The huge oil reserves of Canada, where the stuff can literally be dug out of the ground, provide the U.S. with a nearby alternative to importing crude from distant, unstable countries. But Alberta oil-sands production has one major shortcoming: It results in far more greenhouse gases than traditional drilling.
In the giant, open-pit mines north of this sub-Arctic boomtown, oil literally is carved out of the ground. Shovels the size of buildings scoop hundreds of tons of oil-soaked dirt into Caterpillar dump trucks as big as two-story houses. The trucks move to and from the pits in a perpetual storm of dust.
Everything in the Canadian oil sands — from the machinery to the seemingly infinite oil reserves — is extra large.
"This is mining to the max — it's very extreme," said Brian Patey, who came from Newfoundland in eastern Canada and now runs the truck shop at the Albian Sands Energy mine, a joint venture by oil companies Shell, Chevron and Marathon. Patey said that when he first saw a mine truck, "I thought it was the biggest thing in the world."
Once shunned by oil companies that preferred easier-to-exploit reservoirs of liquid crude, Alberta's oil sands now have made Canada the top foreign supplier of crude to the U.S. They contain the world's second-largest storehouse of crude — surpassing U.S. reserves by a factor of eight.
If the United States is to reduce its reliance on importing oil from countries that are unfriendly or unstable, Canada's oil sands are the place.
Yet, no other source of oil better illustrates our society's Faustian dilemma between energy security and environmental responsibility.
Extracting the tarlike oil called bitumen and converting it into the light crude that refiners want is an energy-intensive process that annually produces as much carbon dioxide as 6 million cars.
Put another way, extracting oil from the sands creates about three times the greenhouse gases as conventional drilling.
Canada, which in 1997 signed the Kyoto treaty on reducing emissions, now struggles to reconcile its newfound role of energy superpower with its promise to cut greenhouse gases. Some say oil-sands profits have cooled the country's enthusiasm for the treaty.
"It's the one thing that is really dragging us in the opposite direction from Kyoto targets," said Simon Dyer, a fellow with the Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental think tank.
Some U.S. policymakers question whether this country should continue to increase its reliance on the oil sands, due to their heavy environmental footprint.
And President-elect Obama could add pressure on the oil-sands industry to clean up its act, said Chris Sands, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C.
Article courtesy of the Seattle Times
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