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7 comments on TH: Canadian Oil: At What Price?

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mw on December 10, 2005 - 1:22pm

I also wrote a piece related to oil sands, US oil imports and the recent UN climate change conference in Montreal:

http://mikewatkins.net/categories/politics/election2006_day12_petrochem.html

My inspiration for writing the piece came from many reports in the media touting the US vs Canada greenhouse gas emissions increase from 1990 - 2003 - US 13%, Canada 24%.

This has frequently been touted as justification for the US not signing on to Kyoto or joining with international efforts.

My point, only partly illustrated in the piece, is that the US has effectively "outsourced" a big chunk of its CO2 / GHG emissions to other countries, and Canada, particularly because of increases in oil sands production during the measured period, has seen its GHG emissions grow at a much more rapid rate. I cite some stats which are interesting too in the peak oil sense.

I didn't mention this in the piece but oil sands production generates twice as much nitrogen and sulpher oxides as conventional oil production; and GHG emissions are almost three times as much as conventional oil (average) production.

If, when, Peak Oil becomes a reality (or the fear of it becomes widespread) we are going to see climate and pollution concerns take a back seat to production.

At present, its political suicide to suggest anything but full steam (pun intended) ahead in the oil sands... more than 100 billion in investment is current and this number is only going to grow. GHG intensity reductions will be part of the mix but rapid output growth will not be offset by new GHG containment strategies anytime soon.

Useful document (pdf) by the Pembina Institute:
http://www.oilsandswatch.org/docs/osf-book.pdf

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Dave Cohen on December 10, 2005 - 6:27pm

Mike: "I didn't mention this in the piece but oil sands production generates twice as much nitrogen and sulpher oxides as conventional oil production; and GHG emissions are almost three times as much as conventional oil (average) production."

That's interesting. What's the direct source on those GHG emissions from the oil sands production? I'd like to know why that is.

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mw on December 10, 2005 - 8:19pm

A large part of the GHG emissions is from burning NG itself in the extraction process; it would be good to ascertain that the NG-related GHG is not double-counted. Its on my list of things to investigate - the actual breakdown.

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