Neil Young calls Fort McMurray oilsands 'a wasteland'

[WLDB]

Neil Young probably lives in Northern California...near La Honda...in order to avoid the sucky Canadian weather and the judgementalism of ordinary Canadians.

I dont think he cares about judgmental people. He has had to deal with them since he first started out on both sides of the border. As for the awful weather - he is far from alone in that.

 

[petros]

He's right--the oils sands do look like a moonscape. He's probably way overstating the associated health impacts though, based on the research I've seen, anyways.

Do you know what really looks like a moonscape? The 500,000sq km of cleared farmland in AB, SK and MB in winter at night.

The high rates of cancers in the Native population isn't from the processing of the bitumen. It has always been there naturally and the problem isn't new. It's poly metallic black shale and it's part of the sand that makes the forest soil and in lakes. Plants love minerals, forest critter eat plants and fish eat bugs that eat aquatic plants and algae. It's in the food chain if you're living off the land.

DNI Metals Inc. holds a 2,720 sq km (272,000 ha) land position in northeast Alberta, 120km north of Fort McMurray, over polymetallic black shales which are locally enriched in Molybdenum, Nickel, Uranium, Vanadium, Zinc, Copper, Cobalt, Silver, Gold, Lithium, Specialty Metals (eg:Sc,Th) and Rare Earth Elements (REE). The Alberta land position was assembled during 2007-2009 and has since been periodically modified to enhance coverage and tenure.

 

[Zipperfish]

I've heard thatbabout clearcuts too from the uninformed. But then so does a freshly ploughed field. Trees just have a longer crop cycle.
I have been to a couple of abandoned minesites that to the best of my knowlege have never had any real treatment done as they were closed in the late sixyies, early seventies. Been there off and on since 1977 and they were a moon scape then. Trees and brush are growing out of the setlement ponds now. Same with the spoil piles.

On some of them. Others are more problematic. There are Roman mines that still pollute water so much that nothing can live in it. The Giant Mine in NWT just passed a billion (taxpayers) dollars to clean up.

Clearcutting wasn't as bad as people said it was, but that didn't help. Image is everything and the industry had to adjust or lose customers and a lot of them. The biggest problem (in my opinion) was the destruction of creeks. They'd be full of debris and silt by the time the company was done. Nowadays companies put a lot more effort into the long-temr prospects of teh land they are working, and that's not a bad thing.

If you want to work the land and make a profit from it, you have to take care of the land for the future. And, in my opjinon anyways, it's a legitimate job of government to take care of the last half of that contract.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Diamonds, gold, oil, logging, you name it...some whiny little group will always cry tears of mad...it's their job. Some of them get paid pretty well too.

Anyway, cry moar, I don't care.

It takes close to a million tons of sand mined every day then huge amounts of water and natural gas to free about 20% of the bitumen from the solid matrix, then mixing with light crude to pump it to the upgraders which often use coal fired electricity to turn it into heavy crude, which due to impurities uses much more energy and is much harder on equipment in refining. All this before it even gets burned in cars and trucks. Not to mention the largest toxic tailings ponds on the planet in the Athabasca.

Oil sands heavy crude is just a stupid way to provide energy and indicates how much control the petroleum sector has in this country. We should be ashamed of what we're doing to the region and all the CO2 that gets poured into the atmosphere.

 

[petros]

It takes close to a million tons of sand mined every day then huge amounts of water and natural gas to free about 20% of the bitumen from the solid matrix, then mixing with light crude to pump it to the upgraders which often use coal fired electricity to turn it into heavy crude, which due to impurities uses much more energy and is much harder on equipment in refining. All this before it even gets burned in cars and trucks. Not to mention the largest toxic tailings ponds on the planet in the Athabasca.

Oil sands heavy crude is just a stupid way to provide energy and indicates how much control the petroleum sector has in this country. We should be ashamed of what we're doing to the region and all the CO2 that gets poured into the atmosphere.

Holy fvck! Where do you come up with this crap?

 

[Zipperfish]

Do you know what really looks like a moonscape? The 500,000sq km of cleared farmland in AB, SK and MB in winter at night.[/.quote]

They look ugly because open pit mines are ugly. It's not supposed ot be a judgment so much as an observation. I suppose you could say they look like money. :lol:

The high rates of cancers in the Native population isn't from the processing of the bitumen. It has always been there naturally and the problem isn't new. It's poly metallic black shale and it's part of the sand that makes the forest soil and in lakes. Plants love minerals, forest critter eat plants and fish eat bugs that eat aquatic plants and algae. It's in the food chain if you're living off the land.

.

Not to mention that incidence of smoking among Indians is abysmally high. And alcoholism. And diabetes. My guess is you wouldn't statistically be able to tease out an oil sands effect due to teh overwhelming influence of smoking and such.

While the background levels of several contaminants is naturally higher (whihc is one of teh reasons they mined there in the first place), mining also tends to make these contaminants more available. You can put controls in place--and teh companies certainyl have--but you can't complete contain it, especially at that scale.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Holy fvck! Where do you come up with this crap?

You're right, I was way off.

It takes about 2 tons of sand to produce one barrel of oil sands crude and the daily production is over 1.7 million barrels a day right now.

World of Change: Athabasca Oil Sands : Feature Articles

The process of extracting oil from the sand is expensive. It takes two tons of sand to produce one barrel of crude oil. Great Canadian Oil Sands opened the first large-scale mine in 1967, but growth was slow until 2000 because the global cost of a barrel of oil was too low to make oil sands profitable.

So they may be mining over 3.4 million tons of sand a day to produce over 1.7 million barrels of crude a day.

Alberta Energy: Facts and Statistics

Of the total 168.7 billion barrels of proven bitumen reserves, about 80 percent is considered recoverable by in-situ methods and 20 percent by surface mining methods. Oil sands within 75 meters of the surface can be mined; whereas, oil sands below this threshold must be extracted using in-situ methods.
In 2011, Alberta's production of crude bitumen reached over 1.7 million bbl/d; of this surface mining accounted for 51 percent and in-situ for 49 percent. In 2011, about 57 percent of crude bitumen production was sent for upgrading to SCO in the province.

They're called actual sources btw...

 

[BaalsTears]

Does the economic destiny of Canada depend on extraction of tar sands?

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

At the very least it's almost 3/4 of a million tons of material.

Oil sand mining has a large impact on the environment. Forests must be cleared for both open-pit and in situ mining. Pit mines can grow to more than 80 meters depth, as massive trucks remove up to 720,000 tons of sand every day. As of September 2011, roughly 663 square kilometers (256 square miles) of land had been disturbed for oil sand mining.

Tailings ponds contain a number of toxins that can leak into the groundwater or the Athabasca River. The mining and extraction process releases sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and fine particulate matter into the atmosphere.

Because it takes energy to mine and separate oil from the sands, oil sands extraction releases more greenhouse gases than other forms of oil production. The mines shown in the image emitted more than 20 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2008— a product of both oil production and electricity production for the mining operation. The effort produced the equivalent of 86 to 103 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every barrel of crude oil produced. By comparison, 27 to 58 kilograms of carbon dioxide are emitted in the conventional production of a barrel of crude oil.

For all of these reasons, some groups have labeled the oil sands an environmental menace. On the other hand, they offer a stable source of energy and economic growth. The Athabasca oil sands are the largest segment of the economy in Alberta, making up just over 30 percent of the gross domestic product. In 2009 and 2010, the Alberta government received more than three billion dollars in royalties from oil companies.

Obviously it's the money that's making our governments so stupid about this.

 

[Zipperfish]

Does the economic destiny of Canada depend on extraction of tar sands?

Maybe not, but it puts milk in teh fridge for the time being. It's likely that our continued prosperity will rely on being hewers of wood and drawers of water (and bitumen).

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Does the economic destiny of Canada depend on extraction of tar sands?

No, it's just the route that certain groups have taken us.

Maybe not, but it puts milk in teh fridge for the time being. It's likely that our continued prosperity will rely on being hewers of wood and drawers of water (and bitumen).

How about burners of heavy elements. One ton of thorium mined from 5,000 tons of ore gives the same energy output as over 3,000,000 tons of coal.

We don't need to live in the 19th century in Canada, despite what some are claiming.

 

[petros]

Do you know what really looks like a moonscape? The 500,000sq km of cleared farmland in AB, SK and MB in winter at night.[/.quote]

They look ugly because open pit mines are ugly. It's not supposed ot be a judgment so much as an observation. I suppose you could say they look like money. :lol:



Not to mention that incidence of smoking among Indians is abysmally high. And alcoholism. And diabetes. My guess is you wouldn't statistically be able to tease out an oil sands effect due to teh overwhelming influence of smoking and such.

While the background levels of several contaminants is naturally higher (whihc is one of teh reasons they mined there in the first place), mining also tends to make these contaminants more available. You can put controls in place--and teh companies certainyl have--but you can't complete contain it, especially at that scale.

How do you put controls in to stop nature?

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

The Energy From Thorium Foundation Energy From Thorium Top 10 Attributes - The Energy From Thorium Foundation

The abundance of the element thorium throughout the Earth’s crust promises widespread energy independence through Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) technology. A mere 6,600 tonnes of thorium could provide the energy equivalent of the combined global consumption of 5 billion tonnes of coal, 31 billion barrels of oil, 3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, and 65,000 tonnes of uranium. With LFTR, a handful of thorium can supply an individual’s lifetime energy needs; a grain silo full could power North America for a year; and known thorium reserves could power advanced society for many thousands of years.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

ha. Written in fun. Lynyrd Skynyrd's singer was buried in a Neil Young t-shirt.

It was a great musical conversation. Neil Young wrote "Southern Man," Lynyrd Skynyrd responded with "Sweet Home Alabama." But Warren got the last word. . .

Warren Zevon - Play it All Night Long lyrics - YouTube

 

[WLDB]

It was a great musical conversation. Neil Young wrote "Southern Man," Lynyrd Skynyrd responded with "Sweet Home Alabama." But Warren got the last word. . .

Warren Zevon - Play it All Night Long lyrics - YouTube

Play that dead man's song. I had an opportunity to see him a year before he died and sadly missed it.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Play that dead man's song. I had an opportunity to see him a year before he died and sadly missed it.

Used to see him a couple times a year at a crappy club under the Whitehurst Freeway in D.C. Man had a razor for a tongue, and played keyboards like a dream.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

http://www.ualberta.ca/~gray/Links & Docs/Web Upgrading Tutorial.pdf

Bitumen has density over
1000 kg/m3
, over 4%
sulfur, viscosity 1000x
light crude oil

which is why light crude is added to bitumen to get it to the upgraders.

How Much Will Tar Sands Oil Add to Global Warming?: Scientific American

Alberta's oil sands represent a significant tonnage of carbon. With today's technology there are roughly 170 billion barrels of oil to be recovered in the tar sands, and an additional 1.63 trillion barrels worth underground if every last bit of bitumen could be separated from sand. "The amount of CO2 locked up in Alberta tar sands is enormous," notes mechanical engineer John Abraham of the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota, another signer of the Keystone protest letter from scientists. "If we burn all the tar sand oil, the temperature rise, just from burning that tar sand, will be half of what we've already seen"—an estimated additional nearly 0.4 degree C from Alberta alone.

As it stands, the oil sands industry has greenhouse gas emissions greater than New Zealand and Kenya—combined. If all the bitumen in those sands could be burned, another 240 billion metric tons of carbon would be added to the atmosphere and, even if just the oil sands recoverable with today's technology get burned, 22 billion metric tons of carbon would reach the sky. And reserves usually expand over time as technology develops, otherwise the world would have run out of recoverable oil long ago.

coal | Environmental Law Centre (Alberta)

Alberta uses seven coal fired power plants producing about 6000 MW of electricity. Instead of phasing out coal-fired power Alberta is expanding its coal fired power use with a new coal fired plant scheduled to be commissioned in the first part of this year. In fact, in the deregulated electricity system in Alberta, generators of all kinds are encouraged and the lowest-cost energy is able to compete, regardless of environmental impacts. Alberta is virtually powerless under current legislation to prioritize lower impact energy.

I doubt the petroleum companies stipulate that their electricity for the upgraders doesn't use coal power, so some of that 6,000 MWe is going to turn bitumen into Western Canadian Select. So before it's even refined oil sands crude has a heavy economic and environmental cost. When you add refining then burning the finished product in vehicles then it becomes unsustainable.

Want to bet this requires a lot of power.

http://history.alberta.ca/oilsands/docs/facts_sheets09.pdf

Thermal Conversion or Coking involves breaking apart the long heavy hydrocarbon
molecules using heat. Hydrocarbons have an interesting and very useful property. If
they are subjected to high temperatures they will react and change their molecular
structures. The higher the temperature, the faster these reactions will happen. This
is sometimes called “cracking” because large hydrocarbon molecules crack, or break
down into smaller molecules. Coking is an intense thermal cracking process. It is
particularly useful in upgrading bitumen into lighter, refi ned hydrocarbons (naphtha,
kerosene distillates, and gas oils) and concentrates extra carbon into a fuel called
coke, which is a byproduct of the coking process. Coke can be used as fuel for coke
furnaces, heat for hydrotreating; it is used in the steel making industry and can also
be stockpiled for further energy use. Currently oil sands companies use two types of
coking to upgrade bitumen: delayed coking and fluid coking.

Western Canadian Select - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Oil sands crude oil does not flow naturally in pipelines because it is too dense. A diluent is normally blended with the oil sands bitumen to allow it to flow in pipelines. For the purpose of meeting pipeline viscosity and density specifications, oil sands bitumen is blended with either synthetic crude oil (synbit) and/or condensate (dilbit)

WCS crude oil with its "very low API (American Petroleum Institute) gravity and high sulphur content and levels of residual metals"(Hackett 2013)[13] requires specialized refining that few Canadian refineries have. It can only be processed in refiners modified with new metallurgy capable of running high-acid (TAN) crudes.

Tell me again why we're allowing our PM to pin our future to this substance?

 

[Zipperfish]

How do you put controls in to stop nature?

It's rather easy to stop most of it. You're just not going to stop all of it.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

The stuff already sells at a major discount that is causing some hardship here.

In January 2013, the Premier of Alberta, Alison Redford, used the term bitumen bubble to explain the impact of a dramatic and unanticipated drop in the amount of taxes and revenue from the oil sands linked to the deep discount price of Western Canadian Select against WTI and Maya crude oil, would result in deep cuts in the 2013 provincial budget.[48] In 2012 oil prices rose and fell all year. Premier Redford described the "bitumen bubble" as the differential or "spread between the different prices and the lower price for Alberta's Western Canadian Select (WCS)." In 2013 alone, the "bitumen bubble" effect will result in about six billion dollars less in provincial revenue.

If we were smart we'd be moving into another source of energy.

I think Canada produces slightly more than 70 Gigawatt years of electricity, that would require mining about 350,000 tons of thorium ore to produce about 70 tons of thorium. If we doubled that to use electricity to produce synthetic fuel, which can basically be created from air using electricity we could double energy production and still be mining less material in a year than the oil sands do in a day. And produce few greenhouse gases.

Molten salt reactors which can be designed to burn virtually all the fissile material input also produce valuable fission products which can be even more valuable than the power produced. They include medical isotopes like Molybdenum99m which is used to generate technetium99m one of the most common radio isotopes used in medicine, plus iodine-131 and bismuth-213 which are used to treat cancer and are in short supply now. Thorium MSRs also produce things like xenon and plutonium-238 which are used in high tech applications like rocket fuel for high efficiency ion engines and thermo-electric generators for deep space missions. There's a shortage of Pu-238 now. They also produce small amounts of noble metals like gold and platinum.

When you look at the options we have to digging up major portion of Northern Alberta while spewing vast amounts of pollution what we're currently doing starts to look pretty self-destructive. It's too bad the governments of Canada and Alberta are in the back pocket of the petroleum sector which is on autopilot.

Instead of investing billions on mining oil, coal and natural gas we could be investing in a real future.

Greenest gas? Synthetic fuel made from air and water - NBC News.com

LONDON (Reuters) - A small British company has developed a way to create petrol from air and water, technology it hopes may one day contribute to large-scale production of green fuels.

Engineers at Air Fuel Synthesis (AFS) in Teeside, northern England, say they have produced 5 litres of synthetic petrol over a period of three months.

The technique involves extracting carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water, and combining them in a reactor with a catalyst to make methanol. The methanol is then converted into petrol.

By using renewable energy to power the process, it is possible to create carbon-neutral fuel that can be used in an identical way to standard petrol, scientists behind the technology say.

"It's actually cleaner because it's synthetic," Peter Harrison, chief executive officer of AFS, said in an interview.

"You just make what you need to make in terms of the contents of it, so it doesn't contain what might be seen as pollutants, like sulphur," he said.

With effectively limitless supplies of fertile and fissile nuclear fuel in Canada we could completely do away with fossil fuels in several decades.

Neil may be exaggerating the local effects of the Tar sands here, but he's not wrong in general. We could be doing so much better than we are.

 

[captain morgan]

Tell me again why we're allowing our PM to pin our future to this substance?

Allow Harper to take advantage of one of the largest single oil deposits in the world?

Did you really ask that question?

The stuff already sells at a major discount that is causing some hardship here.

The TCPL West East pipeline will make a difference on that, at least in terms of the degree of discount for the grade of oil