Alberta orders oil sands firms to cut water use

 Interesting Boom Boom...  I know there's a project to hook up Ontario to Alberta tar sands oil.  The debate between dirty canadian oil vs slightly cleaner foriegn oil goes on.

Saga:

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What can I say? We tried to tell them!

Actually, they've been listening for a little while now.  Water research and innovation center in Lethbridge is the most recent in a string of these types of investments.

Theres a little more stress on it now, but these investments start around '06.

I'd like to see how the Alta gov't plans on enforcing this, if at all.

From a purely environmental standpoint, it's likely correct.  Unfortunately in the same breath, it's either promoting exploiting foriegn oil (heh, like a NIMBY arguement on a global scale) or it's refusing to see the reality of alternatives ability to take over for fossil fuels ('clean energy' is such a loaded term).

Noise:

 "Interesting Boom Boom...  I know there's a project to hook up Ontario to Alberta tar sands oil.  The debate between dirty canadian oil vs slightly cleaner foriegn oil goes on."

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That project, which would have been another route for diluted Alberta bitumen to reach the refineries on the Texas gulf coast, via Quebec and New England , has been dropped.

However, the federal government has now come on board with Mackenzie Valley pipeline support - offering to pay for costs of roadbuilding etc. for the project, and guarantees for the projects viability. Imperial (Exxon) has been vacillating for years.  And the Territories wants it done.

The natural gas will be required to guarantee tar sands productivity when they go to deep  in their bitumen extraction. And if they can bring it on before the Alaska NG pipe, it will mean capital will be available and cheaper. (And, of course, the Alaska product will just go straight south to the  48 south of the 49th).

There's one thing I don't quite understand in the trailbreaker pipeline project and it's objections...  If it was Alberta oil or alternative energies as the only choices, then I can completely see where this is coming from.  But it's not...  The choice is between Alberta oil sands oil vs oversea oil imports.  Even with the most optimistic projections, alternatives aren't going to be capable of replacing fossil fuels for quite a few years.  From that point of view, I see this as cheering the continued dependance on foriegn oil instead of domestic.

 Of course, theres the objection that the $ for this pipeline could have been directed to alternative research while continuing dependence on foriegn oil...  I don't know the price projections well enough to know the validity of that arguement though.

 Maybe we should just wait until the arctic is ice free then start importing directly from Russia instead ^^

 GV:

Got an article on that by any chance?  I'd like to know the numbers behind the cost and the like.

Let me try to answer that from the mainstream Quebec perspective. Quebec imports 100% of its oil (158 million barrels of crude in 2006; 7.9% of which comes from offshore resources off Newfoundland), and produced 148.5 m barrels of refined products in its 3 refineries in 2007. That's 23.6 billion litres of refined products, 17.3 billion of which were consumed in Quebec (net exports: 6.3 billion litres, most of which sold to Ontario).

Since 1999, Quebec has not recieved a drop of Albertan oil and the Montreal-Sarnia pipeline is used by Ontario to buy foreign oil (usually of the light-sweet variety) for its own refineries.

The delayed Trailbreaker project would have reversed the flow of oil in the pipeline, from Sarnia to Montreal. The plan was to feed one of the 2 Montreal refineries with 80,000 barrels a day of tar sands heavy-sour crude (that's 20% of Quebec needs) and to ship 160,000 barrels a day to Portland, Maine where it would be loaded on ships and delivered to refineries in Louisiana and Texas.

Since the 3 Quebec refineries emitted 3.8 Mt CO2 eq. of GHG in 2006. Assuming oil refining emissions increase by a factor of 15-40% when tar sands crude is used, the project would probably increase Quebec GHG emissions by 125,000 to 300,000 t CO2 eq per year, ceteris paribus.  This will certainly not help Quebec reach its Kyoto target (the provincial target is 82.25 Mt CO2 eq for the 2008-2012 period)!

Measures announced in the Quebec 2006-2012 Climate change plan would reduce emissions by 14,58 Mt CO2 eq for a cost of $1.549 billion, for an average cost of $106/t. Thus, refining this new oil would cost between  $13.2 M and  $31.8 M to Quebec taxpayers and it would create few jobs in the refining industry. Of course, one refinery would have to be retooled to use the heavier crude and scrub the extra sulphur, but the plan would also cost jobs in the Montreal harbor (it would reduce the number of ships at the harbor). And since Quebec exports almost a quarter of its production to Ontario, it would have to bear the environmental burden of refining this heavy oil for its neighbor.

As for Ontario, the plan would decrease the possibility of importing lighter and sweeter crude from other sources forcing them to rely almost exclusively on Alberta's  tar sands.

I got the the increased GHG emissions number from a Feb. 2008 Chicago Tribune story dealing with the expansion of the BP refinery in Whiting, IN.

And there is this 2007 U.S. Geological Survey report found that “natural bitumen” contains 11 times more sulfur, six times more nitrogen, 11 times more nickel, and 5 times more lead than conventional oil.

So the problem is not only the GHG, it's also acid rain; concentration of toxic chemicals up the food chain; the creation of ground-level ozone and smog; visible impairments that migrate to sensitive areas; and depletion of soil nutrients.

I ask, ClaudeB, because the importation of offshore NG in liquid form, the new dependency on offshore  sources for this energy source, is something we in "the East" must come to add to our evaluation of future development choices.

Most Ontarians, for instance, have no idea of our dependency on both oil and NG (some NG now comes from stateside to Ontario) in the "energy superpower" of our prime minister with his western proclivities.

Thanks muchly! And the other two sites are out, Claube B?

(Given the possibility of LNG from some other dependable source in North Africa?

Thanks again.

Ontario's pitiful old NG deposits are sucking bottom and  new ones associated with the difficult process of extracting (with lots of surface area destruction) gas in shale deposits are unlikely to mean diddly squat. They have always meant only a tiny increment, first replacing in the province's southwest  the old manufactured gas plants that served a few cities a century back where trains could bring the coal from Pennsylvania.

Ontario became dependent on natural gas in the 1960s and will fall flat on its collective ass if the unregulated use of NG in the tar pits and its export to the U.S. continue at a pace that does not allow for orderly transition to electricity in the approaching "carbon-critical" era (or whatever it will be called). Quebec is all set in that department, like Manitoba.

Strange how unquestioning people are in embracing a new energy source and leaving it up to the ubiquitous "they" - as in "they will come up with something" -  to look after them. Like wind turbines on windless days.

And so it goes (Vonnegut)

I remember what the oilmen were saying about water draws from the Athabasca - "the oil sands use less that 1% of the annual river flow" [meaning that it isn't an issue to them].

To me, "using 1%" means using maybe 50% of the flow during the winter when there is barely a trickle as compared to summer flows. And that is the whole issue - winter water levels are so low the fish are dying, and so absolutely NO draws should be taken at that time...

  BUT "the city of Fort McMurry uses X amount too", and so there are going to be winter draws on the Athabasca. If people come first for water needs, and then wildlife, the Tar Sands should not be taking any water during low flows. And that would shut the whole dirty operation down.

 So, they sacrifice the river and its fish etc. The Tar sands are not a "sustainable" operation.

One thing they could do to supply the Tar Sands with water is to catch more of the spring run off of the Athabasca River and store it in man made lakes or huge holding tanks [but that costs money].

This is why the Liberals can't increase in the polls despite a unpopular governemnt. They offer no alternative on policy. Just the same smarmy weasel lines well rehearsed for thier industry masters.