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Athabasca South? Activity Hints at Tar Sands Development in Utah
Much of the more than 2 million barrels of oil Canada sends south every day comes from the tar sands of the Athabasca region in Alberta. The ongoing tar sands boom in the area has been called an environmental crime of enormous proportions, and there are hints that some of the dirty processes required might be heading south as well, to the Uintah Basin in Utah.
Several companies have been operating small-scale projects in tar sands areas mines in Utah. Now, Earth Energy Resources has obtained the permits required to expand its site to a 62-acre mine that the company hopes will eventually produce about 2,000 barrels of oil per day.
This doesn’t compare with the enormous projects in Alberta — some of which are in the hundreds of thousands of barrels per day range — but environmentalists are concerned about the impact on Utah's other natural resources.
“Even if it were economically viable, I think it would be extremely destructive environmentally, and we would be very eager to see the competent authorities keeping an eye on water and air quality problems,” said Mark Clemens, of the Sierra Club’s Utah Chapter.
Utah’s Tar Sands Resource
According to the Utah Geological Survey, the state has between 14 and 15 billion barrels of measured oil locked up in tar sands. When estimated resources are included, another 23 to 28 billion barrels make an appearance. For comparison, the entire U.S. used about 7 billion barrels of oil in all of 2008.
“We have a large resource that’s out there in the Uintah basin area and elsewhere in southeastern Utah, but our deposits tend to be … harder to mine than the ones in Alberta,” said Dave Tabet, a geologic manager with the Utah Geologic Survey.
“They’re a little bit lower in richness, so they’re not as attractive that way either. They’re a little bit more difficult to extract than the Canadian oil sands.”
The tar sands in Alberta actually do resemble sand, while Utah's are much more rock-like, making them more difficult to mine.
“It’s the difference between mining something that’s hardened or something that’s loose aggregate,” Tabet said. “Down here, you might have to drill and blast if you really wanted to move a lot of material.”
Tar Sands Impacts
The Canadian tar sands have produced any number of environmental issues, from water contamination in the Athabasca River to massive greenhouse gas emissions, both from the mining projects themselves and from burning millions of barrels of extracted oil.
Perhaps the most striking problem is that of the giant tailings ponds, where waste products from the mining are left to — hopefully — settle out from a toxic slurry of water and solid waste.
“Nobody is proposing that for Utah; they would never get away with having a tailings pond like that,” said Jennifer Spinti, a chemical engineer with the Utah Heavy Oil Program at the University of Utah.
Earth Energy Resources says its process, which it hope to put into production by late 2011 if financing can be obtained, will result in no tailings ponds at all.
“We can recover 95 percent of our water right away," said D. Glenn Snarr, the president and CFO of Earth Energy Resources. “The only water we use is in the damp, clean sand, and that goes back into the mine pit and actually helps the reclamation process.”
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© InsideClimate News |
All is not as it seems.
Many young people have been conned into believing that environmentalists want to preserve the environment.
If this is so then why have the oil companies made such huge profits in the past fifty years after the big environmental laws were passed?
I remember when automobile fuel consumption doubled in the mid-seventies because of environmental legislation. This caused a recession and began the energy crisis. Despite this, no automaker adopted century-old electric technology to ease the blow.
If plug-in hybrid cars had been made in the mid-seventies then the tar sands plants would have never started. It was the misguided environmental laws that sent oil prices soaring and only then did extraction become economical.
Even now, if all cars were plug-in hybrids with plain old lead-acid batteries the price of gasoline would drop enough that tar sands and offshore oil would not be needed.
Of course that won't happen since we are dealing with funding whores on all sides and they spin things every way but true.
Good luck to us all.
Filling Yankee Gas-Tanks
Canada needs to use Saskatchewan Uranium in Chinese reactors designed by Tsinghua University for high efficiency to make heat to refine Tar Sands to oil - Selling both oil in primary fashion and Nuclear power in secondary fashion to the U.S.A. Remember: The Tar Sands are worth nothing sitting, cold, in the swamps, and the land destroyed was not in use anyway! Bull*t 30 year old American weapons producing calamities are of no use in the modern world and the Candu is an anachronism at best! If Americans are dumb enough to stay on a liquids fueled economy , let Canada join the Saudis in the "Take" Eventually they will see the light and convert to and electric economy, but in the meantime profits can be made!
Other costs
As we run out of oil, we are driven to use less and less efficient/easy sources of it, notably tar sands and oil shale. Any industry creates jobs, but creating jobs is not a justification for any industry. The Uintah basin is beautiful ranching and cattle country, not to mention adjacent to Dinosaur national monument.
An increase in oil shale
An increase in oil shale production would cause an increase in employment within the regions where shale oil production occurs, or within regions that contain industries providing inputs to the production process. A few hundred thousand jobs would likely be associated, directly and indirectly, with oil shale production. The net effect on nationwide employment is uncertain, however, because increases in employment arising from oil shale production could be partially offset by reductions in employment in other parts of the country. Of course much of this depends on price of conventional oil. But the point is the potential is there.
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