Tar Sands Oil? A Different Type of Oil Production Causing Environmental Damage. GET INFORMED!

What Are Tar Sands?

Tar sands (also referred to as oil sands) are a combination of clay, sand, water, and bitumen, a heavy black viscous oil. Tar sands can be mined and processed to extract the oil-rich bitumen, which is then refined into oil. The bitumen in tar sands cannot be pumped from the ground in its natural state; instead tar sand deposits are mined, usually using strip mining or open pit techniques, or the oil is extracted by underground heating with additional upgrading.

	Tar Sands

Tar sands are mined and processed to generate oil similar to oil pumped from conventional oil wells, but extracting oil from tar sands is more complex than conventional oil recovery. Oil sands recovery processes include extraction and separation systems to separate the bitumen from the clay, sand, and water that make up the tar sands. Bitumen also requires additional upgrading before it can be refined. Because it is so viscous (thick), it also requires dilution with lighter hydrocarbons to make it transportable by pipelines.

Tar Sands Resources

	Tar Sands Open Pit Mining, Alberta, Canada

Much of the world's oil (more than 2 trillion barrels) is in the form of tar sands, although it is not all recoverable. While tar sands are found in many places worldwide, the largest deposits in the world are found in Canada (Alberta) and Venezuela, and much of the rest is found in various countries in the Middle East. In the United States, tar sands resources are primarily concentrated in Eastern Utah, mostly on public lands. The in-place tar sands oil resources in Utah are estimated at 12 to 19 billion barrels.

Utah Tar Sands Estimated In-Place Resources

	Primary Tar Sands Resources in Utah

The Tar Sands Industry

Currently, oil is not produced from tar sands on a significant commercial level in the United States; in fact, only Canada has a large-scale commercial tar sands industry, though a small amount of oil from tar sands is produced commercially in Venezuela. The Canadian tar sands industry is centered in Alberta, and more than one million barrels of synthetic oil are produced from these resources per day. Currently, tar sands represent about 40% of Canada's oil production, and output is expanding rapidly. Approximately 20% of U.S. crude oil and products come from Canada, and a substantial portion of this amount comes from tar sands. The tar sands are extracted both by mining and in situ recovery methods (see below). Canadian tar sands are different than U.S. tar sands in that Canadian tar sands are water wetted, while U.S tar sands are hydrocarbon wetted. As a result of this difference, extraction techniques for the tar sands in Utah will be different than for those in Alberta.

Recently, prices for crude oil have again risen to levels that may make tar-sands-based oil production in the United States commercially attractive, and both government and industry are interested in pursuing the development of tar sands oil resources as an alternative to conventional oil.

Tar Sands Extraction and Processing

Deposit	Known (MMB)	Additional Projected (MMB)
Sunnyside	4,400	1,700
Tar Sand Triangle	2,500	420
PR Spring	2,140	2,230
Asphalt Ridge	830	310
Circle Cliffs	590	1,140
Other	1,410	1,530
Total:	11,870	7,330

Tar sands deposits near the surface can be recovered by open pit mining techniques. New methods introduced in the 1990s considerably improved the efficiency of tar sands mining, thus reducing the cost. These systems use large hydraulic and electrically powered shovels to dig up tar sands and load them into enormous trucks that can carry up to 320 tons of tar sands per load.

	Tar Sands Open Pit Mining, Alberta, Canada

After mining, the tar sands are transported to an extraction plant, where a hot water process separates the bitumen from sand, water, and minerals. The separation takes place in separation cells. Hot water is added to the sand, and the resulting slurry is piped to the extraction plant where it is agitated. The combination of hot water and agitation releases bitumen from the oil sand, and causes tiny air bubbles to attach to the bitumen droplets, that float to the top of the separation vessel, where the bitumen can be skimmed off. Further processing removes residual water and solids. The bitumen is then transported and eventually upgraded into synthetic crude oil.

About two tons of tar sands are required to produce one barrel of oil. Roughly 75% of the bitumen can be recovered from sand. After oil extraction, the spent sand and other materials are then returned to the mine, which is eventually reclaimed.

In-situ production methods are used on bitumen deposits buried too deep for mining to be economically recovered. These techniques include steam injection, solvent injection, and firefloods, in which oxygen is injected and part of the resource burned to provide heat. So far steam injection has been the favoured method. Some of these extraction methods require large amounts of both water and energy (for heating and pumping).

Both mining and processing of tar sands involve a variety of environmental impacts, such as global warming and greenhouse gas emissions, disturbance of mined land; impacts on wildlife and air and water quality. The development of a commercial tar sands industry in the U.S. would also have significant social and economic impacts on local communities. Of special concern in the relatively arid western United States is the large amount of water required for tar sands processing; currently, tar sands extraction and processing require several barrels of water for each barrel of oil produced, though some of the water can be recycled.

Alberta's internationally recognised "tar sand" reserves are now put at the equivalent of more than 175 billion barrels of crude oil. To extract bitumen from the surface deposits of tar sand, which make up about 20% of reserves, huge excavators scrape away the topsoil and the underlying tar sands are lifted into huge dump trucks. The surficial tar sands are trucked to extraction processes, where they are steamed to extract the heavy, bitumenous oil. The resulting oil is piped to refineries. This first step of tar sand extraction is estimated to result in gasoline that carries a burden of "at least five times more carbon dioxide" then would conventional "sweet crude" oil production. According to the Canada National Energy Board engineering break throughs are anticipated to reduce this carbon dioxide emission burden.

Because the remaining 80 percent of the sands are too deep to be mined, steam is injected into these deeper oil sands, loosening the bitumen and allowing producers to draw it upward, as indicated in the graphic. The process was known as "steam-assisted gravity drainage." It is said to be more efficient than the "truck and steam" process.

Although producers recycle much of their water, about one barrel of water is lost for every barrel of oil culled, according to the Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental group.

Developers are required to restore oil sand mining sites to at least the equivalent of their previous biological productivity, which involves revegetation and drainage restoration. None of this has yet been done on a large scale, however.

It may be decades before large scale production becomes a commercial realilty. Huge amounts of infrastructure will have to be added in the midst of a wilderness setting. And, of course, the trees have a stake: according to the Pembina website ""The proposed tar sand developments will tear a hole in Canada's lungs - our vital boreal forest ecosystem," says the Sierra Club of Canada's Lindsay Telfer".

We have to say that large scale tar sand extraction has all the earmarks of being Un-TreeHugger. As they are supporting brand new, expensive technologies, investor attitudes toward Kyoto committments are naturally cynical if not outright hostile. How could they compete with carbon trades as a hedge with a 5X carbon dioxide handicap? It would take a great deal of wind turbine investment to offset those extra emissions.

If Canada has North America's lungs, auto owners in US are it's mouth, gobbling supersize meal after oil meal to keep the wheels rolling, which keeps the trucks driving and steam flowing underground. Reducing our gasoline consumption sounds like the best thing we can do to protect the Arboreal Forests of the northcountry.

Bird deaths highlight tar sand dangers, says Green Party

OTTAWA - The Green Party expresses deep sadness regarding the recent death of hundreds of migrating water fowl that mistook a toxic tailing pond owned by Syncrude as a clean lake.

"This tragedy is yet another glaring example of how the Tar Sands development is producing the dirtiest oil on Earth. The public is now beginning to see the many unacceptable costs that have been hidden and ignored by our current government," said Green Party Environment Critic Mike Nagy.

"The Tar Sands development continues to drag Canada down a path of non-sustainability in order to feed unbridled demand for oil when conservation measures and implementation of energy efficient technology is the solution" said Green Party leader Elizabeth May, "Our current government has tunnel vision and is focused on one sector of the economy only, while our manufacturing and other industrial sectors suffer due to a lack of support."

The Tar Sands development is becoming one the most energy and resource intensive projects ever, with up to 5 units of water permanently contaminated for every unit of oil produced, while using the equivalent of one half of a barrel of oil for every new barrel.

The Green Party of Canada is calling for a moratorium on the expansion of Tar Sands development and an elimination of government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.

Here are some comments from people on the treehugger.com site....

Comment 1

if you think that companies being told to clean up afterwards makes it really happen, look at our boreal ex-forests from alberta to BC if you fly over it, you will puke, its' so sad how much has been clearcut and then (some) replaced by weak monoculture treefarms that dont even survive...great! so we can have more bowren valleys (clearcut so huge you can see it from space)...

Comment 2

the potential cost of additional water purification needed due to this project polluting the water sources should be factored into the overall cost of this project before moving forward, at the very least. Ideally, broader environmental impacts should be considered because having nothing but diseased, poluted, or non-existat forrests to visit also reduces quality of life, not just lack of cheap energy.

Comment 3

Hahaha, I'm a process operator/power engineer at a SAGD plant here in Fort Mac, the oil sands capital of the world.

It's about the dingiest shithole you've ever seen, a real mineing community, and the gold rush effect is tottally going down. 5 years ago the town was half the size it is now, and had half the companies, and I'm sure 5 years from now, the population will have doubled again, as will the company sizes.

Right now, production is very small compared to what its going to be, these oil company's pay HUUUGE money, and thats pulling people from all over the world into there hands.

Nothing except the very most drastic is going to slow down the progess here, the average starting wage for somebody in my profession is 45 bucks an hour, and you could easily have that raised to 60 an hour within a year.

if you work as a freelance contractor down here, you can make upwards of 90 bucks an hour.

personally, -IM- gettin the fuck out, because pollution, oil, technology, and all the bull that comes with it, aint my thing, and I'll preach good and hard against coming here. but progress isnt going to slow unless somebody throws an awful lot of weight into it.

Woo woo flower power! TIME FOR ME TO GO, checkin on my oil treaters to make sure we've got the cleanest water possible, blahaha, I wrote this from the plant!