NaturalNews.com
by Dave Gabriele, citizen journalist
Common belief is that the Middle East is America's largest supplier of oil. In truth, Canada supplies more oil to the US than any other country, providing 19% of US foreign oil. About half of that oil comes from the single largest industrial project on Earth--the Canadian Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada. The Oil Sands, comprised of the Athabasca, Peace River and Cold Lake sites, contains approximately 170 billion barrels of oil in proven reserves. This makes Canada the world's second largest source of oil, after Saudi Arabia.
As of 2006, the Oil Sands were producing over 1.1 million barrels of oil per day, or about 42% of Canada's total crude output. As the industry steadily grows, it is anticipated that production will reach 3 million barrels per day by 2020 and possibly even 5 million barrels per day by 2030.
This deposit of oil represents a great source of wealth for Canada, and especially for the United States, which prefers a stable source closer to home. However, this massive project, which encompasses operations from 49 companies, is literally the largest and most environmentally destructive endeavor of all time.
What are Oil Sands?
Geologists speculate that the oil sands formed millions of years ago from the remains of tiny creatures buried in the seabed of an ancient ocean that covered Alberta. Warm temperatures, combined with the slow accumulation of thick layers of silt, sand and pressure, continuously heated these remains and gradually converted them into the oil sands. The sands consist of a mixture of silica sand, minerals, clay, water and bitumen. Bitumen, a tar-like substance, is a super-heavy form of petroleum.
Environmental Concerns
The enormous process of extracting oil from the oil sands begins with cutting down large areas of boreal forest. So far, the industry has flattened about 389 square kilometers or 150 square miles. Concerns over rapid deforestation have environmentalists troubled.
Because bitumen is too thick and heavy to be pumped like conventional oil, it must be dug out of the ground in what closely resembles an open-pit mining operation. In order to get just one barrel of bitumen, workers need to first scoop about two tons of earth to get to the sand, and then about two tons of the sand itself. To make this process as efficient as possible, the industry uses $15 million 495HF Bucyrus electric shovels that stand five-storeys high to dig out sand and drop 400-ton loads onto 1.5-storey 797B Caterpillar dump trucks. Every day, about one million tons of the sand is dug and transported to be washed with about 200,000 tons of water. The water is then heated in order to extract the bitumen from the sand. This method costs roughly 10 times more than it costs the Saudis to pump their light oil.
But this process is only an option for the shallow bitumen that is closest to the surface. An estimated 80% of the reserves are too deep to be dug so instead the bitumen is steamed straight from the ground using enormously intricate systems of pipes and pumps. This is called "in situ thermal recovery" and it uses about twice the energy of the digging method.
Only when the bitumen has been extracted from the sand can usable oil be upgraded from the bitumen. The raw bitumen is sent to upgrader plants which process the black tar under high heat and pressure. The entire process uses an incredibly large amount of energy which is mostly supplied by natural gas. Critics of the industry note that the cleanest of the fossil fuels is being depleted to produce one of the dirtiest.
The Oil Sands operation releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is the fastest growing contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.
But deforestation, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions aren't the only problems. It takes an average of three barrels of fresh water from the Athabasca River to produce just one barrel of oil. The Oil Sands uses more water per year than the entire city of Calgary, the largest city in Alberta and the fifth largest in Canada. In return, one barrel of oil produces about two barrels of toxic water. The waste is pumped into dozens of holding basins known as "tailings ponds." Although they are known as ponds, some of these massive man-made lakes are dozens of kilometers across. They are clearly visible on Google Earth. (Satellite image: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=k...)
In April 2008, the problems of the toxic tailings ponds entered Canadian consciousness when the media disseminated a story in which 500 ducks lost their lives by mistaking a tailings pond for a natural lake. Although the Alberta government denies it, environmental groups maintain that the tailings ponds leak contaminated water into local soil and water ways causing severe ecological harm.
For further reading:
http://www.environmentaldefence.ca/...
http://www.ualberta.ca/ERSC/water.pdf
http://pubs.pembina.org/reports/Las...
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Most Destructive Industrial Venture on Earth: The Canadian Oil Sands Pose Great Danger
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Canadians beat Bill C-51 — but watch the back door!
ANH, 24 June 2008
Bye-bye C-51
Around a million Canadians made their feelings known about Bill C-51, an amendment introduced by the Harper government to the Canadian Food & Drugs Act. The mass opposition to this Bill forced the Canadian Parliament to call off the second reading last Friday. The Bill, having been successfully through first reading on 8 April 2008, is now dead. Hooray for mass protest!
The Bill was going to create a new category called 'therapeutic products' which would throw natural health products—or ‘therapeutic foods’—into the same category as drugs. It would also have given Canadian authorities obscene powers to raid premises, confiscate products—with no reasons given. It would scare the small, somewhat fragile and fragmented natural products industry into submission—an industry that is the life line for millions of consumers who prefer to take natural products rather than drugs to manage their health.
To find out more about what Bill C-51 was going to mean to Canadian citizens, click here.
If there is one true hero—and of course there are many—in the C-51 battle, it is none other than Shawn Buckley, President of the Natural Health Products Protection Association. Shawn, we fully recognize and appreciate your fantastic work and capability.
However, many will realize that in the minds of those steering the government-corporate machine that is hell-bent on removing our ability to freely access unpatented, natural products and ‘therapeutic foods’ (aren’t all wholesome foods therapeutic?) used in healthcare, this is a chess game. A chess game on which Canadian citizens’ lives depend.
Enter: Bill C-52
The backdoor the authorities are planning to use is Bill C-52. This Bill is designed for something entirely different. It’s meant to be about protecting consumers from unsafe products and chemicals, such as pesticides. It is not directly concerned with natural health products.
But, Shawn Buckley has identified that by slipping in one simple amendment to Schedule 1 of Bill C-52, the Bill could be applied to natural health products overnight. It could—put simply—be used to take away their rights in the name of safety.
And the clock is ticking. The Bill made it though second reading on 1 May 2008! One more reading and it’s through!
To find out more about Bill C-52, click here.
If you consider that the Canadian government has been an active party supporting the entire direction of the Codex Alimentarius Commission’s nutrition committee, which is developing international guidelines and standards on ‘safe’ nutrient levels—that are pitifully low because of a misapplication of scientific risk assessment—you’ll understand that Canadians cannot afford to let this one slip through.
These ludicrously low global levels, sanctioned by the Canadian government, will become the stick with which it can beat its citizens!
What to do
If you are a Canadian citizen, please don't rest on your laurels for a second. If you aren't a Canadian citizen but have friends or relatives there—you have a duty to let them know if you care about their futures and you know they care about their natural health.
The chess game is still running. The backdoor is open—don’t let them make that move as it’s not only your lives at risk—it’s future generations that could have it so much worse if these sorts of legislative proposals are allowed to emerge as law.
More and more people are joining the dots.
Also—make sure you keep a close eye on the National Health Products Protection Association website.
