[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

Alberta ranchers wonder why their livestock suffer and die
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, Alberta–It was a frigid spring afternoon, and country veterinarian Martha Kostuch had another biological riddle on her hands.
Before her, in a livestock trailer, lay a sick calf brought in by a rancher. The animal's belly was tight and swollen, and it was barely breathing.
Kostuch and an assistant worked frantically to relieve the calf's bloating, administering orally a green liquid called Dioctol. After a few minutes, it became evident that the animal could not be revived. Kostuch ended its misery with a lethal injection of sodium pentobarbital.
After 22 years here on the high plains of western Canada, Kostuch has come to expect, if not accept, such incidents. She has heard numerous reports of puzzling deaths, spontaneous abortions, birth defects, eye inflammation and listlessness among cattle. She has seen hardened ranchers cry.
Many of the problems have occurred in areas of intensive oil and natural gas exploration, production and refining. To Kostuch and others in southwestern Alberta, this is no coincidence.
Many of the province's oil and gas fields are extremely sour–laced with hydrogen sulfide, sometimes released intact into the atmosphere but more often converted to sulfur dioxide through flaring. Both gases can play havoc with human and animal physiologies.
"No question, we're seeing chronic and acute effects," Kostuch said. She rattled them off: "Milky substance in the eyes. Difficulty breathing. Diarrhea. Neurological problems. Aggressive behavior. 'Dumb' calves that don't nurse. Poor heats. Uterine infections. Immune deficiencies."
The oil and gas industry rejects suggestions of a relationship between its operations and sickly cattle, noting that sulfur dioxide emissions are down and a recent study proved exculpatory.
"The broad public, by and large, doesn't have any burning issues with our industry," said David Pryce, manager of environment and operations for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in Calgary.
In many ways, Alberta mirrors Texas with its last-frontier disposition, its agrarian roots, its vastness, its modern cities. Calgary could pass for Dallas, the rig-dotted plains near Edmonton for those near Amarillo.
There is, however, one notable difference: In Alberta, sour gas pollution is a pressing human and animal health issue, the subject of endless debate in government offices, university laboratories and small-town taverns.
In Texas, for the most part, it is still treated as an anomaly. For residents of East Texas, in the midst of a sour gas boom, Alberta's experience may be both instructive and unsettling.
The little town of Rocky Mountain House is at the center of a decades-old struggle between the province's two dominant economic forces, agriculture and energy. To the west lie the Canadian Rockies, to the south, north and east farms and ranches that, in many cases, have been in families for generations. Until sour oil and gas development began in earnest 30 or so years ago, rural Albertans had only the extremes of nature to fear. Now, they face something far more capricious.
Wayne and Ila Johnston say that they have had widespread illness in their herd of Angus cattle since 1993, when Shell Canada Ltd. began operating one of the world's largest sour gas processing plants near the town of Caroline, seven miles northwest of the Johnstons' 640 acres.
"They cough," Ila Johnston, 47, said of the animals. "They aren't doing good. The calves, when they come, are just kind of stupid."
Her 52-year-old husband described some of the deformed calves he had seen–one that was hairless, others with missing or extra limbs. A cluster of defects, he said, occurred after a Shell Canada gas pipeline rupture in January 1994.
"I had 165 head when that plant came on line," Wayne Johnston said. "I had a beautiful herd. Now it's down to 140 head and dropping.
"I used to keep a lot of cows over the age of 15. Now we can't get them to that age. Some of them will just drop dead on you."
When it began construction on the Caroline plant in 1991, Shell Canada assured its skeptical neighbors that emissions would be minimal, despite a gas stream containing, on average, 350,000 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide.
"This was supposed to be a state-of-the-art plant," Kostuch said, "but from day one they've had problems." Among them: the 1994 pipeline break and numerous "upsets"–unplanned releases–of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and other compounds.
The plant is allowed by permit to give off 8.5 million pounds of sulfur dioxide per year. "It's like a volcano that's erupting 24 hours a day," Wayne Johnston said.
Kostuch theorizes that all the sulfur interferes with essential trace elements–selenium, zinc, etc.–in the animals' diets, allowing deficiencies to develop.
A recently completed, five-year study funded by Shell Canada and other energy companies challenges Kostuch's hypothesis. Directed by Cheryl Waldner, a veterinarian in Sundre, researchers took one health survey of cattle before the Caroline plant opened and another after. No striking differences were found.
Shell Canada spokeswoman Laurieann Lynne said that the study was conceived and executed, without corporate interference, at the local level. "It is owned by the community, not by Shell," Lynne said.
Last spring, Shell Canada won approval from provincial regulators to increase the plant's throughput of gas, from 300 million to 360 million cubic feet per day. An appeal filed by Kostuch and the Johnstons was denied.
"People are very upset," Kostuch said. "Some are giving up and leaving and some are still fighting. We haven't had much civil disobedience in this province, but it's getting close."
Rancher Larry McLeod is among those who left. Through meticulous research he established what he believed to be a strong correlation between releases from sour wells, pipelines, the Shell Canada plant and a smaller Amoco plant, and reproductive problems, low weaning weights and deaths among his cattle.
"Can I one hundred-percent guarantee it? No," McLeod said. "Am I damned positive? Hell, yes. This appears to be cumulative. Cows appear to be poisoning their calves through their milk."
The sour gas activity in Alberta affects people as well as livestock.
"This industry has totally gone nuts up here," Wayne Johnston said. "When the wind comes out of the northwest, you can't think quite clearly. Your eyes water. Your ears start to ring, and the wax just turns to crap. Your emotions really get to you. It's so easy to get depressed."
Two of the Johnstons' once-unflappable neighbors are in an almost-constant state of agitation. "One of them's so riled up he's ready to shoot someone," Wayne Johnston said.
Drilling near their home outside Rocky Mountain House periodically forces Cheryl Golding and her 24-year-old retarded son, Shane, to take refuge in a motel. The oil companies foot the bill, but Golding has come to dread what can turn into weeks of exile.
She and her son moved here three years ago from Hardisty, an oil town in eastern Alberta. "I came out here to get some fresh air for Shane," Golding said in her room at the Walking Eagle Motor Inn. "The Welcome Wagon didn't bring a little pamphlet saying, 'You could be gassed.'"
The drilling began in the fall of 1994. Golding said that she and Shane–a frail, childlike young man who surrounds himself with stuffed animals and other toys–have since been overcome five times by hydrogen sulfide.
On one occasion, Golding said, she had the sensation of being drunk. On another she "couldn't breathe and had the most awful headache I've ever had in my life."
Shane is particularly susceptible to the gas, Golding said, because he is asthmatic and unable to care for himself.
"They tell you, 'This is for the people of Alberta,' then they come in and muck up your land," Golding said of the oil companies. "Hundreds of us are being driven out of our homes. This whole thing is just a losing proposition."
The origins of Alberta's natural-gas industry can be traced to 1890, when a shallow, non-sulfurous (sweet) well was drilled near the town of Medicine Hat, in the southeastern corner of the province. A deeper, more productive well drilled in 1904 set off a gas boom in the area, drawing international notice.
"Shortly after this discovery, the newly incorporated city of Medicine Hat acquired gas lights on its railway platforms and downtown street corners, making the headlines of Robert Ripley's Believe it or Not in the process," writes Fred Stenson in his book, Waste to Wealth: A History of Gas Processing in Canada.
When English author Rudyard Kipling came to town in 1907, Stenson writes, "The city went to elaborate lengths to entertain its celebrity, taking Kipling for a ride in a motor car, treating him to a community picnic and, the piece de resistance, a long gander at a roaring gas flare unleashed from the city's fiery bowels."
A few years later, the activity shifted to the sour fields of southwestern Alberta, where hydrogen sulfide concentrations can reach 90 percent.
There was a sour gas boom near Turner Valley in the early 1920s, another near Pincher Creek in the late 1940s. The drilling and processing (sweetening) intensified in more populous areas in the 1960s, and workers occasionally were felled by hydrogen sulfide releases.
In terms of public safety, however, the defining moment came at 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 17, 1982, when an Amoco well blew out 12 miles west of the small town of Lodgepole.
Two workers from Texas were killed, and sour gas spurted from the well for 67 days. Nauseating odors reached Edmonton, 75 miles away; people closer to the blowout reported headaches, eye irritation, nosebleeds among children and various gastrointestinal and respiratory ailments.
After a high-profile inquiry, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (now the Energy Utilities Board) concluded in 1984 that the accident "could probably have been avoided, even allowing for equipment failures, if Amoco had followed a policy of cautious drilling in the critical zone and if Amoco had been better prepared to deal with unexpected developments. The public was understandably concerned, frightened and angry about the blowout."
The inquiry set in motion a series of government initiatives designed to prevent a recurrence at an even worse location–say, on the outskirts of Calgary.
"Prior to 1984, it was primarily the industry and regulatory folks who looked after sour gas," said Dick Bissett, a petroleum consultant in Calgary. "Now we have a new ballplayer. It's called the public."
Although Cheryl Golding and others in the Rocky Mountain House area disparage it, the Energy Utilities Board has put in place a fairly elaborate system of checks and balances that applies to wells, pipelines and processing plants.
For example, operators of "critical wells"–those thought to pose the greatest risks to the public–must install redundant safety equipment, prepare detailed emergency-response plans, go door to door to warn residents of impending drilling and maintain certain setback distances from homes and public buildings.
In the event of a release, evacuation of the surrounding area becomes mandatory if the hydrogen sulfide concentration reaches 20 parts per million. Before Lodgepole, there was no standard.
"The onus is on the industry," said Marilyn Craig, program liaison leader for the Energy Utilities Board in Calgary.
Lodgepole did more than beget regulations. It seemed to embolden people who might have remained silent prior to the blowout.
Case in point: In 1991, Calgary's top public-health officials took an unprecedented stand against Canadian Occidental Petroleum, which wanted to drill in an established sour field near subdivisions in the northeastern part of the city. The officials called for more stringent setbacks than the company was proposing, and it eventually abandoned its plan.
"We took a fair bit of heat over that one," said John Pelton, director of environmental health for Calgary Health Services.
"The company took the approach that death from hydrogen sulfide was less likely than getting hit by a meteorite," said Dr. Ken Corbet, an assistant professor of community medicine at the University of Calgary who served as a consultant to the health agency. "Well, you don't compare an exposure situation like that to an act of God; it's apples and oranges. Besides, death is not the only consequence. Other health endpoints have to be considered."
The progress made in Alberta since Lodgepole has come mainly in the area of preventing catastrophic hydrogen sulfide releases. Routine emissions have received less attention.
There are new worries about sour gas flaring–in particular, the burning of an estimated 1.6 billion cubic meters of solution gas at some 5,000 crude-oil tank batteries around the province.
Once thought to be relatively harmless–compared to the discharge of uncombusted hydrogen sulfide, anyway–flaring unleashes a "cocktail of chemicals," including benzene and other carcinogens, said Tom Marr-Laing, executive director of the Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development in Drayton Valley.
"It's like peeling an onion," Marr-Laing said. "Here's another layer of issues we need to be concerned about."
In a 1996 report, the Alberta Environmental Centre chronicled the effects of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide on cattle: bronchial constriction, slow weight gain, gastrointestinal disturbances, breathing difficulties, eye irritation, increased body temperature and heart rate, and death.
The center recommended that flaring be phased out and that the effects of low doses of sulfur and other contaminants on cattle be studied "with special attention to the reproductive and immunological systems." It also called for further study of the effects of high doses released during upsets.
Industry representatives, however, argue that things are better than they seem.
Sulfur dioxide emissions from oil and gas operations in Alberta have fallen by about 75 percent in the past two decades, said Rob McManus, manager of environment and safety for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. This is partly because of better control technologies, McManus said, but mainly attributable to depressed sulfur prices.
"People are trying to find sweet gas now rather than sour," he said.
The provincial government's one major attempt to answer questions about chronic, low-level hydrogen sulfide exposures came in 1985. Researchers from McGill University in Montreal conducted a three-month, $3.7 million study of 2,157 residents of Pincher Creek, in extreme southwestern Alberta.
These people had complained since the 1960s that emissions from sour gas processing plants were making them and their livestock ill. When the McGill researchers compared the Pincher Creek population to two others that presumably had not had such exposures, they found no significant differences in health status.
Debate over the study continues to this day. Did the McGill team, by refusing to conduct air monitoring and doing its work during a period of light activity at the plants, skew the data? Or were the environmental "illnesses" all in the Pincher Creek residents' heads?
Two Alberta academics have tried, with limited success, to pick up where the McGill study left off.
Dr. Tee Guidotti, director of the occupational health program at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and Dr. Sheldon Roth, who heads the division of toxicology at the University of Calgary, have spent countless hours investigating the effects of H2S exposures.
Each has published extensively on the subject. Each displays the impatience of a scientist whose work remains incomplete.
"Biochemically, hydrogen sulfide shouldn't give you much in the way of chronic problems," Guidotti said. "But we continue to get these reports. People certainly aren't making them up."
Guidotti's interest in sour gas was piqued in the mid-1980s by accounts of "persistent neurological deficits" among workers who had survived knockdowns.
By 1990, he and Roth had crafted a grant proposal to establish a hydrogen sulfide research network in Alberta that would have included a registry of exposure victims. The cost was to be split between the sour-gas industry and the provincial government.
At the last moment, the province backed out without explanation.
"Government here is sometimes to the right of industry," Guidotti said. "There was a fear of what we might find."
Roth, for his part, has tried to discern the actions of hydrogen sulfide on the central nervous systems of young rats. He embarked on a three-year, province-funded study in 1986 that suggested the developing brain was vulnerable.
At about the same time, Dr. Rhoderick Reiffenstein of the University of Alberta was pondering the effects of high doses of hydrogen sulfide on mature rats.
Roth and Reiffenstein teamed up in 1990 and approached the Canadian Medical Research Council in Ottawa–the equivalent of the National Institutes of Health in the United States–with a proposal to continue their animal studies. They were rebuffed.
"It was kicked back as a provincial problem," Roth said. "We said it was a national problem, a global problem."
He and Reiffenstein appealed to the council and got their funding in 1991. Reiffenstein died of esophageal cancer four years later. Roth reunited with Guidotti, and the two hope to complete their unfinished business with regard to the exposure registry.
"We need to know the effects of low doses–under a part per million," said Roth, who became so passionate about hydrogen sulfide that he helped organize an international conference on it at Alberta's Banff National Park in 1989. "We need to know the aftermath of acute exposures. It's difficult research to do."
Strong suspicions are not enough, Roth said, because "you're dealing with a gas that's produced for economic gain."
Indeed, Alberta's sour gas industry is an economic colossus that annually produces more than $4 billion in natural gas, gas liquids and elemental sulfur.
"We're trying to get the industry to quit denying that it's emitting anything dangerous," said Rob Macintosh, research and policy director for the Pembina Institute.

[aflurry]

Rockdoc you take the hard fought gains of environmentalists and credit them to Suncor and Syncrude.
It's like a deadbeat dad bragging about how he pays his required child support.

pure horse pucky....many of the same people complaining about big oil polluting the world also want the price of gasoline to be low enough so they can drive to the beach every weekend. What rock have you been living under?

These mythic individuals notwithstanding, cheap gas is not an environmentalist platform, OK? It is a Bush Admin platform, as claimed by a specific individual, Ari freaking Fliescher.

Uhh...perhaps you need to look up the dictionary definition of hypocritical.

Main Entry: hy·poc·ri·sy
Pronunciation: hi-'pä-kr&-sE also hI-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -sies

1 : a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue

So people with significant monetary interest in seeing a project going forward claim that environmentalists are profiting from research grants in an effort to discredit them. My definition's from Mirriam Websters. Who makes your dictionary?

Your point about tar sand extraction providing a softer landing is debatable. Access to more oil will encourage further exploitation of resources, status quo community design and building practices. It does nothing to promote adjustments to usage practices which is what could actually soften the landing.

What I hear from you is irrelevant abuse thrown on skeptics who have yet to be convinced that such large scale mining operations can or will be done on an environmentally sound basis. The companies will get in there, tie in local economies, get into financial trouble, demand relaxation of expensive cleanup efforts, which will be granted at that point because they will have the local economy hostage. Or they will get in there, become wildly profitable encourage the development of more suburbs and autotopias, both locally and wherever their cheap oil supplies are sent, and set up the inevitable debacle when the stuff runs out.

Either way it it just more of the same. Have the last 35 years of oil development and discoveries better prepared us for a "softer landing?"

[rockdoc123]

Rockdoc you take the hard fought gains of environmentalists and credit them to Suncor and Syncrude.

Greenpeace nor any of the other environmentalist groups had anything to do with the practice and standards set up by the Alberta Government. These guidelines were put together by groups of professional biologists, hydrologists, engineers etc. working for the Alberta gov't. The province legislated laws, requirements and resultant penalties. Both Suncor and Syncrude claim that they have exceeded the provincial guidelines for reclaimation. Don't actually see here what the "environmentalists" are doing at all with respect to the tar sands....in Canada they've been more interested in trying to ram fishing vessels or throw themselves in front of the Newfoundland seal slaughter.

So people with significant monetary interest in seeing a project going forward claim that environmentalists are profiting from research grants in an effort to discredit them.

and exactly where did I say the enviromental groups were profiting from research grants?? I actually couldn't give two hoots how they make their money.

What I hear from you is irrelevant abuse thrown on skeptics who have yet to be convinced that such large scale mining operations can or will be done on an environmentally sound basis. The companies will get in there, tie in local economies, get into financial trouble, demand relaxation of expensive cleanup efforts, which will be granted at that point because they will have the local economy hostage. Or they will get in there, become wildly profitable encourage the development of more suburbs and autotopias, both locally and wherever their cheap oil supplies are sent, and set up the inevitable debacle when the stuff runs out.

We are talking about tar sands extraction here and specifically tar sand extraction in Northern Alberta.....not mining in general. There is a 30 year history of extraction here and a traceable record of reclaimation......all of the things you say will happen have not happened so far, why would they happen in the future.....do some research before you put finger to keyboard.

[gary_malcolm]

...do some research before you put finger to keyboard.

Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle meet Pot.

The history of the American West (Canada and the U.S.) is one long trail of using and abusing the most convenient natural resource and then moving on...

You claim to be a geologist.

Tell us about stream beds since the innovation of hydraulic gold sluicing in the 1800's.

Tell us about the run-off from the tailings hills that surround so many Nevada and Arizona towns.

How about the second, third and fourth mono-growth tree farms that are weak and growing weaker versions of the original stands? (See British Columbia and Oregon from the air as an example.)

How about the desertification of the Great Basin from open range cattle?

We've been living with the effects of mismanagement so long we don't even recognize them when we see them.

Yes, we have to use natural resources, but we also have no more horizons to cross when we expend what we have now. Planning and conservation of such precious resources in the most extreme manner is simply a matter of future security.

IMHO it's better to lock-up resources than let capitalists squander what we have left.

[Snowrunner]

This just goes to show that money always speaks the same language, and that even a relatively advanced country like Canada is no better than the neocon empire to the south when it comes to $$$. Money will continue to trump environment until it's too late.

I wanted to see the Oil sands first hand so I drove up to Fort McMurray last weekend and had a look for myself.

The first thing I noticed was this sweet smell that seemeed to be lying all over the area, when they trucked us into the Mine it became even worse.

During the "showing" they spoke about Energy Efficency and they claimed 92%, which I highly doubt. In essence I think they only talk about the process of oil and sand seperation, but everything else (e.g. the huge monster trucks they use) isn't accounted for.

Here's a look at part of the mine:



I'll be writing up something more in depth, I also have around 90 minute sof video I have to sort out. The "highlight" I think was when they showed us a four minute "promo" video that was detailling how it all works and how great they are.

It was sort of funny to hear the voice and music which utterly reminded me of a 1950s promo video about nuclear energy: "Don't worry, it is all very complicated but we know what we're doing and it's good for you!".

[Snowrunner]

Basically my end conclusion was they ripped up everything to get to the sand. They then collected the sand and processed the oil out of it. The oil free(and probably completely dead) dirt was then piled back into the hole it had come from and eventually it was all smoothed and replanted.

I'm sure it's not as good as original but I don't think it's much worse then your average city soccerfield.

The only thing that bothered me was the river heading through everything had a sheen of oil on it. This could be natural for all I know but it made me think of it as polluted because it's not at all like water out here that is clean.

After being there last weekend the issue I see is that the vegetation may not be coming back that easily.

It is not as far north as say Siberia with Perma Frost, but there have been studies done that seem to indicate that the higher you go the more fragile the eco system becomes (not too surprising, to survive up there you need to be highly specialized).

The pits are ugly though, as can be seen at the Aurora Mine that SynCrude has opened in 2000.

[seldom_seen]

Some one made the comment that it would take a great deal of natural gas and water. Its true. Alberta has been drilling for decades and you should see the number of farmers who can no longer produce crops.

My understanding is that much of the water needed would come from the Athabasca river. The Peace-Athabasca Delta is one of the largest freshwater deltas in the world. Canadian Wildlife Service counted 220 species of birds, mammals and fish that inhabit the delta. In 1982, the delta was recognized by the Convention on the Conservation of Wetlands of International Importance (also known as the Ramsar Convention) as an internationally significant site for waterfowl habitat.

So when people say "oh it's just a bunch of dirt and scrub forest." They're really talking out of their ass.

[rockdoc123]

Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle meet Pot.

The history of the American West (Canada and the U.S.) is one long trail of using and abusing the most convenient natural resource and then moving on...

You claim to be a geologist.

Tell us about stream beds since the innovation of hydraulic gold sluicing in the 1800's.

Tell us about the run-off from the tailings hills that surround so many Nevada and Arizona towns.

How about the second, third and fourth mono-growth tree farms that are weak and growing weaker versions of the original stands? (See British Columbia and Oregon from the air as an example.)

How about the desertification of the Great Basin from open range cattle?

We've been living with the effects of mismanagement so long we don't even recognize them when we see them.

Exactly what does this have to do with the current situation in the tar sands? History is history....we learn from it, that is why the US has Superfund which they enacted after the Exxon Valdez and this is why there is a very significant environmental regulatory effort in Alberta surrounding the oil industry. I haven't seen anyone post a record of an environmental claim made against Suncor or Syncrude....what I have seen is these companies public statements that they are exceeding the environmental reclaimation standards set out by the government. You can sit there and imagine all you want about how the oil companies must be destroying the enviroment in Athabasca but there is no proof of that from what I have seen to the contrary it looks like they are doing a good job of stewardship. Showing pictures of active mine sites is cheery picking at it's best. As Suncor and Syncrude both say they are gradually reclaiming areas as they are shut-down from a mining perspective.

When it is all said and done I would suggest the American's here simply put their actions where there mouths are...don't buy our oil, it looks like the Chinese want it and I'm not sure you will be able to pay your bills anyways.

[MrBill]

Wayne Roberts, Bowden, Alberta
In October 1998, Wayne Roberts, a rancher near Bowden, was charged with killing Patrick Kent, a Calgary oil executive. Roberts had been embroiled in a two-year dispute with Kent’s company, KB Resources, over a contaminated well site situated on Roberts’ ranch. Kent was shot when he came onto Roberts’ land to inspect the contaminated well. Roberts, who did not have a criminal record at the time, was charged with first-degree murder. A dozen Alberta farmers set up a defence fund for Roberts, which could be an indication of just how much sympathy other farmers feeling for his predicament

Intresting. I think I used to play ice hockey with Wayne back in high school. Everytime I drive by Bowden I wonder what he is up to?

[Snowrunner]

Showing pictures of active mine sites is cheery picking at it's best. As Suncor and Syncrude both say they are gradually reclaiming areas as they are shut-down from a mining perspective.

Yes, that would be "cherry picking" to some degree, but what I have seen of the reclaimed land doesn't necessarily give me a good feeling either.

The further north you go the more touchy the eco system becomes. Ripping it all apart, then filling it back up may make it look like it is "as good as new" (and yes, they do apparantly keep the top soil seperate), but it alone doesn't gurantee it is.

After an open heart surgery you are "as good as new" as well, and yet, you're still not the same. I doubt very much it is different with the land.

Here is a shot of the reclaimed land, you can see the plant in the background.

I also have quite a bit of video from there, but I didn't get around yet to actually cut it and make it ready for the net.

My biggest problem right now isn't even the land reclaimation, I think they will do a "fine enough" job on this one and if the land has a couple of hundred years afterwards it will recover, but rather claims like being "92% energy efficent", which sounds really really good, yet one has to wonder how true those claims are considering that they seem (as one example) use huge cooling towers to cool down the water they used for the seperation process (why not use a heat exchanger and feeed it back into the process?).

You also can't quite understand just HOW large the affected area is, have a look at this satellite image.

And this isn't even the NEWEST image, I am sure it is at least a year or two old. If you scroll south you see Ft. McMurray.

[RealJoe]

The following is a post I made to the forum of the local Seattle-area peak oil and sustainability group. Our web site is www.seattleoil.com and I write there under the moniker: writing-on-the-wall. Here's the post:

I tend to read a lot on renewable energy sites/blogs and also on energy business sites like www.321energy.com. Because of this I encounter lots of information on things like tar sand development, coal gasification and liquefaction projects and the recently accelerated uranium exploration and coal field developments. Then yesterday, the front page of the Seattle Times had an article on how Buckhorn, that Okanagon valley gold mining project may be restarted after it and Slade Groton was defeated six or so years ago. Apparently, this time Buckhorn will be mined by internal shafts following the ore veins, instead of having the mountaintop blown off and fed to a processing plant, something guaranteed to create a huge cyanide tailing lake that would poison the regional watershed.

This has lead me to wondering if oil depletion is going to lead to a huge rise in destructive mining projects and practices. Heavy energy demand will continue if not increase for a number of years yet and we can absolutely expect that any sandstone formation that might have fossil fuels in it will experience exploratory drilling. Besides the massive drilling, it appears that clean-coal technologies (we can hope) and coal gasification/liquefaction plants are on the project books right now and certain to have environmental restrictions and controls minimized (We do need that energy!).

Add to this the tens of billions of dollars being invested into expanding the tar sand projects in Alberta with those monster shovels and dump trucks leading to new levels of forest/wetlands removal and strip-mining. Then there is copper, which is expected to peak very soon and far before oil or natural gas. With copper demand rising in China and soon to increase in the USA and everywhere due to the need to build many more high voltage transmission power lines from wind farms and nuclear powerplants. So more base metal mining is a given and since the higher quality ores have been mostly found and used up, the lower quality ores will produce much more waste material and tailings.

Which brings up gold mining, perhaps the most environmentally destructive mining technology of all when projects use the cyanide extraction processes. How can people not be expected to explore for and mine gold if its the price rises justify the mining of even very low quality ores? Of course, the lower the quality of gold ore, the more likely cyanide extraction technology will be employed. If environmental restrictions are somehow miraclously kept in place, then we will see non-legitimate, shadowy and black-market gold mining taking place.

All in all, I fear petroleum depletion will lead to all sorts of destructive mining practices. A trend that seems to already be started, because from my reading, literally billions of dollars is being invested into all sorts of gold, silver, copper, uranium, tar sand and coal mining projects. Few developments are less ecologically desirable. In fact only deforestation for firewood, cooking charcoal and biofuels is more harmful.

[Heineken]

I think it's become fairly obvious that we're going to keep on destroying as long as we can. Any resources that are available and accessible will be used until they're exhausted, no matter the cost. There will be minor political staying actions along the way, but ultimately voracious human need---and greed---will prevail. It's all going now, at a quickening rate---sort of like the Titanic as it started plunging almost vertically downward.

[PhilBiker]

Mountaintop Coal Mining in Appalachia

This is a large part of the reason that I advocate nuclear power with breeders in order to minimize our energy mining footprint. We need mining to forward the mechanisms of civilization, but it needs to be done in as responsible a manner as possible.

[Kickinthegob]

This has lead me to wondering if oil depletion is going to lead to a huge rise in destructive mining projects and practices

Going to lead or already has. Mountain top mining, tar sands - wait until the depletion kicks in. I fear for the Okanagon too, that area has a long history of mining but not the modern form of it. Have you ever taken a close look at satellite images of the north west, WA and BC, the clear cuts are scary.
Vancouver Island clear cuts

[BrazilianPO]

Click here for the story

CALGARY -- The oil sands' thirst for water is far outstripping Alberta's projections, threatening to drain the Athabasca River as the pace of project development accelerates, a prominent environmental group says in a report issued yesterday.

And Alberta Environment Minister Guy Boutilier said the province will start charging for water use, if necessary, to curb consumption in an increasingly parched province.

Environmental groups have long warned of the peril posed by using water to separate bitumen from the oily sands of northern Alberta, but the figures released yesterday by the Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development indicate that the threat is more imminent than previously believed....

[BrazilianPO]

Looks like exploring those oil sands is not going to be easy. They have now reached water usage levels predicted only for 2015 . The exploration is growing rapidly, but they are at risk of basically running out of water before they run out of bitumen.

[AZpeaker]

Okay, the water is heated to create steam which melts the tar sands. What happens when the water cools? Where does it go? How is it treated? Seriously folks, if you are tapping a river dry the water must be flowing out the other end of production in a river as well.


It's what YOU do that counts!

[Starvid]

Maybe the water turns to steam, flies away and make clouds?

But hey, start desalinating the sea and pipe it to Alberta. Then you'll have some use for the CANDU's.

[Eli]

Well the water actually is made into lakes, nice black foul smelling lakes of contaminated waste water.

[ClassicSpiderman]

Alberta is the last remaining jurisdiction in N. America where one can experience 'the American Dream'. I should know--I live here.

There is nearly full employment, universal health care, a housing boom (it is a seller's market--my house has doubled in the 2 years).

I bet that most of N. American urban centers were a lot like Calgary during the 1960s when the post-war generation took plentiful growth for granted.

As the peak oil crisis grows worse and worse, there will be two types of North Americans--the 'haves' (those who live in Alberta) and the 'have nots' (everybody else). There will be a revolt where either Canada nationalizes Alberta's oil or the US will annex Alberta and economic refugees from California come streaming in for the black gold rush.

As for the water thing, I hope that the tree huggers manage to get the government to put taxes on water or some other way to restrict population growth. That means more $$$ for those of us who are fortunate to live here and we don't have to share them with desperate unemployed yuppies from Toronto who want to come here.

Want to hear something funny? My politics are conservative but I'm not a sucker. It would be in my best economic interests to have an anti-sprawl government to halt this mad dash for growth. I hope I can convince enough of my fellow Albertans to actually vote in a tree hugger Prime Minister--our houses would be worth MILLIONS on paper as a result