Alberta Research Council Warns Tarsands Industry To Cut GHGs

[hatrack]

CALGARY - Oilsands growth will be stunted unless the industry voluntarily cuts greenhouse gas emissions, Alberta Research Council president John McDougall warned Wednesday. "Unless we deal with this (output of waste carbon dioxide) environmental pressures will accumulate and gather that will at best slow the pace of development and at worst stop it," McDougall predicted in an interview.

"It's not going to do us any good if we have five million barrels a day of oilsands production but we can't breathe," said McDougall, a past president of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta. Current technology lets emissions increase on a scale that matches oilsands megaprojects, he told a business conference held by Insight Information. "It is a very significant issue," he warned the industry.

Oilsands carbon dioxide emissions, if allowed to continue at today's rates, will climb to 145 million tonnes a year if production grows five-fold to its forecast potential of five million barrels per day, ARC projections show.

The clouds of airborne oilsands waste alone would exceed Alberta's total 1990 greenhouse gas emissions from all sources by 10 per cent, McDougall said. Ratings of the industry's potential anticipate production of 1.5 million barrels daily from mines and 3.5 million barrels a day from in-situ plants, with upgraders converting two-thirds or more of the bitumen into premium refinery-ready oil.

EDIT

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/business/story.html?id=2047675e-321e-4fb1-b3af-51e9ca9d78ae&k=21298

[phantom power]

1. My stoichiometry is rusty, but...

If a barrel of longish generic hydrocarbons is about 1 carbon atom for every 2 hydrogens, that means a barrel of oil is about 6/7 Carbon by weight. If we burn those carbons into CO2, then (by weight) we will get 4 mass-units of CO2 for every unit of carbon, or 3.4 units of CO2 for every unit of oil burned.

If they're producing 5 million bpd, and a typical barrel of oil weighs 0.125 tonnes, that's 228 million tonnes per year, times 3.4 gives 775 million tonnes of CO2 per year, if we burn it.

So, he's worried about the 145 million tonnes, but he doesn't care about the fact that burning that 5 million bpd is going to release 5 times that amount of CO2, no matter where that oil comes from? (unless, of course, it's produced renewably, as in biodiesel)

[hatrack]

2. To paraphrase Henry Ford, "Melt your own tar, and it will warm you twice"

Besides, there's the whole "cheap natural gas = expensive synthetic oil" thing - or at least for as long as the cheap natural gas holds out.

[amandabeech]

3. There has been talk off and on of putting a Candu nuke up there

to provide steam for the extraction process.

I have no idea whether that would cut down on the GHG.

Since the EROEI of the tar sands is low to start with, any added energy-using equipment to ameliorate the cabon dioxide problem might send the whole process into an EROEI of less than 1.

[hatrack]

4. Yeah, what is the EROEI, anyway - 1.8? 1.4? 1.2?

Not surprisingly, numbers from scientists vary substantially from the numbers you get from industry. :eyes:

[amandabeech]

6. I've seen everything from about .2 to 35, seriously.

Something that the next administration's Department of Energy could do is work out a viable framework for EROEI, net energy, etc., calculation.

I'm not asking for exact numbers, but something that would give a meaningful comparison.

I think that the EROEI/net energy general concept will be valuable in allocating public funds to alternative energy projects, and frankly, would be a guideline for private funding, as well. IMHO, without additional considerations, a very low EROEI would be a red flag to me in considering the monetary return on investment, as well.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. even if EROEI < 1...

...it will still be useful. Whilst I have high hopes (and lower expectations) for hydrogen/battery tech, we'll probably still need a portable, high-content form of energy for transport - whether it be biofuel or wrangled oil: All the nuke/wind/solar in the world won't help you if you can't get the harvest in.

Even using 100 joules of generated energy to make 1 joule of portable energy still makes a weird sort of sense.