, but pointing fingers at one area does nothing to find a solution. It might make you feel a little more self-righteous because you oppose it, but your actions fuel the demand for it.
The effective change will come from a reduced demand for the resource, not the elimination of it's supply from one area. If you think the oil sands are bad, what will happen when they've become the cleanest source we have left for oil?
What have you personally done to reduce your consumption? Me, I've moved my business into my home. I spend less than a quarter of what I did on gas without having to commute to work. I don't have to heat a separate building to work in. I share the resources of my home with my business. My footprint has been greatly reduced through a few small personal actions. I'm not some sort of drill baby drill, or global warming is a myth kind of guy. As I said before, I'm just a realist trying to find balance and do what I can personally. You can see what your actions are causing. What are you doing to reduce your impact and the overall demand for the product you seem to despise? How have you found a way to use less of it, or do you think that your vocal opposition will have the same affect as a change in your behaviour?
Complain all you want. See how much good it does compared to actually doing something about how much you use. Canada didn't pull out of Kyoto because of the oil sands. We pulled out because we're addicted to our cars and motorcycles and heating our homes with natural gas and fuelling our generators with coal. The problem is consumption, not extraction.
TerryK, you make some good points as well. I happen to be in a fairly senior managment position in a Canadian Oil and Gas company. Its surprising to me how hard my company, and MOST of our competitors are trying to find ways to recover the oil, and do it in the most responsible manner. I will support what rooster said, and make note that the Manufacturing and Auto industry in Eastern Canada is actually one of the biggest hits to the Canadian Green House gas emissions. And, they have done more polluting than we will probably ever do. Especially now with the super strict flaring regulations, and with the lean burn compressor engines, etc. The regulatory bodies for the manufacturing industry have huge strides to make as well.
I like what Terrys point is though, in that we ALL need to be more responsible in how we industrialize. We are simply borrowing this earth from our kids and thier kids. Thats probably the thing we all need to remember the most.
In the horizontal well fracking process, there is too much fresh water being used. It becomes super expensive to recover produced water for the Fracs, but man its one thing that everyone is working hard to find a solution to. There is only so much fresh water, and we need to conserve it.
As long as there is people needing oil and energy, there will be someone to produce it. Hopefully we can do it so that my grandkids one day will be able to enjoy this big ole' ball of mud we call home.
As long as humans want to maintain this industrialized, modernized society that we all (from the most radical and extreme environmentalist, to the tar sands CEO who cares more about his checking account balance that the environment) enjoy...the environment is going to get hammered. And it doesn't matter where we get our energy from (even solar and wind energy isn't "clean"....cleaner, but not clean).
Get at the Tar sands...build Keystone!
If you want to stop tar sands development, stop driving so much. Become an energy conservationist. Trying to block a pipeline is a waste of time.
As far as Canada's threat to sell their oil to China, please help yourself to that option. We couldn't care less. When you sell oil on the open market, you lower the price of oil (although the amount we're talking about wouldn't make a measurable difference). Oil is a world-traded commodity, whether Saudi Arabia or Canada or Russia puts more oil on the market, the price goes down, no matter where the ships carrying the oil go to unload. Look at what happened to the price of natural gas when supply suddenly increased - it dropped by 300% or so over a few years.
I was interested cause I have been by the huge tank farm in Il.
http://www.transcanada.com/5730.html
Hmmm, guess it would be just another pipeline crossing the Oglallah Aquifer.
Pit Row
http://www.transcanada.com/docs/Key_Projects/know_the_facts_kxl.pdf
"The crude oil Keystone XL will transport will be put on tankers and sent to China."
The crude oil Keystone XL will transport will not be shipped to China; it will be refined at U.S. refineries on
the Gulf Coast to meet American demand for petroleum products.
"Keystone XL will increase gasoline prices."
TransCanada does not set oil or gas prices. In fact, the price of international oil prices has no impact
on the operation of our pipeline and we do not profit from changing market changes. Prices are set on
a global level. Recently, for example, oil that is imported and sold on the U.S. Gulf Coast is trading for just over $102
U.S. per barrel. Western Canadian oil is currently trading for $68 U.S. per barrel. So in addition to enhancing America’s
energy security, the price to acquire Canadian oil is much lower.
"Keystone XL doesn’t benefit the U.S."
Keystone XL will bring significant economic benefits to Americans during construction and operations:
• private sector investment of more than $20 billion in the U.S. economy – at no cost to American taxpayers (food, lodging,
fuel, vehicles, equipment, and other construction supplies and services),
• create about 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs, which will increase the personal income of American workers
by $6.5 billion,
• generate more than $585 million in new taxes for states and communities along the pipeline route,
• pay more than $5.2 billion in property taxes during the operating life of the pipeline, and
• strengthen America’s energy security by increasing the supply of safe, secure and reliable oil from Canadian and
American oil fields.
TransCanada’s Keystone
No one seems to be worried about prime farmland in CA being paved over for subdivisions. Lets dig a hole in the ground and fill it with concrete.
.........but now I just want the crib notes.
Oh Canada!
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/statistics/CL3012209/caab0103?ref=topn…;
with nothing to do but drink and fight.
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