About the Tar Sands

The single most environmentally destructive project in the world today is Canada’s Tar Sands. The extent of the devastation is breathtaking. Fueled by American’s addiction to oil, proximity to its market, and Canada’s geopolitical stability, the tar sands have attracted hundreds of billions in financial investments to push production as much as five times the current 1.2 million barrels a day of synthetic crude by approximately 2020. 

The tar sands region covers an area the size of Michigan. Vast boreal forests are simply cleared for open-pit mining, and newer mining approaches are marginally less destructive. One barrel of tar sands oil requires 3-4 barrels of fresh water to produce. Existing operations already draw more than 349 million cubic meters of water per year and are projected to triple in the next decade. While some water is reused, 90% of it is relegated to tailing ponds which are acutely toxic.  Covering 50 square kilometers, they are among the largest man-made impoundments on Earth. These ponds seep effluent, and investigative researchers suspect that purposeful releases at night into the Athabasca River contribute to a 150-mile long oil slick with a concentration of 2% oil that flows into Athabasca Lake, home for several First Nations communities. To support the voracious energy appetite of tar sands operations (much of it fed, ironically, with relatively clean natural gas), Alberta is dotted with more that 300,000 oil and gas wells, and drilling is accelerating.

Incredibly, the tar sands have been exempted from Canadian federal air emissions regulations because its nitrogen and sulphur oxide emissions – responsible for acid rain, ozone smog, and fine particulate matter – are already so high. The Canadian federal government fears that enforcement of air emissions regulations would lead Alberta to consider seceding from Canada, as Quebec has threatened in the past. Yet the tar sands are largely responsible for the rapid rise in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.  A barrel of tar sands oil produces at least three times more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than a barrel of conventional oil. The Sierra Club of Canada claims that tar sands operations spewed 23.3 million metric tonnes (MMT) of GHG emissions in 2000, or about three per cent of Canada's total emissions. Those emissions are predicted to rise to between 57 and 97 MMT by 2015, making the tar sands Canada's largest single contributor to global warming.

Tar sands extraction and production are causing health problems as well, particularly in native communities. Doctors in downstream communities such as Fort Chipewyan report unusually high rates of thyroid conditions, bile duct cancer, leukemia, lymphomas, lupus, and autoimmune diseases, which the Alberta Health Ministry has been quick to dismiss without investigation.  Tar sands-related refinery expansions in low income communities in Canada and the US are likely to increase the incidences of disease there as well.

Canada has effectively reneged on its Kyoto commitment and is helping the US evade its climate responsibilities at a time when both countries should be aggressively seeking alternative clean fuel sources. The development of extensive pipelines to bring in natural gas and diluent to fuel the extraction, upgrading, and transportation of tar sands oil, as well as new pipelines to ship the synthetic crude to the US also portend serious environmental damage. Every day 600 million cubic feet of natural gas is burned to produce dirty tar sands oil. Pipelines are proposed to cut through the pristine Mackenzie Valley and across British Columbia to the West Coast. A new Alaska pipeline is also proposed to supply natural gas to extract oil from the Tar Sands. To supply and refine tar sands oil for the US, several new pipelines are being built or extended.  Several new refineries and expansions of existing refineries in the US heartland are also planned or under construction. Illinois, Colorado, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will all be affected by just one leg of the expanded Keystone pipeline. Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas will be impacted by another leg of this pipeline.