Canada's oil sands are besieged with two myths: That a "clean" coal technology exists and that the oil sands imperil the planet as the world's dirtiest fuel.
Both statements are bunk and yet they inform an environmental movement that swarms the White House and Congress to fight the Keystone XL pipeline designed to bring more oil sands exports from Canada.
Meanwhile, for instance, they are not swarming around America's biggest carbon dioxide emissions culprit -- Southern Company's Scherer Plant. In 2007, the plant was the single largest source of carbon dioxide in the U.S. and 20th biggest worldwide, spewing out 27 million tons annually.
And while the environmental industry attacked Keystone during the 2012 election campaign with large protests and media noise, there were no dramatic sit-ins or mass arrests in Georgia or other dirty coal plants. In fact, that year the Scherer Plant hired KBR Haliburton to build yet-another gigantic smoke stack, increasing emissions.
Comparing a single plant with the oil sands sector may sound unfair, but consider the numbers. The Scherer Plant's emissions alone are equivalent to 75% of the carbon dioxide produced by Canada's oil sands and yet the filthy Georgia utility gets a pass while the oil sands are dubbed the pariah of polluters.
Digging deeper, the Georgia emissions are far worse using the "wheel to wheel" measure that environmentalists like to apply to the oil sands. This is because the Scherer is fed with coal from distant Wyoming and every day between two and five trains, with 124 cars each, are unloaded in Georgia. And there are dozens more plants like this one across the U.S.
But the greens pick on the oil sands even though a recent report stated that the oil sands have 9% more emissions than average crudes but roughly the same as most foreign crudes or California's heavy crudes. Canada's an easy target because Canadians don't vote in the U.S. and the Keystone XL Pipeline is even easier because there are so many jurisdictions to lobby.
What's most disturbing about oil sands bashing is that it may offer a distraction from smart energy/environmental policy. There are other benefits involved in importation of oil sands crude oil that are never acknowledged:
1. Canada is a reliable supplier, now providing 28% of America's oil imports.
2. Buying more crude oil from Canada is simply a means of backing out of equally heavy, or dirty, oil from Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq. The U.S. cannot become totally oil independent.
3. Buying crude from Canada to value-add in U.S. refineries creates American jobs, as does operating and building pipelines and refineries.
4. Buying crude from Canada benefits the United States directly because the oil is produced in Canada by U.S.-owned companies or by Canadian companies with as much as half their stocks owned by Americans. Money sent to Hugo Chavez or Nigeria or Saudi Arabia never comes back.
5. Buying crude from Canada is more beneficial than buying from other countries because Canada is America's biggest customer, biggest supplier and one of its biggest investment destinations. In other words, the oil profits made by Canadians and their companies will be spent buying American products and services and vacations.
6. Geopolitically, International Energy Agency estimated that the U.S. will produce more oil but need about 4 million barrels a daily from Canada's oil sands to reach energy security by 2035.
7. Environmentally, buying crude from Canada will, one hopes, lead to a comprehensive energy/environmental treaty that will rationalize energy facilities, bankroll a "Manhattan Project" to reduce emissions, develop affordable alternatives and impose continental conservation measures.
8. Foreign policy-wise, the oil sands make sense. I told an audience of oil tycoons eight years ago at the Canadian embassy in Washington that their country's best bet would have been to invest $250 billion to develop the oil sands and back out all foreign oil imports.
"For $250 billion, you'd have acquired all the oil you need, you wouldn't have had to invade Iraq and nobody would have died."
Despite the common sense, nothing much changed because of domestic vested interests tied to the status quo as well as foreign skulduggery. Oil rivals in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Nigeria and elsewhere have been bankrolling and generating criticism of the oil sands for years.
This is because the sands is the only strategic oil deposit in the world in a safe jurisdiction and which is large enough to shut them out of the U.S. market. It would be in China's interest to shut Canadian oil out of the U.S. so it can import it readily.
But the matter will be resolved soon. President Obama can approve or nix the pipeline and may use it as a bargaining chip in his fiscal negotiations with Republicans, who have mostly lined up in favor of oil sand imports and Keystone.
But messages are mixed which means he hasn't weighed all options. His postponement of Keystone in 2011 doesn't preclude approval because in 2009 he approved a bigger pipeline from the oil sands. The delay was mostly due to the election, but he still may turn it down.
On the other hand, many Canadian oil interests took his silence in the State of the Union on the issue as a positive sign. There was also an interesting argument in favor of the pipeline this week in the Washington Post by Obama-friendly Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary: "Those who will decide whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run between the tar sands of western Canada and Nebraska, need to recognize that Canadian oil not flowing to the United States will probably flow to Asia, where it will be burned with fewer environmental protections."
The facts are that the oil sands is not the environmental line in the sand that activists have concocted. In 2012, U.S. coal-fired power plants account for roughly 25% of the carbon dioxide produced in the world, China's coal plant for 24% -- a combined total larger than all other countries globally.
"Coal presents a climate challenge 1500x greater than that presented by the oil sands," wrote University of Victoria Professor Andrew Weaver in Nature Climate Change. "We will live or die by our future consumption of coal."
Despite that, American oil sands combatant Bill McKibben has labeled the oil sands as "the dirtiest fuel on Earth".
He's totally wrong. Coal is the energy killer and one hopes the White House will opt for smart, rather than expedient, policies.
Follow Diane Francis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@dianefrancis1
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No other country in the world subsidizes a private industry that makes billions in profits. Each gallon of gasoline sold in the United states should have a green tax applied to it, and that money should be immediately applied research into everything from fusion to wind and solar power.
As for the Tar Sands, the developers have been in breach of contract with the Canadian people since the seventies, since the promise was that they would develop a clean method of extraction BEFORE massive profits would be distributed. The greenhouse effect of simply producing a barrel of Tar Sands oil is shocking, never mind the refining and use of the byproducts. But no one seems to be counting that nowadays. Not one dime of profit should leave the country until they fix this. Not one permit should be issued until they get their act together.
I want my fusion powered flux capacitor that I ordered twenty years ago and I blame the oil companies for not allowing it to be invented yet.
Hmmmm. According to this report, Canada only supplies about 15.1%
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised.
Makes me question the validity of the rest of the info.
All Francis is doing is repeating the lie tarsands proponents want everyone to believe, and trying to throw out a strawman: dirty coal.
The trouble with folks like Francis is they only want to hear what they want to hear. They don’t want to hear that the tarsands will never replace foreign oil; dirty or otherwise. The tarsands aren’t resource limited, they are process limited, they need huge supplies of water and nat gas. And as those necessities become increasingly costly the cost of extraction will skyrocket. There will be no “Manhattan Project” to deal with CO2 emissions; that’s a dream of those who still believe in the tooth fairy and santa claus.
And they don’t want to hear that we’re at the tipping point in CO2-induced climate change.
oil execs dont to the right thing --they do what is expedient --and it blows up in their faces often ---BP comes to mind ---pipeline leaks come to mind
The only alternative for doing away with carbon burning is no SUVs, no fresh fruit and vegatives in the winter, not heating our houses as much, using cold water to bath in and having fewer children.
"Since the beginning of human civilization up until about 200 years ago, our atmosphere contained about 275 parts per million of carbon dioxide."
"350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere."
Currently, "the planet has about 392 parts per million CO2 – and this number is rising by about 2 parts per million every year."
"Scientists are now saying that's too much – that number is higher than any time seen in the recorded history of our planet—and we're already beginning to see disastrous impacts on people and places all over the world."
Quoted source: 350.org
Want to see the National Post's series on scientists who are climate change deniers? See their article "Climate change: The Deniers"
Most scientists in the world agree that global warming is manmade - and that means the burning of oil, dirty or not. I find it irresponsible to keep planting narrow half-truths about the present economy in light of the damage to the future of our planet.
No. Coal is esily replacable with dozens of here-today green alternatives unlike oil. Which is better for the planet? Removing 2.2 billion tons of coal produced GHG's per year (that's the US only) or keeping them and removing 78 million tons per year.....only to have those 78 million tons replaced by increased production of the very same dirty oil in Venezuelia, China or Nigeria?
Um, we're Canadians. The tar sands is OUR largest source of CO2, so it's up to us to oppose it. And we have a bigger carbon footprint per capita than the U.S., so we have a greater responsibility to be public about it. If the Scherer Plant goes unopposed, shame on them; it's their responsibility. If the tar sands go unopposed, the shame is on us.
Typical all-or-nothing thinking from the fossil fuel apologists. Ho hum.
You don't what the heck you're talking about. Our gas and oil sector only makes up 7% of our total CO2 emissions.
"And we have a bigger carbon footprint per capita than the U.S., so we have a greater responsibility to be public about it."
No we don't. the US is not only the largest culprit for per capita CO2 emissions, but it emits 21% of total global GHG emissions. Canada is only 1.9%.
"If the tar sands go unopposed, the shame is on us."
If you ruled the country and shut down our oil sands sector, the economic results of a double dip recession, 150,000+ job losses, 20-30% less in exports, and $10's of billions in tax revenue losses would make you ashamed. Fortunately, thank god mindless ideologues don't rule our country.
"Typical all-or-nothing thinking from the fossil fuel apologists. Ho hum."
So out of 8 reasons that she provided, you try to refute one reason of her's with half truths and lies, and think you disproved her entire argument?
http://www.ec.gc.ca/doc/publications/cc/COM1374/ec-com1374-en-s2.htm#s2-1
I believe it's up to around 24-25% now, but I don't have time to look those figures up now. This something that it took me about 20 seconds to get my hands on, and it's peer reviewed data. Where'd you get your data, the Heartland Institute, perhaps?
In one sense, though, you're right: in the above cited report the Transportation sector contributes more CO2 by 1 or 2%, but of course that's mostly from burning oil as well.
Mindless ideologues DO rule our country; ones that value the short-term profit of a dying industry over the long- term fate of the planet.
Because the oil from Alberta is meant for export, China will most likely get that oil no matter what lines are going to be built. The oil industry isn't particularly interested in who gets it, as it is to who will pay the highest dollar. Converting from coal to Alberta's oil would be a great scenario, but we know that won't happen. Obama knows what he's going to do, he's just hoping we'll think whatever he says was his only option. The Keystone will be built.