Back in 2008 the world was in agreement that the production rate of cheap “quality” crude oil had reached its maximum. But the oil industry says that there is no need to worry since we have, among other things, oil sands to rely on. An advocate of exploiting oil sands was Tommy Nordin, the former managing director for the Swedish Petroleum Institute. Production of oil from oil sands is now the world’s largest single industrial project and it is destroying part of Canada’s natural world. It is also destroying the environment of the region’s indigenous peoples. If the Keystone XL pipeline is built the production of oil from the oil sands can reach 2.5 million barrels per day, approximately 3% of the world’s oil production. Around 50% of the production is open mining. Look at these images and decide if you want gasoline and diesel from this oil (click on each image). In Sweden, the oil companies assure us that they are not using it.
(I have also added an image of in situ production, 50% of the production)
(Swedish)
Världen är överens om att den billiga ”fina” råoljan har nått maximal produktion, det gjorde man 2008. Men oljeindustrin säger att vi inte skall oroa oss, vi har bland annat oljesand. En förespråkare för oljesand var Tommy Nordin, före detta VD för Svenska petroleuminstitutet (se artikel i Dagens Industri). Oljesandsutvinningen är nu världens största industriprojekt som förstör en del av Kanadas natur. Den förstör också miljön för områdets utinvånare. Om Keystone XL byggs kan produktionen av oljesand nå 2.5 miljoner fat om dagen, ungefär 3% av världens oljeproduktion. Titta på dessa bilder och ta ställning till om du vill ha bensin och diesel från denna olja (klicka på varje bild). I Sverige försäkrar oljebolagen att man inte har det.
(bilder från utvinning av oljesand)
(På begäran infogar jag en bild på in situ utvinning i Kanada)
Aleklett's Energy Mix 
Ludvig
April 17, 2013
Varför länkar du bara till miningdelen av oljesandsutvinningen? Det ökar mest för insitu extraction eller hur? Detta är inte vackert på något sätt men är det inte bättre att visa hela sanningen än bara en del som passar ens eget syfte?
Tyvärr har jag inte så mkt erfarenhet men jag kan tänka mig att det ser liknande ut i många gruvområden. Hur ser de tyska brunkolsgruvorna ut? Där är vi alla stolta ägare genom vattenfall. Vill vi ha de elen? Bilderna på raffar skiljer sig inte så mkt från de bilder över stora industriområden var de än är placerade.
Det är tragiskt att se dessa bilder och vad vi är beredda att offra för att få det vi vill ha men lika synd att detta inte belyses i inlägget att allt kanske inte ser likadant ut. Sanningen är tillräckligt starkt så den behöver inte vinklas!
/Ludvig
Rune A
April 17, 2013
Att oljeutvinning på något sätt är miljövänligt har väl aldrig påståtts?
Tar du själv någon slags ställning till K-XL? Det förefaller så i texten.
Oljeutvinning bör i så fall diskuteras både vad gäller Ryska pipelines, utvinning i djuphavsområden på kilometerdjup, eller i orimligt miljökänsliga områden som Arktisk..
Dessutom finns enormt stor skillnad i benämningen oljesand. In Situ-utvinning eller gruvdrift är två helt olika saker.
Det här inlägget med smaskiga bilder känns lite osakligt och känslogrundat, för att komma på din sida Kjell. Knappast någon vetenskaplig utredning här.
Mvh
aleklett
April 17, 2013
Många har ingen aning om hur det ser ut. Bilderna är en upplysning.
Karl
April 29, 2013
Det finns en betydligt bättre blogg om dessa frågor här:
http://peakenergi.wordpress.com
Och denna kille har en betydligt mer seriös bild av tarsands och K-XL:
http://peakenergi.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/keystone-xl-for-miljons-skull/
Rune A
April 17, 2013
Eller Sydamerikas regnskogar..
Olja är ingen snygg sak någonstans Kjell.
Fred Rastar
April 17, 2013
Det finns total 142 Gb olja där och det behövs 200 Tef gas för att kunna utvinna hela oljan fast hela kanadas gas reservat är 58 Tef och bara 10% av det används till olje utvinning så total kan 6 Gb utvinnas från fältet, för mer information om detta kolla på den länken nedan,
Fred Rastar
April 17, 2013
sand olja löser inte problemet det gör priset på olja att stiga ännu mer, år 2000 en fat olja var $20 år 2010 $100, om den här fortsätter vi får år 2020 $500 till $600 då bensinen kommer och kosta 75:- till 90:- liter detta innebär att arbetslösheten stiger till 50% och välfärden kollapsar vi får helt enkelt inte kunna importera så mycket livsmedel som vi gör idag,
aleklett
April 17, 2013
Jag har nu lagt till en bild på in situ utvinning och helt riktigt är den inte lika smutsig men den tar i anspråk stora utrymmen. Det är riktigt att in situ ökar men det gör även dagbrotten. Ser man på framtida produktion så verkar det bli ungefär hälften av varje. Vad jag vill visa är att en mycket begränsad volym, om vi tar bort in situ, blir det 1.5% av världsproduktionen som teoretiskt enligt den forskningsrapport som vi publicerade 2007 maximalt kan bli 2 miljoner fat om dagen gör ett ofantligt stort fotavtryck. Vad det gäller Keystone XL så är det tveksamt om man kommer att bygga om så många raff i USA så att den verkligen behövs. Skifferoljan gör oljesanden mindre attraktiv.
Jan
April 19, 2013
“Världens största och smutsigaste industriprojekt”
Du menar Kanadas smutsigaste industriprojekt, kanske.
Delar av det mest industrialiserade Kina med sina mångmiljonstäder är ur hälsosynpunkt närmast obeboeliga, miljökatastrofer av skilda slag förekommer regelbundet och floderna tillhör de mest förorenade i världen.
Peter Shepherd
April 23, 2013
Great graphic to show how hard it is to reclaim land to previous state. Much of the surface is boreal forest & peat bog that cannot be reclaimed at any price, even if oil companies wanted to. According to limnologist David Schindler their idea of reclamation is thin layers of soil and little strips of wetland to replace boreal forest. CBC has an excellent updated documentary online at http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/tipping-point.html
And for atmospheric externality cost the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently gave a paper:
Canada’s Carbon Liabilities
The Implications of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets for Financial Markets and Pension Funds
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/canadas-carbon-liabilities
Anna
April 29, 2013
Since it seems totally impossible to get the world to consume less energy, are not the tar sand project and the XL Keystone pipeline better alternatives than for instance the oil extraction in Nigeria? Or what are the “clean” alternatives. There is an interesting blog post about this (in Swedish) on http://peakenergi.wordpress.com.
Peter Shepherd
April 29, 2013
The graph on well to wheel emissions from http://peakenergi.wordpress.com is from http://www.oilsands.alberta.ca
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n5/fig_tab/nclimate1180_F1.html
is a slightly more objective graph.
The Pembina Institute in Canada has something on this http://www.pembina.org/oil-sands/os101/climate, though it’s not terribly up to date.
As for oilsands being the green alternative, we’re already trapping over 50 times more solar energy from AGW than we use, see http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/explained-radforce-0309.html : “The current level of radiative forcing, according to the IPCC AR4, is 1.6 watts per square meter (with a range of uncertainty from 0.6 to 2.4). That may not sound like much, Prinn says, until you consider the total land area of the Earth and multiply it out, which gives a total warming effect of about 800 terawatts — more than 50 times the world’s average rate of energy consumption, which is currently about 15 terawatts.”
Climate scientists rightly point out that extracting these unconventional reserves will overshoot our carbon budget, and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF recently warned: “Unless we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled.” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/roasted-toasted-fried-and-grilled-climate-change-talk-from-an-unlikely-source/article8077946/
Climate scientists may miss the peak oil bus to some degree, but the result of society missing the climate science train will be much greater than local damage to landforms pictured in the original post. This is not to diminish local effects – I bet not a single person on this forum would drink the Athabaska river water downstream from the tailing ponds, nor eat the fish riddled with cancer that the indigenous populations has been left with. They too have record levels of cancers only associated with industrial pollution from these operations. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/27/keystone-xl-oil-sands-health_n_3164615.html for more on this.
Peter Shepherd
April 29, 2013
For those interested in a how Alberta is doing on making the oilsands more sustainable, the Pembina Institute has just today released an update “Solving the Puzzle Progress Update 2013” http://www.pembina.org/pub/2443 Pembina is based in Alberta and has engineers and some ex oil-industry staff working for them.
I think that Canada and Alberta have many similarities to Norway in how we see ourselves.
Kari Marie Norgaard has an excellent environmental sociological analysis of how Norway, the US and the world in general looks at climate change. Many of the sociological insights are transferable to the threat of peak oil (& Swedes) as well, and go a long way to explaining why people are resistant to change, to seeing the multiple reasons we must reduce consumption.
The best and most recent of the four articles on her site is
Click to access NorgaardOxfordChapterPageProofs.pdf
Jonas
April 30, 2013
Sorry for jumping in here but I really need to get this straight.
Peter, noone says that oil extraction in Alberta is pretty, but the guy with the blog (http://peakenergi.wordpress.com) has a point.
The majority of the greenhouse gases are emitted when the oil is consumed, not produced.
The average Californina heavy oil is dirtier than the average canadian tar sands oil.
The average Nigerian oil is just as dirty as the averge tar sands oil. But the oil spills and environmental effects are much worse in Nigeria than in Canada.
So what he says is that the US should build the KeystoneXL and import the Canadian oil instead of producing dirtier oil in Californa, and importing even dirtier oil from Nigeria. Fruther, if you are serious about the emission, you can also force people to use less oil by taxing gasoline or something. However, the blog guy claims that this will never happen in the US since it is not very popular.
All he says makes more sense to me than just complaining about the tar sands, or what is your point? I get it that solar is great but I think you know that this is no replacement for oil, at least not today.
So we will still use oil no matter what, why should we then export our environmental problems to Nigeria? Would it not be more honest to extract the oil in North America where it is consumed?
Lasse
April 30, 2013
Hej Kjell!
Hur kan Sveriges radio göra följande reportage om skiffergasen som gör USA oljeoberoende, utan att nämna Peak Oil? “USA beräknas gå om Saudiarabien och bli världens största oljeproducent…”
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1637&artikel=5519990
Lasse
Lars-Eric Bjerke
May 1, 2013
Lasse,
Jag frågade faktiskt producenten Magnus Thorén detta den 29/4 med referens till http://cornucopia.cornubot.se/2013/03/usa-kommer-inte-bli-sjalvforsorjande-pa.html
Han lovade kontakta reportern Sten Sjöholm och återkomma, vilket han ännu inte gjort. Jag bad dessutom om en rättelse.
Peter Shepherd
May 1, 2013
Jonas, it’s not just me “just complaining about the tarsands”.
1. It’s the First Nations and fish getting cancer from the combustion soot of 1 million tonnes of coke to upgrade the oil in Alberta. Again, you would neither drink Athabaska river water nor eat the fish – there’s a picture of one of these fish on the CBC documentary on the tarsands at the first link I posted: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/tipping-point.html If tables were reversed, would you trade your health for their energy supply wishes or needs?
2. I did not bring up alternative generation issues. My reference to solar energy was to point out the disbenefit of positive radiative forcing from our past emissions. If you honestly want to get things straight it would be more considerate to read what others write, and respond after you’ve looked at their links. I am very interested in both peak fossil and climate change and like reading Kjell’s work, which is why I posted here in the first place. They are both serious challenges to society and ecosystem which should not be played off against each other.
3. The physics of climate change may seem like a distraction from energy security and economics, but it is no less real, and is already having an impact on energy security itself. If you shifted the ocean heat content anomaly (93 % has partitioned there) from AGW to the atmosphere (2% partition) , the atmosphere would be at 65 C and all mammals would be no more. Skeptical Science: http://www.skepticalscience.com/further-comments-on-economist-climate-sensitivity.html
This will of course not happen all at once, but even a small fraction of that heat shifted it would produce big earth system changes.
4. Similarly with ocean pH there are ecosytem limits to consider outside of human energy supply needs. The normal range for ocean pH is 0.1, the same narrow window as for human physiology to support carbon exchange, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood#Narrow_range_of_pH_values
If we mine and add more carbon to the atmosphere the ocean will likely have trouble handling that much more acid. See
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/07/16/bc-ocean-acidification.html featuring UBC PhD student Kathryn Anderson and Chris Harley, and
http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/06/14/OceanAcidification/ – graph from Turley et al
pH change doesn’t have to be a extremely low ocean average to have dire implications, see Chart C below for very low 7.6 pH lapping up onto an ocean shelf, from http://www.scor-int.org/High_CO2_II/Presentations/Feely.pdf :
5. Please note that this is evidence of what’s already happened, so even if Kjell is entirely correct on limits to coal-to-liquids, and David Rutledge also correct in his catalogue, we’re already seeing massive energetic earth system changes and feedbacks not included in Rutledge’s spreadsheets. They are discrete threats that do not cancel each other out, no matter how disturbing either are to consider. You may think it’s easy for a Canadian with more fossil energy security than a Northern European to say, but it’s not (or shouldn’t be) if we’re honest about thinking about the implications.
6. The IEA warns about locking in high-fossil infrastructure, Fig 5.11, http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/2011/key_graphs.pdf
7. The US military says climate change is the largest security threat
http://www.rtcc.org/us-generals-warn-of-climate-change-dangers/ Signatories include former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, General Wesley Clark, Richard Armitage, George W. Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State and Anthony Zinni, a retired four star general in the Marine Corps. March 1, 2013
8. Energy is mis-priced: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/imf-citing-trillions-in-government-subsidies-calls-for-end-to-mispricing-of-energy/2013/03/27/09957d6e-96e1-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html?wpmk=MK0000200 , Howard Schneider, March 27, 2013.
9. The GAO adds climate as financial risk
http://www.gao.gov/press/high_risk_additions_2013feb14.htm
How many other actors do you need to say that developing unconventional sources has too high a cost?
I realize that if tables were turned, and it was a Northern European (or Russian) outside my house giving a quarter-turn-to-off on my gas valve (physically or economically) that I’d probably be saying something different, but it doesn’t negate the truth of environmental limits.
Canadian’s consume 35% more energy per capita than Swedes do, so we have much further to go than you (if you’re Swedish). p 50 & 56, IEA Key World Energy Statistics:
Click to access kwes.pdf
Peter Shepherd
May 1, 2013
Jonas – the Keystone XL isn’t primarily for US consumption, it’s for oil companies to make money exporting dilbit via the US. I think Kjell makes this clear in another post describing capacity of existing upgraders.
Peter Shepherd
May 1, 2013
This is an excellent article by Andrew Nikiforuk, Canada’s top journalist specializing in the oilsands.
Bitumen’s Extraordinary and Popular Delusions
Behold the latest mystical and ecstatic pronouncements of Keystone XL acolytes.
By Andrew Nikiforuk, 9 Mar 2013, TheTyee.ca
“At length corruption, like a general flood,
Did deluge all, and avarice creeping on,
Spread, like a low-born mist, and hid the sun.
Statesmen and patriots plied alike the stocks,
Peeress and butler shared alike the box;
And judges jobbed, and bishops bit the town,
And mighty dukes packed cards for half-a-crown:”
— Alexander Pope
It has been an extraordinary couple of weeks for bitumen mania and related delusions as Canadian politicians and oil executives rally around the Keystone XL pipeline the way drunken bankers once talked up the ill-fated South Sea Company in the 18th century.
Canada’s Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver who hawks bitumen better than a seasoned tulip speculator, even dubbed the tarry junk crude a “greener alternative” in a Chicago speech.
The very next day Oliver told a Houston crowd they had but one choice: Americans could buy “low-cost oil from a friend and ally with a robust environmental protection regime” or purchase expensive oil from unsavoury people elsewhere.
Other bitumen champions hailed bitumen mines as a steaming example of “responsible resource development.” Why the resource will even improve the energy security of North America!
In particular Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall gushed liked a ruptured Enbridge pipeline in Washington, D.C., about bitumen’s sordid charms which, of course, include more dollars and jobs for Americans than Canadians.
Al Monaco, CEO of Enbridge, the very firm that produced the continent’s most expensive oil spill with diluted bitumen and then responded like the Keystone Cops, cheered on the mania with a call for a “balanced national discussion” on the immediate construction of more pipelines.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford crossed the border too and promoted Keystone XL as a glorious petroleum windfall for all. Oddly her rapturous presentations did not explain why the bitumen republic of Alberta has recorded five sorry deficits in a row and saved nothing for the future.
Given the hubris of bitumen’s cheerful advocates, naive Americans might well conclude that a scandal-free Pope will also emerge from the end of the Keystone pipeline only to plop contentedly into the lap of a Valero refinery on the Gulf Coast. Bitumen, it seems, can deliver miracles.
Heresies
But Canada’s slavish promoters omitted the troubling facts as hawkers do. They said nothing, for example, about bitumen’s poor quality, unending carbon liabilities, soaring costs and appalling energy returns. They also lied about Canada’s pathetic environmental record.
The first big omission, of course, concerns bitumen’s role in climate change. The Canadians, for example, did not mention how the great ice fields covering the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the largest collection of ice outside of Greenland and Antarctica, will soon lose a fifth of their volume due to the burning of fossil fuels.
In fact, the deeper that industry digs into the tar sands and the more shale gas the industry burns to upgrade the stuff (one-fifth of Canada’s annual gas consumption), the smaller the continent’s glaciers will become.
Bitumen, which now accounts for 10 per cent of Canada’s warming emissions and explains the government’s determined muzzling of climate scientists, can only contribute to climate instability and uncertainty. It is a dead end and part of the larger global assault on Creation.
Moreover Canada’s environmental record reads like a con game with failing marks on energy intensity, smog and waste generation. Even the Conference Board of Canada recently gave the nation a mark of “D” on climate change.
Thanks to rapid tar sands production, Canada “remains one of the world’s largest per capita GHG (greenhouse gas) emitters and ranks 15th out of 17 OECD countries on GHG emissions per capita.” And contrary to Oliver’s bitumen appeals, this dismal record is not improving.
Natural Resource Minister Oliver also fudged the facts on Canada’s environmental regime. It is Third World. The right-wing petro state of Stephen Harper, acting on instructions from aggressive pipeline lobbyists, has now dismantled three of the nation’s most important environmental laws to ease the construction of bitumen pipelines.
Damn those fish
The Navigable Waters Protection Act has become the Navigation Protection Act. The Orwellian transformation effectively removed 2.5 million lakes and waterways from environmental protection. The government also gutted the Fisheries Act and Canada’s Environmental Assessment Act. As a consequence, Chinese funded pipelines don’t have to worry about destroying fish habitats or doing annoying impact studies.
And for good measure and to show the government’s disdain for environmental science, Harper’s team disbanded the Experimental Lakes Area, a federal research group that once made Canada a champion of freshwater protection.
Canadian pipeline executives also failed to declare their conflict of interest with bitumen mining. They love the ultra-heavy hydrocarbon because the difficult hydrocarbon requires twice as much pipeline infrastructure as light oil. That’s right: bitumen is to pipeline companies what gamblers are to casinos: a way to get richer.
The junk crude is so thick and heavy that transporting the stuff takes 30 to 50 per cent more pipe in the ground. Industry not only needs one line to export diluted bitumen but another to import the higher-value light hydrocarbons needed to liquefy the tar for export.
Sensible public policy that demanded bitumen be upgraded and refined into synthetic fuel, gasoline or diesel within Canadian borders would, of course, end Canada’s great pipeline mania. But TransCanada and Enbridge now hold Ottawa captive and have rewritten the nation’s laws.
Then there is the issue of cost. The crowd in Houston probably snickered at Oliver’s preposterous comments about bitumen being “low-cost.” Wayne Kelley, a straight shooter at RSK Limited, recently noted an investment of $8 billion in the Middle East yields one million barrels of oil a day. That’s low-cost oil.
In contrast, it takes $45 billion to mine one million barrels of bitumen and then tens of billions more to upgrade and refine it. That’s the world’s most expensive oil.
Energy returns and the return of reason
The real problem with high-cost bitumen, notes Tullett Prebon (one of Britain’s largest financial players), are its lousy energy returns. Good light oil takes one barrel of energy to put another 20 on the market. That’s a healthy energy return on energy invested (EROEI) and a good surplus.
Not so with bitumen. One barrel only yields five more in Alberta’s open pit mines, while the awful steam plants offer returns as civilization-killing as corn ethanol: 1:1.
Energy returns of five-to-one would not only cripple the economy but also allow a huge wealth transfer to bitumen miners says Tullett Prebon. If the world ran on fuel made from dirty oil, the energy sector would absorb one-sixth of global GDP — double what it now does. It would be like running the global economy on the equivalent of $280 a barrel for oil.
Devoting more capital to bitumen sprawl, of course, means squeezing and cannibalizing the rest of economy as well as shrinking food and water supplies, warns the terrifying 2012 Tullett Prebon report. “A declining EROEI could bomb societies back into the pre-industrial age.”
Last comes the intoxicating B.S. on energy security. Since 2008 United States expenditures on gasoline have fallen like a stone while domestic production from the Bakken has soared. So moving bitumen to the Gulf Coast is really about finding foreign markets for a junk crude that foreign oil companies have overproduced due to Canada’s “give it away” low royalties and taxes.
Charles Mackay, a sensible Scot, nailed it just right though three centuries ago: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Given the number of bitumen maniacs on the prowl, Canada’s politicians show no evidence of recovery.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2013/03/09/Bitumens-Extraordinary-Delusions/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign 0313
Nikiforuk’s last point reminded me that Canadians are subsidizing oilsands at a rate of $1.3 billion/year, charging almost no royalties and a token carbon “regulation” price, which as environmental economist Mark Jaccard points out, is not a carbon tax: http://markjaccard.blogspot.ca/2013/04/albertas-non-carbon-tax-and-our.html
Jonas
May 2, 2013
Peter, first of all I would like to thank you for your comments. You are truly dedicated and write long detailed post. However, you misunderstand my questions.
And for the record, I’m with you all the way on the environmentals and eroei. I know we are killing the planet and I know the fish has cancer, climatechanges will be an issue going forward, we are running out on cheap oil etc.
The first question about oil is if we should consume it at all. I’m still looking for your answer there, but I guess it will be something along the lines of “Yes but very limited and responsible so that we in a controlled manner can reorganize society according to peak oil”. If that’s the case, Im with you all the way there as well. But in that case we should invest all our efforts in eliminating the demand for oil, and prohibit private cars etc. This is where the majority af all emissions originate, right? Killing the tar sands and driving cars on oil from Nigeria is not a victory for the climate at all. You would just be promoting Shell and their agenda, and I guess you are not a lobbyist from the oil industry?
The second question is what oil should be exploited and what should be left down there in the ground. This is however only a relevant question if we actually manage to reduce demand for oil, otherwise all oil will be extracted no matter the cost. Currently we are not in that position, all we can do right now is to choose between the oil from countries like Nigeria and the oil from Canada. So what do you prefer, do you seriously think that we should kill the tar sands and support Shell and their activities in Nigeria? Have you seen any picture from there?
The alternative to importing oil is of course for the US to prodcue its own oil, however shale oil is neither green nor will it last very long. At least accordign to the blogger I mentioned earlier:
http://peakenergi.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/13/
Since the shale oil is also intended to go via the Keystone XL I guess you prefer railcars of crude oil over pipelines as a means of transportation. It makes no sense to pay 20 times more for transports via rail cars than pipelines?! Finally, why not launch a frontal assult on the California heavy oil instead of picking on Canada, this is domestic oil production proven to be dirtier that the tar sands. If you cannot stop the US from producing dirty oil itself, you will never succeed in stopping the US from importing the cleaner canadian oil. Why on earth would the US not want to import cleaner oil than it produces itslef?!
Peter Shepherd
May 3, 2013
Jonas,
I agree that it would be better to use Canadian rather than Nigerian oil in Canada. Here is today’s post from Elizabeth May, MP and leader of the Green Party giving the history of why Eastern Canada still imports oil:
http://elizabethmaymp.ca/news/publications/island-tides/2013/04/25/pipelines-to-the-east/
As for the US using tarsands oil, my impression is that the Keystone XL is almost entirely meant to export dilbit via the US, not for US consumption. Why do you keep repeating the notion that it’s primarily for US energy security?
What are your ideas for demand reduction? Why are you speaking on behalf of Americans if you’re Swedish?
For demand reduction and promoting alternate sustainable supplies in Canada I recommend:
The Trottier Energy Futures Project: An Inventory of Low-Carbon Energy for Canada, March 2013, Ralph D. Torrie, Tyler Bryant, Dale Marshall, Mitchell Beer, Blake Anderson, Ryan Kadowaki, and Johanne Whitmore
Click to access An-Inventory-of-Low-Carbon-Energy-for-Canada.pdf
The Trottier Energy Futures Project: Low-Carbon Energy Futures: A Review of National Scenarios; Jan 2013, Ralph D. Torrie, Tyler Bryant, Dale Marshall, Mitchell Beer, Blake Anderson, Ryan Kadowaki, and Johanne Whitmore
http://www.trottierenergyfutures.ca/low-carbon-energy-futures-a-review-of-national-scenarios/
Passive Buildings Canada, http://www.passivebuildings.ca/
National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, (site removed as government offended by suggestion of a carbon price) as of March 2013, archived at
http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives2/20130322140948/http://nrtee-trnee.ca/
And for reports missing from National Archives, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Round_Table_on_the_Environment_and_the_Economy and the Wayback Machine http://archive.org/index.php
Engineers Canada, http://www.engineerscanada.ca/e/ ; their Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee, http://www.pievc.ca/e/index_.cfm
Ontario’s Green Energy Plan 2.0, Pembina Institute and Greenpeace Canada, August 2010 http://www.renewableisdoable.com/
Energy (R)evolution: A Sustainable Energy Outlook for Canada, Greenpeace International, European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), Aug. 2010
Click to access E%5BR%5Dcanada.pdf
Climate Science mitigation basis economic:
“Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach” Special Report 2009
WBGU, German Advisory Council on Global Change, Berlin, 2009 http://www.wbgu.de/fileadmin/templates/dateien/veroeffentlichungen/sondergutachten/sn2009/wbgu_sn2009_en.pdf
Kirsten Zickfeld SFU http://www.sfu.ca/geography/people/faculty/kirsten-zickfeld
Climate Response to CO2 Emissions: characteristics and policy implications
[Globally and for Canada]
http://mediasite.mediagroup.ubc.ca/MediaGroup/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=d8de12bf120941eda8595abc942ff9821d or:http://tinyurl.com/8la37v5
“Canada’s Carbon Liabilities: The Implications of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets for Financial Markets and Pension Funds”, by Marc Lee, Brock Ellis, March 26, 2013
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/canadas-carbon-liabilities
Jonas
May 5, 2013
Ok Peter, I think we need to get the facts right, you obviously do not know much about the oil industry.
1. Canada has the largest reserves of oil outside OPEC, there is no way you can build up demand for this kind of reserves in a tiny domestic market like Canada. Secondary industries and deriviatives from oil refining ranges from asphalt and plastics to jet-fuel and diesel… there is no way you can make this a closed circuit in Canada. The oil must be exported or left in the ground. So forget all ideas about refining in Canada.
2. Keystone XL is for domestic US cosumption in the PADD3 refineries (gulf coast). The US does not export the oil but rather the refined products such as motor gasoline, this is mainly a result of Mexico and other countries not being able to refine their own oil. So the Canadian oil will be consumed in the US and the KXL is not a transporting pipeline for exports. Actually, if Canada wanted to export the oil to China, they would just build a pipeline to the west coast without asking the US for permission.
3. All oil are not equal, the PADD3 refineries in the US are 2-stage facilities that cannot process light sweet crude… they must be feeded with heavy oil. Since both Venezuela and Mexico have peaked in their oil production your PADD3 refinaries are doomed without the Canadian heavy oil. Make no mistake, your shale oil will not save you here… you need the canadian tar sands more thanyou can ever imagine.
I can go on but I think you get the picture, you need to read up on this. Declining the Canadian oil will just force Canada to build a pipeline to the west and sell oil to China. Then the US will have to shut down one refinery after the other….from where will you get the heavy oil? Name one country that can replace the declining output in Mexico and Venezuela? And as for energy security, Venezuela is just crap compared to Canada.
What you need, more than anything, is to reduce your dependency on oil by the projects you suggest. However, until you have managed to reduce that consumption you will have to build the KXL and import Canadian oil.
This will be my final post on the topic, it’s a pitty you do not understand Swedish, that blog offered me a lot of insights, and i’m a proffesional in the (Swedish) energy sector:
http://peakenergi.wordpress.com/category/keystone-xl/
Peter Shepherd
May 12, 2013
Jonas, thanks for your descriptive points and the recommendation to read the second blog, which I’ve done using Google translate. If climate change weren’t an issue then I’d agree with you on risks. However I see no reason to doubt the scientific consensus on climate change and don’t trust price supply curve as adequate to prevent dangerous climate change. I didn’t see any signatures, even proxy ones, on the blog you recommended. By the way, I’m a Canadian based in Ontario, not in the US, and am equally concerned about peak oil and climate, and interested in technical discussion of both. Here in Toronto we’re predicted to have 4 times as many heatwaves by the 2040’s, and heatstroke is the most dangerous of all natural phenomena for humans, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_wave#Mortality
While you say you accept the idea of global warming, you clearly doubt the interpretation and implications of even the existing level of radiative forcing, which is irreversible on a human timescale. If you don’t believe that we’re trapping 800 TW of energy and that this rate is irreversible even if we stopped cold, and has massive implications for the planet, then which scientists do you believe and why?
The oilsands consumption happens on top of all the other emissions. Humans can only produce 2.7 tonnes CO2 per capita per year if we want a sustainable planet according to the German Advisory Council on Global Change, WBGU (2). Albertans already produce 50 tonnes per capita per year, vs Ontarians 13 tonnes. You may make fun of environmentalists for being idealists, but you totally misunderstand radiation balance of the planet and how it’s not just our society that’s at risk from peak oil, but the biosphere itself to support future civilizations.
It’s a pity that some in the peak oil movement don’t understand the scale and implication of anthropogenic radiative forcing. Again, even if Rutledge is largely right on scale of anthropogenic fuels, there are no entries in his spreadsheets for changing albedo, land use, soil carbon in peat bogs & methane spikes, or ocean acidification, or for the fact that we’re already trapping 50 times more energy than we’re using, and that this has much larger momentum than he or you give credit to.
One way I see a partial split between a minority in the peak oil camp and climate camp is in how they view safe climate parameters and Canada’s record. The best parallel I can think of is crash test dummy speed limit of 55 km/hr, because testing above that speed is pointless as we can’t engineer safety beyond it. For a technical description in road safety:
http://www.euroncap.com/Content-Web-Faq/21982f7f-a312-49db-99e0-8e38e37004de/the-testing-process.aspx#faq31d06b34-88bd-40e3-8708-0f4e63a4ecfc
Why have you chosen such a high front impact test speed?
By carrying out frontal impact tests at 64km/h (about 40 mph) we are simulating a car impacting a similar sized car where both cars are travelling the same speed of 55 km/h. This speed has been shown by accident studies to address a high proportion of fatal and severe injury accidents.
Should this not be higher given driving speed limits are higher?
Accident research shows that carrying out frontal impacts at 64km/h speed covers a large proportion of the serious and fatal accidents which occur. Even if the maximum speed limit is 120 km/h, few accidents occur at such speeds and where they do, it is beyond current capabilities to provide protection for the car’s occupants.
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In the lecture (1) below Canadian climate scientist Kristen Zickfeld explains (using a graph not very different than your basic high-school physics velocity/time graph, showing displacement/distance of carbon (or in the case of climate, temperature) by area under a velocity curve) in simple terms how humans are in effect, playing with the high-temperature limit switch on the global furnace. And to use a more common risk analogy, 97% of published scientists are telling us that climate risk is no different than air travel safety calculations: we can only afford to ever burn 20% (170 Gt Carbon globally) of our known fossil reserves in order to keep chances of overshooting 2 C down to a one in ten chance of crashing the climate as a mechanical system. That is what everyone at Copenhagen agreed is dangerous. Globally we have only seven years left at our current rate of emissions in order to avoid a 2 c rise. In Canada we have 12 years left at our current rate of emissions pro-rated to our global per-capita carbon allotment. On a microscopic level, thermal energy can be considered kinetic, hence the common analogy between plane and ecosystem crashes.
It is clear from this scientist’s presentation that carbon emissions budgeting is just as important as carbon supply mapping to make a responsible resource analysis. We must be diligent if our children are not be be involuntarily embarked upon a climate flight thousands of times riskier than the worst-rated airline in the world. (1)
1) Presentation in original: http://mediasite.mediagroup.ubc.ca/MediaGroup/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=d8de12bf120941eda8595abc942ff9821d
or: http://tinyurl.com/8la37v5 ]
2) http://www.die-gdi.de/CMS-Homepage/openwebcms3_e.nsf/(ynDK_contentByKey)/MRUR-7VGF22/$FILE/WBGU-Special%20Report_Solving%20the%20climate%20dilemma%20-%20the%20budget%20approach_en.pdf
3) http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm ;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/how-risky-is-flying.html
http://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html
Regards,
Peter Shepherd
Peter Shepherd
May 12, 2013
One further point I’d make is that most of the climate science I’ve brought up here is comprised of natural science observations of what’s already happened, not simply ideal carbon budgets generated from untested theories.
This shouldn’t be a left/right debate. As Margaret Thatcher said “We need to work together for our environment – to save our common inheritance for generations yet to come.”
Coral Davenport has a good piece on how the GOP is facing the issue: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-coming-gop-civil-war-over-climate-change-20130509?mrefid=site_search&page=1