Findings counter studies that put bitumen’s carbon footprint slightly higher than regular crude.
A report
by a major global research group representing the world’s 10 largest
car buying markets has concluded that Canada’s bitumen is one of the
world’s dirtiest oils due to its poor quality, low gravity and the vast
amount of natural gas needed to enrich it.
The study for the International Council on
Clean Transportation (ICCT), which looked at the carbon intensity of oil
from 3,000 fields now supplying European gasoline markets, also concluded that increasing reliance on dirty fuels will raise greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent above that of conventional oils.
The findings of the ICCT, a group that does
technical research on the environmental performance of automobiles,
contradicts modeling studies
funded by the Alberta government and the oil sands industry which claim
that bitumen has only a five to 15 per cent higher carbon footprint
than conventional crude.
The study calculated the amount of green
house gas emissions created by extracting, moving and refining different
types of crude oil based on specific characteristics including weight,
viscosity, purity, age of the field, leaks and the flaring of waste
gases. (About 20 per cent of oil’s carbon footprint comes from the
production and refining process: the rest comes from cars burning
gasoline.)
Canadian taxpayers could be on the hook for billions of dollars in
clean-up and compensation costs if an oil tanker crashed on the west
coast, suggests a report released Thursday.
“The funding and compensation scheme that exists under
Canadian law would be remarkably inadequate in the event of a
catastrophic oil spill,” it reads.
The report was written by the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre and prepared for the Living Oceans Society.
It notes that Canadian law currently provides up to about
$1.33 billion to deal with the aftermath of potential oil spills. Yet
remediation costs associated with the Exxon Valdez disaster were at
least US $3.5 billion, the report reads.
And the U.S. government forced BP to set up a US $20 billion compensation fund for its Gulf of Mexico spill.
Thursday’s report is aimed directly at Enbridge’s plans
to build a pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands operations to coastal
Kitimat, then transport crude oil on supertankers to markets in China
and beyond.
In the event a tanker crashed in the notoriously
turbulent waters of the Hecate Strait, Enbridge would have little legal
liability, the report notes.
Read this exceptionally informative rebuttal to an Ebridge defender in the Northern Sentinel!
By Murray Minchin of Kitimat, BC – Jan 12, 2011
Allan Hewitson’s article in the December 22, 2010 Northern Sentinel, Miscellaneous coastal tanker traffic
suggests he must have incredible physical flexibility, which is
admirable, but it appears he’s managed to manoeuvre his head into a
location which affords a very limited angle of view regarding Enbridge’s
Northern Gateway proposal. Perhaps his position doesn’t allow him to
see many of the problems and unanswered questions, so I’ll try to shine
some light on them for him.
First of all, he was confused in thinking there are no
differences between transporting natural gas and bitumen, when they are
as different from each other as wood smoke is to cold molasses. When
natural gas escapes from a pipeline it dissipates into the air, leaving
the surrounding environment unharmed. Bitumen on the other hand will
flow downhill to the nearest waterway, then separate out from the
naphtha used to make it thin enough to flow through the pipeline. The
bitumen, which is heavier than water, will then sink to the river bottom
at a rate dependant on the speed of the current and how large the
globules of bitumen are. Hundreds of miles of river bottom and salmon
spawning gravel would be contaminated, crippling that river system’s
salmon based ecosystem as well as the food and commercial fisheries for
generations. It would also cause lasting damage to tourism throughout
BC.
In shipping the products there are equally dramatic
differences. Natural gas is cooled to -160 degrees celsius until it
becomes a liquid and reduces by 600% in volume. This means ships
carrying the liquified natural gas will call in Kitimat’s port every 60
days, or only 6 times a year as compared to Enbridge’s 225 oil
supertankers per year. Actually, one oil supertanker will be arriving
empty and one leaving full every 36 hours or so, so they’ll be making
450 separate transits through our waters per year.
An explosion has rocked the Horizon oilsands site near Fort McKay in northern Alberta, injuring four employees.
The explosion occurred around 3:30 p.m. MT Thursday. The owner of the
site, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., said at 7 p.m. MT that the fire
was contained to the coker area. A coker uses heat to convert bitumen
into crude oil.
Three employees were taken to hospital in Fort McMurray. One person
sustained first-degree burns, another suffered second- and third-degree
burns and a third suffered a neck injury.
What you don’t know about a deal you haven’t heard of
In coming days, Canadian and European officials will intensify
negotiations on a new trade agreement most Canadians have never heard
of. The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement
is by far the largest free-trade deal this country has ever undertaken.
If
it goes through, CETA will open up the rules, standards and public
spending priorities of provinces and municipalities to direct
competition and challenge from European corporations. Ottawa refuses to
even discuss the environmental implications, but a recent trade
sustainability impact assessment commissioned by the European Commission has sounded alarms in several areas.
The report says the kind of liberalizing trade deal envisioned will lead
to increased European investment in the Alberta tar sands, and thus to increased greenhouse gas emissions. Trade lawyer Steven Shrybman
has sounded a similar warning in a recent legal opinion, noting that
CETA will give corporations the right to ignore or challenge existing or
new rules aimed at reducing the current heavy footprint of the tar
sands. He posits that the Conservative government sees international
trade regimes as an important tool for defeating efforts to address
climate change.
A new year and I enter the last year of my youth – I just celebrated the 40th anniversary of my 39th birthday. This is the year for my first great grandchild – a daughter will be born to my grandson Ty and his lovely wife Rhea in April. And it has all seemed to happen so fast.
This year will be a very important one for us who love our province and want it to be saved from those who, in Oscar Wilde’s words, “know the price of everything and the value of nothing”.
Why is this such a special year?
Because it’s one that will be chock-a-block with electioneering as the two major parties in BC select new leaders, we see if a third middle party may emerge, and the feds almost certainly will have an election.
We have a critical job to do – and an unusual one.
Let me explain.
Until recent times, the public could rely upon the media to present them not only with issues but points of view surrounding these issues. There was always a debate going on and there was a reasonably informed voting public. Since 2001, when the Campbell government took over, the media have been, for one reason or another, defanged pussy cats. You only have to look back at the great work Vaughn Palmer did on NDP Premier Glen Clark’s “fast ferries” issue to see how a public could be informed very much against the wishes of the government. The NDP government of the day pulled out all the stops and had people like me, in the media, pressed to come and see these magnificent vessels that so clearly were the wrong boats for the waters they were to ply. All to no avail – not just because of Palmer but because the full media coverage made it a large and legitimate issue.
It was scarcely just fast ferries – the media made the government’s life miserable, which is what they did to the government I was in. And they were right to do so.
Of course there were excesses – that’s what democracies are all about. That’s the premium we pay for free speech.
Since 2001, the government has got away with whatever they wished to do and in 2009 we saw what that meant – a 50% turnout at the polls. And what should have been a huge issue – the environment in general and a disgraceful handling of fish farms, highways, and rivers in particular – simply wasn’t because these issues didn’t seem to be real. How could they be real when Tony, Vaughn, Mike, and especially Christy didn’t talk about them? How could they be issues when the opposition who followed the poll numbers instead of making them hadn’t the foggiest idea what was going on and campaigned in slogans, as so long has been their wont? I campaigned around the province for the NDP – not, for God’s sake, because I had become an adherent to that party but because I wanted to see the environment saved and they were the only possible alternative to the Liberals.
Most NDP stalwarts will now agree with me that their campaign, especially on the environmental issues, was appalling. We, the members of the voting public now have the solemn obligation of making sure that this doesn’t happen again.
The “environment” isn’t a non-issue because it isn’t an issue, but because both political parties, for one reason or another, haven’t made it one. In other words, it’s like the tree in the forest – if no one’s there to listen, there’s no noise when it falls.
As many of you know, I’ve been asking people to pass on that which I circulate and other stuff that comes to my attention. While I believe that what I say is right, that scarcely makes me right. What I do say with more confidence is that it is an important part of the debate that ought to be. And this is what we must, in my opinion, concentrate on – namely making the environment not just a real issue but one which will decide the government at election time.
Forgive my repetition on this point but if a government screws up the economy, a new government with time can make it better. What we cannot ever do is get back our rivers, our fish, or our farmland once destroyed.
Please, then, for the sake of those to come, get behind us at The Common Sense Canadian and help us make the environment the #1 issue such that political parties no longer can avoid.
Let me close by telling you one of the reasons we call ourselves “The Common Sense Canadian.”
Both Damien and I, the founders, are huge fans of Thomas Paine, the failed customs official from England who was both catalyst and chronicler of the American Revolution, starting with his blockbuster bestselling pamphlet called Common Sense.
With this and other pamphlets, he circumvented the censorship of the aristocracy and reached the “common man.” Google it and read it yourself – it makes damned good reading today.
With TheCanadian.org, we are trying to follow Tom Paine’s example. For 2011, please resolve to help us do that – by sharing our work with others and getting involved in your own way in these vital issues.
I have full confidence that if the public of BC is fully informed on the issues at hand, we shall see justice and common sense prevail.
In looking ahead to 2011, I see a very troubled environmental scene. This is because of one thing mainly: with our governments money talks and big time money talks big time. This will reflect itself in several ways and places.
In order to understand this, I think, it must be remembered that corporations don’t give a rat’s ass about the environment. They would pollute all water, destroy wildlife, and desecrate the environment generally. Every tiny bit of environmental restraint has been and always will be imposed by government and it will be resisted and ignored by the corporate world. Many of my generation and others have been brought up to respect government authority and to assume that the world was full of “good corporate citizens.” We, in fact, marveled at the great construction taking place such as Alcan even reversing rivers and creating huge artificial lakes. We developed a public mindset that marveled, uncritically, at development.
There is no question that much of the world will need power; more and more every year. What’s interesting is the lack of an intelligent debate on the subject both at a local and global level.
We have industry and environmentalists fighting but it’s scarcely a fair fight. On the Enbridge proposal to build two pipelines from the Tar Sands to Kitimat and back, industry is out-spending the environmental community 100-1. All the magazines I read carry huge touchy feely ads from huge corporations who tell us in full page ads that they are working just as fast and as hard as environmentalists to make all their creations green.
Much of the problem has been created by an uninformed and ill-informed public which refuses to critically consider anything they’ve been brainwashed into believing or disbelieving. We in the environmental field, me very much included, have decided that certain issues cannot be discussed. These beliefs have become a hardened catechism that brooks no debate.
I have written in the past about nuclear power, for example. This is wrong, we all agree. They explode like atom bombs or melt down. If you live near them or work in them, you’ll be nuked. And there are the calamities at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
In the first case there was a disaster, and at Three Mile Island there was a dangerous near-miss. And these and other scares tell us that if you do nuclear power and don’t keep up safety programs it’s only a matter of time before you have very bad news. Nuclear plants are hugely expensive to maintain and no one has found a safe way of dealing with the waste.
Does this mean that nuclear can never be debated again? Do any of us know what research has been done in recent years? In a moment I’ll tell you why this is an important question.
On the other side we’re told that wind power is the way to go because it’s “green” and that’s good. (“Green” is now a weasel word used by polluters to gloss over their destructive policies). The fact that wind power is hugely expensive and invariably set up with taxpayers money, that it is unreliable and environmentally unsound is not dealt with, for this is the reverse of the uranium argument – nuclear is bad and wind power is good, now let’s have no more arguments. While we’re at it, the future is electric cars and that’s that! Never mind asking where the electricity is coming from and how green that source is – this matter has been decided, period!
Right behind nuclear power comes fossil fuel power. This source of power is evil, so no more discussion please.
I would advise one read the lead argument for the use of coal in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. Here is a pretty strong argument which, in a nutshell says “we’re not going to eliminate coal as a source of power for a very long time to come. Isn’t the object to lower carbon emissions, so if we have no alternative for coal we should work harder at reducing the carbon footprint of this and other fossil fuels? Are there not, coming out of China for God’s sake, new techniques which have dramatically reduced the unhappy consequence of burning coal for power?”
My point is that of a British Columbian who wants to save his province’s environment. If I fight on the mantra that fossil fuels and nuclear are bad for the environment so that their use must be eliminated, doesn’t that lead to the conclusion that hydroelectric power is the only way to go? Of course we have wind power, tidal, and solar power but until they can supply the world’s needs for power, what is left?
Do we not see that by saying that other countries must stop all nasty sources of energy we are inviting them to look to us to supply the power from our rivers?
The demand for energy must go somewhere and rudimentary economics tells us the demand will lead to and find a supply – and we’re it! That demand is going to increase so that every piece of water that moves in BC will become a potential source.
This is the great evil of the Campbell Energy Plan (based largely of private river diversion projects), which has been sold on the basis of our own needs – which is plain barnyard droppings. Not only is it going to outside consumers, it is saying “look, neighbour, don’t you worry your pretty little heads about designing your own sources of energy and don’t bother for a moment with conservation because there’s lots more where that came from!”
I will soon be accused of all the usual sins – Rafe Mair favours nuclear, fossil fuel power, etc. – but I am not. What I’m saying is that our energy policy has us financing, out of taxpayers’ pocket, large international corporations who build their plants to produce power for somewhere else.
How are we financing these corporations? This is not hyperbole at all. We buy their power at 2-3 times what we can sell it for and that is money in the bank that otherwise would have to be borrowed or used out of the company’s assets. British Columbians are, therefore, not giving away power to other jurisdictions so that they needn’t make any sacrifices themselves – we’re financing the operation!
We’re saying to American governors: don’t worry about your environment, don’t fret about how you deal with carbon emissions, don’t give more than a passing thought to conservation – BC rivers and streams are yours for the asking!
It’s one thing to be a good neighbour but don’t you think this is a bit too much!
As another year draws to a close, news outlets the world over are running down their lists of best and worst (fill in the blank) and biggest news stories of 2010. In the latter category, recent issues still fresh in our minds like WikiLeaks, the European debt crisis, the Heathrow fiasco, and the Chilean miners are likely to figure prominently. But make no mistake, 2010 was unquestionably the “Year of the Oil Spill.”
I wasn’t alive in 1962 at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so I can’t begin to imagine what people felt during those 13 days of Cold War terror. But in my lifetime, the blow-out of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is the single scariest event we’ve experienced. If you think that’s overstating things, let me explain.
Some would point to the financial crash of 2008, or 9/11, for that matter, as the most traumatic events in our recent history. But in neither case did we face such a fundamental threat to the planet itself, and thus our collective survival upon it. The BP tragedy saw us staring both literall and figuratively into the abyss.
It is thus a testament to our 24-hour news cycle, tabloid-saturated, overworked, short attention spanned society that we have largely already forgotten the sense of sheer powerlessness and intense fear that gripped the world in the months of the Gulf crisis. It is with good cause that Gore Vidal uses the term “the United States of Amnesia.”
I certainly have not forgotten what it was like to hear the daily reports tracing the dramatic upward arc in the scale of the disaster – from 1,000 barrels a day to 100,000 billowing into the Gulf; not ten days but over 3 monthsto stem the flow(of course there is no real end to the damage, much of it hidden beneath the surface by way of illegal, toxic chemical dispersants)…The exasperation of seeing, for a time at least, no way out of the whole sordid mess. Various increasingly far-fetched solutions – such as the much-parodied golf ball “junk shot” – left us wondering, “Is this really the best they can come up with?!”
We steadily came to realize that we could not trust one iota of what the mainstream media, the US government, and, most of all, BP, were telling us. We found ourselves sifting through youtube videos and purported “experts” on the fringes of the blogosphere, just to cobble together our own sense of what was really happening. Your yoga instructor or coworker were as likely to know the truth as was Katie Couric. Maybe this thin could never be stopped…Would it flow into the Gulf Stream, spreading its deathly red-black ooze all the way to Europe’s shores, destroying the whole Atlantic Ocean in the process?
All the while, a slew of breathtaking images poured forth –
the oil-soaked sea birds, the multi-coloured slicks, captured from helicopters by the likes of National Geographic, that spread for hundreds of miles over the horizon.And the live web-cam producing the single most iconic image of the year: that spewing underwater geyser – a constant, undeniable visual reminder of the havoc being wrought before our very eyes.
On it gushed, as ecosystems and livelihoods were lain waste. Economic damages ranged from $20 Billion and way up from there. The world’s best experts, one of its largest corporations, and its mightiest government all seemed powerless to stop it (while the CEO of BP produced a string of appalling soundbites that would have been comical if they didn’t highlight such a tragic disconnect with the widespread suffering his company was causing). These gut-punching images brought us face to face – in a way we hadn’t perhaps experienced since the Exxon Valdez, 21 years earlier – with the dirty business upon which we’ve all become so dependant.
But it wasn’t just the BP catastrophe that made 2010 the year of the oil spill. Far from it.
Enbridge – the pipeline company currently proposing to pump over half a million barrels a day of Tar Sands bitumen across the heartland of BC, into supertankers on our North and Central Coast – had three major spills of its own, in Michigan, Illinois, and New York State. The massive explosion of a tanker terminal in Dailan, China, produced some of the most graphic images – of any nature – ever recorded. The Boston Globe’s website carried a jarring reel snapped by a Greenpeace photographer that made the Gulf shots seem like Bob Ross canvases by comparison.
The Gulf itself played host to a second rig explosion – lost in the shuffle o the BP fiasco. A collision between an oil tanker and heavy bulk carrier i the Malacca Straight, off the coast of Singapore, caused a leak of 15,00 barrels of crude oil. In September, disaster was narrowly averted when tanker carrying 9 million litres of diesel fuel ran aground in the Canadian arctic.
Incidents in Mexico, the Middle East, and elsewhere exposed other vulnerabilities for fossil fuel supply lines – namely, crime and terrorism Thieves attempting to siphon off oil were blamed for the explosion of a Mexican pipeline that took 28 lives, while a Kurdish separatist grou claimed responsibility for the bombing of two pipelines in Turkey – on carrying natural gas, the other oil.
Meanwhile, various authorities and citizens in Tennessee were still dealing this year with the clean-up and lingering environmental effects o the disastrous bursting of a toxic coal ash tailing pond in Tennessee – a catastrophe 50 times bigger than the ExxonValdez oil spill – that occurred at the tail end of 2008. In October, 2010, Hungary experienced a similar tragedy when a sludge reservoir at a metals plant burst, spilling som 35 million cubic metres of toxic waste on the town of Akja…And we end this year with a fresh round of alarms rung over leaking tailing ponds and the impacts of the Tar Sands on water, human and ecological health, and climate change.
And those are just the big ones. A cursory study of the business of oil, gas, and coal exploitation and use reveals a litany of small-scale – bu nevertheless environmentally significant – pipeline leaks, tailing pond malfunctions, and myriad problems with the extraction, refining transportation, and burning of fossil fuels. They’re all just standar externalities – part of the cost of doing business, born by the planet, whil corporations reap record profits.
Many people – and pretty much every mainstream media outlet in the world – have failed to connect the dots, thus missing the lesson to be
learned from these very visible disasters in 2010. They see them as isolated incidents, rather than part of a larger systemic problem.
The truth is, none of these disasters is an “accident” – rather they are manifestations of an until now largely theoretical concept known as “Peak Oil.” They bring us face-to-face with the real-world implications of this phenomenon. This is what happens when you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for fossil fuel energy, which Barack Obama himself aptly referred to as “dirty, dwindling, and dangerous.”
Offshore wells like the Deepwater Horizon are being drilled at greater depths today, as easier sources dry up, presenting far greater operational and environmental risks.
The Alberta Tar Sands and their Venezuelan Orinoco counterpart are among the dirtiest and most capital and resource-intensive oil (or bitumen, rather) sources in the world.
Natural gas fracking is a relatively new and enormously damaging process, with severe impacts on our aquifers we’ve barely begun to grasp while we plough forward with new projects.
So long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels (which looks at this point to be a long time – as long as we can, that is), there will be ever-increasing BP blow-outs, pipeline leaks, and tanker crashes. Despite the assurances of the likes of Enrbridge that we have nothing to worry about with their new proposed projects, we have now seen irrefutable evidence, in gory, high-definition detail, of the inability of human beings to eliminate the risks that attend these operations.
My wish for the New Year is that these powerful images remain indelibly burned in our consciousness. I, for one, will continue to draw upon them in my work – not to score cheap emotional points, but to ensure they serve their purpose, namely, helping us to make better decision regarding our exploitation and use (and hopefully lack thereof) of fossil fuels going forward.
One of the highlights of my 2010 was spending several weeks amid BC’ Great Bear Rainforest, traveling the very coastline Enbridge wishes to se plied by the world’s largest oil tankers. Having witnessed and documente firsthand the rugged terrain, navigational hazards, and extreme weathe along that stretch of coast – one of the most perilous on the planet – the mere contention that the company could guarantee the safety of thes shipments, or their ability to clean them up should they occur is, simpl put, so preposterous as to be insulting.
So it is heartening to see the lessons of the Exxon Valdez, BP blow-out and pipeline leaks being deployed in the battle to stop Enrbridge in BC With the recent passing of a federal motion(albeit non-binding, at this stage) for a North Coast tanker ban that would effectively kill that project were it made into legislation, and a growing coalition of First Nations, conservationists, and citizens standing together against the project, it appears we may be learning something after all.
So here’s hoping that 2011 is the year of conservation, clean energy solutions, and beginning to seriously confront our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels. Clearly, that’s naively idealistic – but we’ll always have February through December to be cynical about the future.
Re: Oil tanker ban plays into hands of U.S. foundations, Column, Dec 18
Vivian
Krause’s article poses an interesting conspiracy theory. However, she
neglects the key fact that governments since Liberal Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau 40 years ago have maintained the policy of banning oil
tankers from B.C.’s inside straits and channels around Haida Gwaii. The
Harper Conservative government wants to change that.
Oil supertankers today are far bigger than in the ’70s, while weather events are becoming more extreme and unpredictable.
The
Exxon Valdez and Gulf of Mexico oil spill disasters prove there is no
guarantee against human error or equipment failure. We invite an
eventual disaster if we allow hundreds of oil tankers a year to ply
those dangerous northern waters. Should a major oil spill happen, and
inevitably it would, there would be no going back. B.C.’s coastal
environment, lives, and jobs would be changed forever — for the worse.
Oilsands giant Suncor has been fined $200,000 for dumping material harmful to fish into a northern Alberta river.
Suncor Energy Inc. was fined Tuesday after pleading guilty to charges under the federal Fisheries Act.
Environment Canada says the fine was for the release of effluent in
2008 from sediment ponds built as part of Suncor operations near the
Steepbank River north of Fort McMurray.
The material in the water was clay and other natural materials and
did not include oilsands or tailings pond effluent, Environment Canada
spokesman Mike Bell said Wednesday.
“It was total suspended solids — matter suspended in water,” Bell
said. “It is deleterious to fish because it interrupts their respiration
and can impact habitat as well.”
It is thus a testament to our 24-hour news cycle, tabloid-saturated, overworked, short attention spanned society that we have largely already forgotten the sense of sheer powerlessness and intense fear that gripped the world in the months of the Gulf crisis. It is with good cause that Gore Vidal uses the term “the United States of Amnesia.”
All the while, a slew of breathtaking images poured forth –
The Gulf itself played host to a 
And those are just the big ones. A cursory study of the business of oil, gas, and coal exploitation and use reveals a litany of small-scale – bu nevertheless environmentally significant – pipeline leaks, tailing pond malfunctions, and myriad problems with the extraction, refining transportation, and burning of fossil fuels. They’re all just standar externalities – part of the cost of doing business, born by the planet, whil corporations reap record profits.
One of the highlights of my 2010 was spending several weeks amid BC’ Great Bear Rainforest, traveling the very coastline Enbridge wishes to se plied by the world’s largest oil tankers. Having witnessed and