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Oil from sand? You better believe it.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 21:45

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

Question: From which country does the United States receive the majority of it’s oil?

Answer: Canada! Not Saudi Arabia. Not Angola. Not Kuwait. Canada.

You would be very surprised by how few people know this crucial fact. Or maybe not that surprised, depending on how you answered the above question.

Fact is Alberta’s bituminous tar sands have rapidly become a burgeoning force in our oil-driven world. The oil itself is retrieved through “unconventional” methods, as the sands are mined and refined through various processes to extract bitumen and turn it into petroleum. Controversy is raging right now over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would bring much more oil from Alberta’s tar sands across the US to refineries on the Gulf Coast – possibly for export to Mexico, Central America and other markets. The U.S. recently began exporting more petroleum than we import.

Alberta has experienced a economic boom in only a few short years, shepherding job creation and wealth into the province. However, environmental protests against domestic tar sands expansion and subsequent impacts on local wildlife and the Athabasca River are gaining force. Although industry players draw support through proclamations that tar sands are more “ethical” compared to oil from the Middle East or Africa, carbon emissions from extraction and refining pose significant climate threats to all of us.

Regardless of the politics, the actual mining imprint on Alberta’s landscape is impossible to fudge, and getting harder to ignore.See SkyTruth’s Flickr page for satellite images of the Athabasca mines.

Animation of Alberta’s tar sands growth, including refining stations, open pit mines and tailing ponds.

(Click on link, then click on map to begin download. Once download is complete, double-click to open and begin animation).

Map showing 1974-2009 mining extent and approved area:

1974-2009 mined extent and area approved for tar sands mining. Washington, DC shown for scale. Mine-extent data provided by Global Forest Watch Canada.

Believe it or not, these SkyTruth maps only show part of the impact of tar sands development – the area where surface mining is the preferred technique. A much larger area surrounding this has been targeted for “in-situ” exploitation, where steam is generated (by burning natural gas) and pumped into the ground, heating up the buried tar sands deposits until bitumen is liquified and can be pumped to the surface for processing. Here’s the landscape footprint of the in-situ process:

Infrastructure footprint of in-situ extraction of bitumen using the steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) technique near Cold Lake, Alberta. Each bright rectangular patch is a cleared area about 6-7 acres in size where horizontal wells are drilled to inject steam and extract the bitumen for processing. Drilling sites are spaced about 0.2 – 0.5 miles apart.

Read more at SkyTruth

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Before It’s News® is a community of individuals who report on what’s going on around them, from all around the world. Anyone can join. Anyone can contribute. Anyone can become informed about their world. "United We Stand" Click Here To Create Your Personal Citizen Journalist Account Today, Be Sure To Invite Your Friends.

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