Tar sands = filthy dirty bitumen "oil"

dumpthemonarchy

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I punched in tar sands and found this article about how tar sands oil is extreme energy and extracts a heavy environmental price.

Frinstance, fracking is causing rare tremors in Texas.

Gross: The True Costs of 'Tough' Oil - Newsweek


Going to Extremes

Our unbridled pursuit of untapped energy is taking us into treacherous new territory.


Jared Moossy / Redux

A well in Wise County, Texas, taps into the Barnett Shale, a source of plentiful but hard-to-extract natural gas.

The ongoing debacle in the Gulf of Mexico is a sign of many things—the incompetence of BP, poor oversight, and an industry that places too much emphasis on production technology and too little on safety technology. But it also highlights a larger truth. We’ve entered an age in North America where the production of energy, especially from fossil fuels, comes with ever-more-expensive environmental tradeoffs. We’ve entered what Michael Klare, a professor at Hampshire College, calls the era of “extreme energy.”



Consider how oil production in the U.S. has evolved. In Texas in 1901, wildcatters didn’t have to work very hard to tap into the great Beaumont gusher. The oil was essentially at the surface, all but seeping out of the earth’s crust. When the land-based oil was exhausted, American prospectors went to sea. And when the shallow-water oil was exhausted, they went farther out. In 1985 only 21 million barrels, or 6 percent of the oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, came from wells drilled in water more than 1,000 feet deep. In 2009 such wells produced 456 million barrels, or 80 percent of total gulf production. Today, deepwater gulf wells account for about one quarter of the oil the U.S. sucks from the earth. The Webcams broadcasting images from the spill provide a real-time measure of the environmental cost of this effort.



The Gulf of Mexico isn’t the only place where such so-called tough oil is to be found in North America. The environmental hazards of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are so obvious that even the Bush-era Congress and White House wouldn’t go there. Analysts have enthused about the rapid development of the Alberta tar sands in Canada—friendly, nearby, democratic, non-terrorist-promoting Canada. An Alberta government Web site notes that the oil sands are “the second largest source of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia.” The reserves there—171.8 billion barrels—amount to 13 percent of the global total and are about what Iraq and Russia have, combined. But the gunk in the tar sands isn’t really oil. It’s bitumen. And it has to be ripped out of the earth, or pushed to the surface in a process that itself consumes a lot of water and natural gas. Producing a barrel of oil from tar sands creates more than twice the amount of emissions of old-school oil drilling.



Jesse Cancelmo

The gulf spill's disastrous effect on marine life


Animals at Risk From the Gulf Oil Spill
Natural gas is supposed to be an easy form of energy—it burns more cleanly than petroleum, and the U.S. has vast supplies. In recent years discoveries of reserves locked in shale rock in the Ozarks (the Barnett Shale) and in the Appalachians (the Marcellus Shale) have spurred a boom. But shale gas is also tough energy. The gas is produced via fracking—fracturing the rock with water and chemical solvents to loosen up the gas molecules. The environmental risk? The water mixed with solvents could filter into underground aquifers. Inconveniently, the Marcellus Shale overlaps with the watershed of the New York City region. And then there’s the matter of earthquakes. Last year experts in Texas grew concerned when rare seismic activity was detected in areas where natural-gas drillers had been fracking.



Even the cleanest sources come with tradeoffs. The wind-turbine farm off Cape Cod, Mass., aroused the ire of waterfront homeowners whose views would be marred by giant propellers in the distance, but also by environmentalists concerned about its potential impact on wildlife. Proposals to put huge solar arrays in the Mojave Desert have provoked similar green concerns.



Thus far, we’ve deemed these risks—oil spills, more emissions, polluted water, the odd earthquake—to be worthwhile, in large measure because of the laws ofsupply and demand.“As the price of energy keeps drifting higher, we’re going to do more and more dubious things,” says Joseph Romm, an assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration and editor of the influential Climate Progress blog.



But the response to the age of tough oil shouldn’t be engineering feats that allow us to drill deeper or to liberate hydrocarbons from rocks. Rather, we should apply our collective engineering smarts to figuring out ways to use less energy. If we want to avoid extreme energy, we need extreme efficiency.
 

AnnaG

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Ya think?
People seek the fastest and easiest routes first. If you have a pound of sugar in your cupboard, why would you cross town to a store for what you need for your coffee?
Critters can adapt to things like windmills. They cannot adapt to poisons (at least not as quickly).
 

dumpthemonarchy

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Ya think?
People seek the fastest and easiest routes first. If you have a pound of sugar in your cupboard, why would you cross town to a store for what you need for your coffee?
Critters can adapt to things like windmills. They cannot adapt to poisons (at least not as quickly).

We are crossing the street right now for that sugar. These projects would be less profitable if they didn't get so many tax breaks.

The enviros are failing here big time.
 

dumpthemonarchy

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Read the article.

Fracking is mentioned in the article. Fracking is another form of extreme energy we are pursuing. Peak oil is here, which is why the oil industry is going so far out to sea, so far beneath underground, and digging filthy tar sands for energy. The end is nigh muchachos.
 

taxslave

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In view of what is happening in the gulf of Mexico right now tar sands is looking pretty clean.
Building a pipeline to the west coast and a tanker port is not a waste, it opens up new markets so we are not totally dependent on the US for markets. Nor is peak oil here. That is a scam to raise prices. There are lots of untapped supplies in both Canada and the US. They are just out of bounds at the moment.
 

karrie

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Fracking is another form of extreme energy we are pursuing. Peak oil is here, which is why the oil industry is going so far out to sea, so far beneath underground, and digging filthy tar sands for energy. The end is nigh muchachos.

Fracking is not a form of energy, fracking is a production technique... one that has been around for ages to maximize wells.
 

Cliffy

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It does look like the Earth is producing the oil, that it is no longer considered a fossil fuel. This is really too bad, because there is no incentive to get away from the stink stuff that is choking our air ways and causing so much respiratory diseases.
 

AnnaG

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We are crossing the street right now for that sugar. These projects would be less profitable if they didn't get so many tax breaks.

The enviros are failing here big time.
Actually Canada is in agreements with other oil producing nations and is an exporter of more oil than it uses. If there were no agreements with other nations then we wouldn't be crossing the street for it. The USA was using up its oil so it decided it wanted other people's oil, too, and wangled agreements to get it. It's an importer of oil. It HAS to cross the street for it.

It does look like the Earth is producing the oil, that it is no longer considered a fossil fuel. This is really too bad, because there is no incentive to get away from the stink stuff that is choking our air ways and causing so much respiratory diseases.
Of course Earth produces oil. It's not created in Star Trek replicators. lmao
It comes from vegetation that's been under huge pressure and heat.
 

wulfie68

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Read the article.

Fracking is mentioned in the article. Fracking is another form of extreme energy we are pursuing. Peak oil is here, which is why the oil industry is going so far out to sea, so far beneath underground, and digging filthy tar sands for energy. The end is nigh muchachos.

"Fraccing" or "hydraulic fracturing" is a well stimulation technique that has been around for decades. Its a process that is essentially pumping fluid down a producing well faster than it can disperse and using the hydraulic pressure, fracturing the producing rock, creating larger flow channels into the well itself. Most of the time, the fluid pumped down is a gel carrying sand (or a similar material) called "proppant" which is to "prop" open the newly created flow channels. It is not used on all formations, as it doesn't work on all, and smart companies (and regulartory bodies) know better than to allow it in areas of seismic instability (opening a fault doesn't usually help increase oil/gas production, as well as other more prominent issues). Getting up in arms over this practice is misplaced and a little late...

Peak oil, is something that may occurr some day but hopefully our society will research alternative energy sources so that nightmare scenario of the scaremongerers never takes place. I'm not saying it can't or won't, but its a LOT farther away than people like Dumpthemonarchy have an appreciation for.
 

dumpthemonarchy

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Fracking is not a form of energy, fracking is a production technique... one that has been around for ages to maximize wells.

Right. Fracking is not a form of energy. Fracking is a technique of extreme energy, or scraping the bottom of the energy barrel.

Fracking is forcing high pressure water into already drilled wells to loosen what is left of the hydrocarbon-be it gas or oil. So, the ancient Egyptians. Mesopotamiams, Greeks, Hittites etc used high pressure water to get oil and gas? Not so, you are wrong.

People think, "Oh, they'll think of some new fandangled technology to save our energy asses and keep gas cheap forever." Fracking is one of those new techs and makes groundwater unsafe.
 

dumpthemonarchy

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Actually Canada is in agreements with other oil producing nations and is an exporter of more oil than it uses. If there were no agreements with other nations then we wouldn't be crossing the street for it. The USA was using up its oil so it decided it wanted other people's oil, too, and wangled agreements to get it. It's an importer of oil. It HAS to cross the street for it.

I mean crossing the street for going to great lengths to produce oil. Taking great efforts to get what used to be easy to get.

Right now Alberta exports oil to the USA while Quebec and the Atlantic provinces import oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria. We are self-sufficient in oil. We need a national energy grid. Not an energy grid linked with the USA. An energy superpower should start calling the shots.

These "OPEC" countries are not mentioned by name in a report by the federal govt.

http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/eneene/sources/crubru/outape-eng.php
Canadian Oil Market
Review of 2006 & Outlook to 2020


December 2007

Petroleum Resources Branch
Oil Division
Energy Sector

Canadian Oil Imports

  • For geographic and economic reasons oil is exported from the west and the Atlantic offshore and crude oil is imported in the eastern and central regions; on balance, we are a large and growing net oil exporter.
  • About half of the crude oil used by Canadian refiners comes from imports.
  • The Atlantic region and Quebec are dependent on crude oil imports. Following the reversal of the Sarnia to Montreal pipeline in 2001, Ontario refiners imports have declined to only 124 MB/D in 2006.
  • Interestingly, in 2006, while Canada’s oil imports totalled .85 MMB/D, 44 percent of these imports came from OPEC countries and 37 percent came from the North Sea.
  • Between 2005 and 2006, Canada’s crude oil imports declined by 77 thousand barrels per day to 850 MB/D, as domestic oil production made up for a decline in crude oil imports.
  • In Ontario, between 2005 and 2006, crude oil imports declined by 34 thousand barrels per day. In the Atlantic Provinces crude oil imports declined by 45 thousand barrel per day. There was a slight increase in crude oil imports in the Province of Quebec (1-2 thousand barrels per day).

Hydraulic Fracturing:
http://oilgasglossary.com/hydraulic-fracturing.html

It doesn't mention water as being the propellant, so I guess the propellant for the proppant can be any liquid they choose.

Right, it's not usually water, but sometimes diesel which is even worse for groundwater. Fracking is a health risk and they are against it in New York state.


Bill to halt hydro-fracturing close to Assembly vote | pressconnects.com | Press & Sun-Bulletin

By Jon Campbell •jcampbell.gannett@gmail.com • June 4, 2010, 6:45 pm

Bill to halt hydro-fracturing close to Assembly vote

ALBANY -- A bill that could place a lengthy moratorium on natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation came one step closer to making it to the Assembly floor for a vote after it was approved by the Environmental Conservation Committee this week.

With strong support from environmental groups, the committee approved a bill by a 22-7 vote that would place a moratorium on fracking. The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Steven Englebright, D-Setauket, Suffolk County, and Sen. Joseph Addabbo, D-Queens, was sent to the Rules Committee, likely its final stop before reaching the Assembly floor.
 

AnnaG

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I mean crossing the street for going to great lengths to produce oil. Taking great efforts to get what used to be easy to get.

Right now Alberta exports oil to the USA while Quebec and the Atlantic provinces import oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria. We are self-sufficient in oil. We need a national energy grid. Not an energy grid linked with the USA. An energy superpower should start calling the shots.
*shrugs* Like I said, the natural habit is to use the easiest and fastest to get first. After a little thought (and I mean little), the natural thing (read "the greedy thing") to do is use up OPO (other people's oil) first then you can fall back on what you have left.
Personally the less quantity of oil that's available and the more expensive it gets is really good news, IMO.
 

karrie

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Right. Fracking is not a form of energy. Fracking is a technique of extreme energy, or scraping the bottom of the energy barrel.

Fracking is forcing high pressure water into already drilled wells to loosen what is left of the hydrocarbon-be it gas or oil. So, the ancient Egyptians. Mesopotamiams, Greeks, Hittites etc used high pressure water to get oil and gas? Not so, you are wrong.

People think, "Oh, they'll think of some new fandangled technology to save our energy asses and keep gas cheap forever." Fracking is one of those new techs and makes groundwater unsafe.

dtm, my husband has been running frack jobs for years. you don't need to tell me what it is, you just sounded confused.

Fracking has been done on wells for ages (not eons or centuries... we don't talk about the patch in terms of ancient Greeks... lol). It is not new, it is not a symptom of the end of life as we know it. And ground water in Alberta towns where the technique has been used extensively for decades is fine.

Is its increased use a sign of the end of conventional oil? Yeah... hubby's company says we've already hit peak oil too. But not in the way you try to portray it.
 

dumpthemonarchy

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dtm, my husband has been running frack jobs for years. you don't need to tell me what it is, you just sounded confused.

Fracking has been done on wells for ages (not eons or centuries... we don't talk about the patch in terms of ancient Greeks... lol). It is not new, it is not a symptom of the end of life as we know it. And ground water in Alberta towns where the technique has been used extensively for decades is fine.

Is its increased use a sign of the end of conventional oil? Yeah... hubby's company says we've already hit peak oil too. But not in the way you try to portray it.

How many years has your husband been running frack jobs?

Your time frame is now defined, got it.

Well, I don't get paid to study this but I know an important topic when I see one. Since we are on internet time they say, I believe events are moving swiftly. I get it, you like nice, clear, formal presentations or you take irascible pot shots at the messenger. I don't mind, the public is in a pea souper of a fog about this potential train wreck they're on.

Your brilliant hubby is wrongo in the Congo. Peak oil is the end of life as we know it, get a grip. BC only produces half of its food right now. Can we grow enough food if we need to? We likely would but not without pain for some. I'll be okay, but then I'm not a child, elderly or lame.

CBC News - World - Washington town votes vs. Alberta oilsands

Washington town votes vs. Alberta oilsands

Last Updated: Wednesday, June 9, 2010 | 2:44 PM ET

CBC News


A small, environmentally conscious town in upstate Washington has moved one step closer in its bid to stop using fossil fuels derived from the Alberta oilsands for its transportation needs.

City councillors in Bellingham, Wash., on Tuesday voted unanimously in favour of a motion calling on the city "to identify ways to shift operations and consumption away from fossil-fuelled transportation and specifically high-carbon based Canadian tarsands."

"It's the least that we can do," said Coun. Jack Weiss, minutes before he and his six fellow councillors approved the motion without debate.

Bellingham, with a population of 76,130, is located 35 kilometres south of the U.S.-Canada border and is the county seat of Whatcom County.
The county is home to an aluminum plant, four fossil-fuelled electric power plants and two oil refineries that ultimately supply much of the northwest United States, according to city documents.

But it's also a model for green businesses, having developed in 2002 a revolutionary way to educate businesses in sustainable practices, according to the U.S. environmental group Natural Resources Defence Council.

It ranked first of 15 small cities in the NRDC's list of "smart cities," with strong showings in the categories of air quality, and energy production and conservation.
'A small and important step'

The oilsands are Canada's fastest-growing source of carbon dioxide, emitting five per cent of the country's greenhouse gases.

Extracting oil from the asphalt-like oilsands produces three times more carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, than extracting a conventional barrel of oil from the ground.

"I trust that by now, you understand how bad modern methods of oil extraction, such as those in Alberta, are," said Bellingham resident Kendall Hardy, speaking at the start of Tuesday's council meeting.

She then called on councillors to "take a stand against further destruction."
"Bellingham alone can't stop this," stressed resident Max Wilbert, referring to the harm done by fossil fuels. "But this resolution is a small and important step in the right direction."

Some jobs in Whatcom depend on what comes out of the oilsands.
In the past, almost half of the crude oil processed at the county's refineries came from Alaska. But recently, the area has "become increasingly dependent on crude oil imports from Canada and other exporting countries," according to a report presented to council in November 2009.

Canada now supplies 15 per cent of the total crude oil at Whatcom's refineries, some of it coming from the oilsands.

On May 10, Bellingham councillors passed a franchise renewal with Trans Mountain Pipeline, which operates a six-metre petroleum pipeline from Edmonton, through Bellingham, to Anacortes, Wash.

The pipeline supplies about 20 per cent of the crude processed at the state's oil refineries, including some that comes from Alberta's oilsands, according to city documents.

The renewal angered many Bellingham residents, who felt it should be denied because the pipeline carries oilsands products.


 

karrie

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pot shots? No... just trying to educate you. But, if you think you know more about the petroleum industry than a certified petroleum engineering tech, I'll leave you to your wild assumptions rather than endure your insulting sarcasm.
 

dumpthemonarchy

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pot shots? No... just trying to educate you. But, if you think you know more about the petroleum industry than a certified petroleum engineering tech, I'll leave you to your wild assumptions rather than endure your insulting sarcasm.

Not too long ago-like a year or two ago, it was the understanding in the oil patch that peak oil was a wild and silly assumption. I'm laughing now. Oh yeah, these guys know it all.

Do the engineers protest that the tar sands are causing massive environmental devastation in Alberta? No, they're too busy. These guys tend to have few opinions beyond the job at hand.

For ten years and despite huge inventments, Alberta has been unable to increase conventional oil production. Where are the certified engineering opinions on that in the media? Continue to educate me.