Through the '70s after one oil crisis after another there was a proliferation of maps showing the existence of oil deposits throughout the world.
The rural regions of Canada had huge deposits, but they were marked as useless sludge not any better than the goop in the La Brea Tar Pits. Nobody wanted that oil. Why should they? It is the ultimate waste product, oil so old it has gone to dust.
But not so fast, the black gold there became cost effective after oil prices spiked and stayed there.
Natural bitumen (often called tar sands or oil sands) and heavy oil differ from light oils by their high viscosity (resistance to flow) at reservoir temperatures, high density (low API gravity), and significant contents of nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur compounds and heavy-metal contaminants. They resemble the residuum from the refining of light oil. Most heavy oil is found at the margins of geologic basins and is thought to be the residue of formerly light oil that has lost its light-molecular-weight components through degradation by bacteria, water-washing, and evaporation.
Extracting this "resource" is expensive since the soil is basically strip mined and heat processed. Making the actual extraction of this oil the most inefficient method of oil extraction known.
Tar Sands Extraction and Processing
Tar sands deposits near the surface can be recovered by open pit mining techniques. New methods introduced in the 1990s considerably improved the efficiency of tar sands mining, thus reducing the cost. These systems use large hydraulic and electrically powered shovels to dig up tar sands and load them into enormous trucks that can carry up to 320 tons of tar sands per load.
With tires that weigh more than your fully loaded SUV the equipment to extract this oil increases the carbon footprint of this oil dramatically. Only 10% of the material extracted is useable as oil.
After mining, the tar sands are transported to an extraction plant, where a hot water process separates the bitumen from sand, water, and minerals. The separation takes place in separation cells. Hot water is added to the sand, and the resulting slurry is piped to the extraction plant where it is agitated. The combination of hot water and agitation releases bitumen from the oil sand, and causes tiny air bubbles to attach to the bitumen droplets, that float to the top of the separation vessel, where the bitumen can be skimmed off. Further processing removes residual water and solids. The bitumen is then transported and eventually upgraded into synthetic crude oil.
About two tons of tar sands are required to produce one barrel of oil. Roughly 75% of the bitumen can be recovered from sand. After oil extraction, the spent sand and other materials are then returned to the mine, which is eventually reclaimed.
About that reclaiming. Apparently the miners did not get the memo. The toxic sand is the Koch Brothers' new White Elephant.
Until recently, the dusty piles rising above the Calumet and other waterways near Midwest refineries had been a largely unnoticed consequence of a shift to thicker, dirtier oil from Canada.
The growing black mountains first became an issue in Detroit, where another Koch company maintained a towering repository of petcoke from a nearby Marathon Petroleum refinery. In August, Mayor Dave Bing ordered it removed in response to community complaints.
Under pressure from [Chicago Mayor Rahm] Emanuel and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Beemsterboer [a storage terminal owner] called in a giant Canadian freighter last week to take away all of its petcoke. A legal agreement expected to be filed Thursday in Cook County Circuit Court would block the company from accepting the refinery byproduct until it adopts more aggressive dust controls.
It is unclear where the petcoke goes after it is stored in Chicago.
Because this pet coke is highly toxic sludge basically returning it to the ground is likely to trigger innumerable environmental violations. So the cost of playing pet coke musical chairs must be added to the carbon footprint equation.
Now we get to gasoline, the final product we are most familiar with.
CONCLUSIONS
In this work, we compared the emission behaviors of fuels derived from oil sands and from conventional crude oil at different engine operating conditions. We also investigated the effects of total aromatic content and density of diesel fuels on NOx [generic term for mono-nitrogen oxides] and PM [particulate matter] emissions. Our results lead to the following conclusions:
Oil-sands-derived diesel fuels behave similarly as conventional-crude-oil derived diesel fuels in terms of NOx emissions at all engine operating conditions,
Oil-sands-derived diesel fuels exhibit higher composite PM emissions than their conventional-crude-oil-derived counterparts at the same total aromatic content. This can be attributed to the higher densities of the oil-sands-derived fuels. However, this trend was not clear at each individual engine operating mode.
Different fuel properties influence NOx and PM emissions at different engine operating conditions, Fuel density and total aromatic content influence NOx emissions at medium to heavy load conditions, whereas the effects of fuel density and total aromatic content on PM emissions appear to be greater at low load conditions, It is therefore important to investigate the interaction between fuel properties and engine operating conditions.
Now NOx form at temperatures over 2500 degrees F, which is a good thing.
Because they are basically acid in a gas form. A corrosive that will eat your engine and dissolve your exhaust system. You can guess how good it is for your lungs.
PM is particulate matter, hydrocarbons, lead, heavy metals... And other bits of burned chemistry we should not be pumping into our ecosystem.
Europe doesn't want this dirty oil. China is choking on their own industrial expansion already so their soon to be imposed emission standards will not welcome the filthy tar sands oil either. The US doesn't want it, our auto industry would scream at the garbage they would be expected to clean out of the exhaust.
Last week, a study commissioned by the provincial government of Alberta reported that oil extracted from the oil sands emit 12 percent more emissions than oil produced in Europe. Others estimate that oil coming from the oil sands is as much as 23 percent more polluting than other sources.
We don't need this pipeline. No one wants this oil. Call or write and make your voices heard.
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Keystone XL Pipeline "Public Comments" Blogathon: March 3-7, 2014
The public comment period for the National Interest Determination ends on March 7, 2014. We have a coalition seeking public comments to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline.
You can write your own comment to post at regulations.gov. Or, you can copy from one of the comment templates available from the list below. It's preferrable to tweak the template a little with your own words so that it does not resemble a boilerplate comment.
Let your voice be heard by opposing the Keystone XL Pipeline.
The deadline for submission of comments is March 7, 2014.
350.org
Bold Nebraska
Center for Biological Diversity
CCAN or Chesapeake Climate Action Network
CREDO
Energy Action Coalition
Environmental Action
Friends of the Earth
League of Conservation Voters
Moms Clean Air Force
Montana Environmental Information Center
National Wildlife Federation
Natural Resources Defense Council
Northern Plains Resource
Oil Change International
Rainforest Action Network
Sierra Club
Our Daily Kos community organizers are Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, rb137, JekyllnHyde, citisven, peregrine kate, John Crapper, Aji, and Kitsap River, with Meteor Blades serving as the group's adviser.
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