Bill
10-31-2007, 04:50 PM
It costs $27 US dollars (25 canadian dollars) to extract a barrel of synfuel from the richest veins of the athabasca tar sand - but that doesn't count the cost of dealing with the pollutants, which are just piling up, mountains of sulfur, heavy metals, and giant lakes of "dead water", too polluted to ever use again.
Compare that with the dollar (yep, one dollar) it will cost to extract and refine Iraqi oil.
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"The oil sands excavations are changing the surface of the planet. The black mines can now be seen from space. In 10 years, estimates Schindler, they are "going to look like one huge open pit" the size of Florida. Acid rain is already killing trees and damaging foliage. The oil companies counter that they are replanting - grass for bison, 4.5m trees by Syncrude alone - but the muskeg (1,000-year-old peat bog and wooded fen, which traps snow melt and prevents flash floods, and is home to endangered woodland caribou) is irreplaceable.
Two barrels of water are required to extract one barrel of oil; every day as much water is taken from the Athabasca river as would serve a city of a million people. Although the water is extensively recycled, it cannot be returned to the rivers, so it ends up in man-made "tailings ponds" (tailings is a catch-all term for the byproducts of mining), which are also visible from space. According to the US Department of the Interior, the dam holding back Syncrude's pond is the largest, by volume of construction material, in the world. Four of the projects haven't started production yet, so their tailings ponds haven't begun, but theirs, too, will soon be full of sand and what Schindler calls "dead water" because, he says, they're full of carcinogenic hydrocarbons and toxic trace metals such as mercury, cadmium and arsenic, all topped off, in Syncrude's case, with an oil slick. "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/30/energy.oilandpetrol
"Current technology means companies can reach only about 10% of deposits, but even that makes the Athabasca oil sands the second largest proven oil reserve in the world. Add in the so far unreachable 90%, and Alberta's oil reserves would be at least six times the size of Saudi Arabia's. Already Canada produces as much oil as Kuwait. Soon it'll be two Kuwaits. Canada is the biggest single supplier of crude oil to the US. Small wonder Canada is increasingly described as the world's next great energy superpower.
Ask anyone why they're in Fort McMurray and - apart from the occasional person who says they were born here - the answer is the same. A quick rub of forefingers and thumb, a knowing look. Or, in the case of irrepressible 11-year-old Ron Mfoafo-M'Carthy, here with his sister and mother to visit his father, a Ghanaian engineer: "Cha-ching!" Projects are going up so fast that there is a huge shortage of skilled labour, and the companies are paying way over the odds to get it. An engineer like Johnny Mfoafo-M'Carthy can make, including living allowances, up to Can $220,000 (£110,000) a year here, compared with $90,000 in Toronto; you only need a high-school education and a six-month certificate to qualify for a $100,000-a-year job driving heavy equipment. One cocky 26-year-old I meet claims he sometimes earns $1,000 a day driving a truck. He already owns two homes and two flash vehicles (or, as he puts it gloatingly, "nice rims")."
Compare that with the dollar (yep, one dollar) it will cost to extract and refine Iraqi oil.
---
"The oil sands excavations are changing the surface of the planet. The black mines can now be seen from space. In 10 years, estimates Schindler, they are "going to look like one huge open pit" the size of Florida. Acid rain is already killing trees and damaging foliage. The oil companies counter that they are replanting - grass for bison, 4.5m trees by Syncrude alone - but the muskeg (1,000-year-old peat bog and wooded fen, which traps snow melt and prevents flash floods, and is home to endangered woodland caribou) is irreplaceable.
Two barrels of water are required to extract one barrel of oil; every day as much water is taken from the Athabasca river as would serve a city of a million people. Although the water is extensively recycled, it cannot be returned to the rivers, so it ends up in man-made "tailings ponds" (tailings is a catch-all term for the byproducts of mining), which are also visible from space. According to the US Department of the Interior, the dam holding back Syncrude's pond is the largest, by volume of construction material, in the world. Four of the projects haven't started production yet, so their tailings ponds haven't begun, but theirs, too, will soon be full of sand and what Schindler calls "dead water" because, he says, they're full of carcinogenic hydrocarbons and toxic trace metals such as mercury, cadmium and arsenic, all topped off, in Syncrude's case, with an oil slick. "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/30/energy.oilandpetrol
"Current technology means companies can reach only about 10% of deposits, but even that makes the Athabasca oil sands the second largest proven oil reserve in the world. Add in the so far unreachable 90%, and Alberta's oil reserves would be at least six times the size of Saudi Arabia's. Already Canada produces as much oil as Kuwait. Soon it'll be two Kuwaits. Canada is the biggest single supplier of crude oil to the US. Small wonder Canada is increasingly described as the world's next great energy superpower.
Ask anyone why they're in Fort McMurray and - apart from the occasional person who says they were born here - the answer is the same. A quick rub of forefingers and thumb, a knowing look. Or, in the case of irrepressible 11-year-old Ron Mfoafo-M'Carthy, here with his sister and mother to visit his father, a Ghanaian engineer: "Cha-ching!" Projects are going up so fast that there is a huge shortage of skilled labour, and the companies are paying way over the odds to get it. An engineer like Johnny Mfoafo-M'Carthy can make, including living allowances, up to Can $220,000 (£110,000) a year here, compared with $90,000 in Toronto; you only need a high-school education and a six-month certificate to qualify for a $100,000-a-year job driving heavy equipment. One cocky 26-year-old I meet claims he sometimes earns $1,000 a day driving a truck. He already owns two homes and two flash vehicles (or, as he puts it gloatingly, "nice rims")."