The USA already imports more oil from Canada than it does from any other country.
The potential for pollution from transportation and secondary processing of tar sands is bad enough. But the bigger problems are in the mining and the processing of tar itself.
Extraction of oil from the tar sands is not an easy process. It is a dirty, dirty business. It requires vast quantities of fresh water which remains polluted and must be stored in large tailing ponds of toxic sludge. Every barrel of crude produced requires 4.5 barrels of fresh water from the Athabasca River. The amount of water used annually is equivalent to the amount used by the city of Toronto and it not be treated or allowed to return to the environment. The tailing ponds (lakes really) are already 50 square miles in surface area and one of them is held in check by the world's third largest dam. There are no plans in place for dealing with the long term storage of the toxic wastes. Instead the operators are planning to expand them. Any bird that lands in these lakes is dead.
Mining tar sands and produces three to four times the amount of greenhouse gases as does regular crude oil. Huge amounts of natural gas are used to heat the tar in the extraction process. So much so, that for every three barrels of crude produced, the equivalent of one barrel of energy is consumed.
Every barrel of crude produced requires 4.5 barrels of fresh water from the Athabasca River. The amount of water used annually is equivalent to the amount used by the city of Toronto and it not be treated or allowed to return to the environment
The project covers an area the size of England and is set to be expanded once the pipeline capacity to the south is increased.
The destruction of the Boreal forests, the loss of wildlife, the air pollution, lake, river and aquifer pollution, the eventual draining of lake Athabasca, none of these consequences are worth North Americans being able to continue to drive around willy nilly in over weight gas hogs. Especially when there are a plethora of alternatives waiting to be developed that produce cheaper and cleaner energy, jobs, and technological advancements.
Why continue to to invest in the extraction of dirty, toxic substances that kill, using 19th and 20th century technology when we can invest in cleaner, more sustainable systems that will move us forward as a civilization? None of it is pie in the sky either. It makes no sense.
The Tyee – The Harm the Tar Sands Will Do