For context, Alberta oil sands have an energy ratio of about 4 to 1, meaning it takes one barrel of oil to produce 4 barrels. The world average is about 17 to 1 with your typical Saudi oil about 40:1. It's difficult to describe what this stuff is like if you haven't seen it. It's essentially a stiff tar that soaked into sand. One of the techniques for refining it (not sure if still used) consisted of importing good oil from the US to dilute it up to a minimum standard so it can be sold. A current technique like mentioned in the article is to heat up the formation with steam until it gets hot enough so that it starts to flow. They use natural gas to heat the steam, so it's essentially a scheme to turn natural gas into oil, but with pollution added to the mix.
What works for monitoring in other basins is obviously insufficient for the oil sands, so it's good to see the federal government funding these sorts of studies. It will likely lead to better monitoring and reporting regulations, but the Alberta government will likely scream that a Trudeau is trying to f** us over once again. The last time in the 80s was plain protectionism, while this is protectionism for a much better reason.
I love my province, but man, are we stupid sometimes.
The oil produced mostly gets shipped to the US, where we sell it at a discount because it's crappy quality. This in turns helps the US pollute more but save dollars in the process. Oil sands oil makes up about 14% of US oil consumption.
If I was dictator of Alberta, I wouldn't do anything to stop production, I would just make a law that any production energy has to come from renewable, non-carbon sources. It would generate a frenzy of research and development that hasn't been seen since the industrial revolution as people pant and salivate at all that money sitting in the ground. :)
I eventually decided I wouldn't work for oil companies any longer. If they want to do it, they'll have to do it without me. It has led me down a fun career path of working for companies I only dreamed about working for when I was in school.
> It's difficult to describe what this stuff is like if you haven't seen it.
I want to echo this point, because it gets talked about in the popular media like it's just another kind of garden variety crude oil, when it is anything but. For the curious, there are independent sellers (on ebay and elsewhere) who sell specimens of the stuff, along with samples of other kinds of raw fossil fuel and energy minerals. It's very helpful for demos and discussions like this one.
This stuff is almost literally road tar mixed with sand, almost like asphalt. It's difficult to break up by hand when cold, and when warm it has a tarry, putty-like texture. Contrast this with light-sweet crude, which is a pale yellow, gasoline-smelling liquid. Once you have a feel for these things, it doesn't take a leap of the imagination to grasp that the latter is going to take a lot less effort and energy to turn into useful products than the former!
How does it compare to the energy ratio of US fracking? It’s a similar process of using heated water (though not steam so maybe a greater volume of water) to break the oil from shale.
It uses a ton of water. I think more than oil sands so, if the oil sands displace some fracking it is a global net positive to have that substation.
About a decade ago I realized we are going to extract all the oil, no matter what. All we can do is try to slow the rate to give nature time to heal and maybe develop counter measures to pollution.
> meaning it takes one barrel of oil to produce 4 barrels
This is a dumb statistic and doesn’t help prove a point. It can “take 3 barrels” to produce 2 and it would still be worth it because it doesn’t actually take 3 barrels. It takes the energy equivalent and the value of oil is the energy density with its portability.
If you want to get a feel for what it's like for the people who work those fields, I can highly recommend Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, an Eisner Award and Harvey Award-winning graphic novel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducks:_Two_Years_in_the_Oil_Sa...
Thirded – it is a stunning, haunting work. The author, Kate Beaton, was previously probably best known for her (also award winning) 'Hark! A Vagrant' web comic [1,2].
> between 1,900 per cent and 6,300 per cent higher than industry has reported
Maybe that's just me, but I find it harder to think in percentages above 200%. I mean, the math is easy, but it is less intuitive. I feel that: "20 to 64 times of what industry has reported" would be easier to grasp and probably also less ambiguous.
The oil sands are a disaster and will be left for future generations to deal with. They have yet to clean up any of it but will point to one are they cleaned but in reality they did not clean it. They took all the sludge and moved it to another location then buried the area in a thin layer of new soil and planted some grass and said see we can clean it up. But in reality all the waste was just moved elsewhere for another generation to deal with. Furthermore they have countless abandoned wells that need cleanup and that will never happen. The second oil becomes uneconomical these companies will bankrupt and disappear for ever leaving the mess for future generations. Just a travesty.
>The oil sands are a disaster and will be left for future generations to deal with. They have yet to clean up any of it but will point to one are they cleaned but in reality they did not clean it. They took all the sludge and moved it to another location then buried the area in a thin layer of new soil and planted some grass and said see we can clean it up.
Yes, we have to dig things out of the ground to sustain our society. Oil, metals, minerals. It's not clean. We do what we can.
You can insert the "we should improve society" somewhat meme all you want, but it doesn't hide that fact that the people who complain the most are just as likely to reap the rewards of all the things they hate.
Anecdotally I've heard the people living downwind of the big oilsands developments suffer a wide range of health problems from the toxic air quality. It's no secret that these developments are not good for human or animal health, although the big oil companies don't advertise it. I guess the upshot is that to even get to Fort McMurray you need to drive for hours through pure wilderness--no towns, no farms, nothing but endless forest. It's far out of the way of where most people would choose to live (were it not for high-paying oil jobs).
But even in the south of the province it feels like the air quality has been deteriorating. We seem to get air pollution warnings are long more than I ever remember growing up.
I'm Canadian. Went to school in Edmonton. Visited the oil sands a few times. It's amazing, in both a "good" and "bad" sense.
But the climate change discourse is so poisoned, and scientific research so politicized, I find this hard to believe. 63 times? It's a headline meant to grab attention. It's simply not possible this is the case without anyone ever noticing prior, or massive liability issues. Blame the companies, of course. But how could the government be so inept to allow it? It's extraordinary. To the point I can't even be bothered to look at the paper, since I have to assume they are measuring something completely different.
You, yourself have just said that the discourse is politicized and poisoned.
It's not 63x more than estimated, or thought, or calculated. It's not an error somewhere in the process to calculate it. It is 63x worse than reported by an industry that has routinely lied about their impact on the climate. It is very, very possible.
> But the climate change discourse is so poisoned, and scientific research so politicized
Only because the people profiting from fossil fuels completely lie and deny facts to make it "politicized".
No different than when young Earth creationists claimed that evolution or astronomy were "politicized" and demanded that schools "teach the controversy" or put warning stickers on biology textbooks to say that the science doesn't align to Biblical creation stories.
The rhetoric to deny climate change constantly moves the goal posts. First it's not real, then it's real but not human caused, then it's human caused but too late to change, then it's not too late to change but the proposed solutions are too expensive, then the solutions are reasonable but involve too much government intervention, etc.
The discourse isn't poisoned and the research isn't politicized. It's a fact, and pretending it's "politicized" is just the latest angle the fossil fuel profiteers are using in their propaganda campaign.
So your faith in the competence of government oversight is what primarily prevents you from believing this piece of research is correct? That's an unusual stance for HN. :-)
Both the companies and the government obviously have a financial/economic interest in not finding this out, if it's true. I find it pretty easy to believe, and I am a fairly pro-govt lefty type.
The paper is saying that the numbers reported by industry are made on the basis of a few pollutant species, but looking at a much wider set of potential pollutants yields this "6300%" figure.
Seems more like the standard used to measure emissions is inadequate.
> Past monitoring has failed to capture the full scope of organic carbon pollution because it wasn’t looking at a diverse enough range of molecular sizes often associated with heavy oil and bitumen deposits. Such deposits are expected to account for 40 per cent of global oil production by 2040, the study found.
Alberta politics today is like Texas in the 1990s. Freedom. Hatred of the national government. Denialism (climate/vaccinations/gravity etc). Pickup trucks. Guns. Oil. If someone says don't do something, a large portion of Albertans will do it out of spite. The only place I've every even heard of rolling coal in Canada was in northern Alberta, home of the oil sands.
Typical example: in BC people turn on their head/taillights in bad weather. In Alberta, heck no. Lights don't come on until legally mandated at sunset. Freedom.
Feels like the opposite to me. "6,300%" looks weird as we're expecting to see percentages used for numbers much smaller than that. "63 times more" would prompt a visceral reaction. "6,300%" at first looks like a typo.
[+] [-] jseutter|2 years ago|reply
What works for monitoring in other basins is obviously insufficient for the oil sands, so it's good to see the federal government funding these sorts of studies. It will likely lead to better monitoring and reporting regulations, but the Alberta government will likely scream that a Trudeau is trying to f** us over once again. The last time in the 80s was plain protectionism, while this is protectionism for a much better reason.
I love my province, but man, are we stupid sometimes.
The oil produced mostly gets shipped to the US, where we sell it at a discount because it's crappy quality. This in turns helps the US pollute more but save dollars in the process. Oil sands oil makes up about 14% of US oil consumption.
If I was dictator of Alberta, I wouldn't do anything to stop production, I would just make a law that any production energy has to come from renewable, non-carbon sources. It would generate a frenzy of research and development that hasn't been seen since the industrial revolution as people pant and salivate at all that money sitting in the ground. :)
I eventually decided I wouldn't work for oil companies any longer. If they want to do it, they'll have to do it without me. It has led me down a fun career path of working for companies I only dreamed about working for when I was in school.
Energy statistics by a partisan group, so numbers might be biased: https://sustainablesociety.com/research-material/oil-sands/
Energy stats worldwide: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
[+] [-] fastneutron|2 years ago|reply
I want to echo this point, because it gets talked about in the popular media like it's just another kind of garden variety crude oil, when it is anything but. For the curious, there are independent sellers (on ebay and elsewhere) who sell specimens of the stuff, along with samples of other kinds of raw fossil fuel and energy minerals. It's very helpful for demos and discussions like this one.
This stuff is almost literally road tar mixed with sand, almost like asphalt. It's difficult to break up by hand when cold, and when warm it has a tarry, putty-like texture. Contrast this with light-sweet crude, which is a pale yellow, gasoline-smelling liquid. Once you have a feel for these things, it doesn't take a leap of the imagination to grasp that the latter is going to take a lot less effort and energy to turn into useful products than the former!
[+] [-] nytesky|2 years ago|reply
It uses a ton of water. I think more than oil sands so, if the oil sands displace some fracking it is a global net positive to have that substation.
About a decade ago I realized we are going to extract all the oil, no matter what. All we can do is try to slow the rate to give nature time to heal and maybe develop counter measures to pollution.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/25/climate/frack...
[+] [-] danbolt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pfdietz|2 years ago|reply
They don't actually use oil to produce the oil though, do they? If they need heat it would be cheaper to use (say) natural gas.
[+] [-] pstuart|2 years ago|reply
I like your idea better, but perhaps a softer touch might get more traction?
[+] [-] hatenberg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kortilla|2 years ago|reply
This is a dumb statistic and doesn’t help prove a point. It can “take 3 barrels” to produce 2 and it would still be worth it because it doesn’t actually take 3 barrels. It takes the energy equivalent and the value of oil is the energy density with its portability.
[+] [-] CharlesW|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bouvin|2 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.harkavagrant.com
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hark!_A_Vagrant
[+] [-] mc3301|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alentred|2 years ago|reply
> between 1,900 per cent and 6,300 per cent higher than industry has reported
Maybe that's just me, but I find it harder to think in percentages above 200%. I mean, the math is easy, but it is less intuitive. I feel that: "20 to 64 times of what industry has reported" would be easier to grasp and probably also less ambiguous.
[+] [-] actionfromafar|2 years ago|reply
"So, I was 20% over the speed limit, and I got a huge fine."
"Oil producers were 6000% over the pollution limit and they got a huge profit."
[+] [-] 14|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsoktocry|2 years ago|reply
Yes, we have to dig things out of the ground to sustain our society. Oil, metals, minerals. It's not clean. We do what we can.
You can insert the "we should improve society" somewhat meme all you want, but it doesn't hide that fact that the people who complain the most are just as likely to reap the rewards of all the things they hate.
[+] [-] briga|2 years ago|reply
But even in the south of the province it feels like the air quality has been deteriorating. We seem to get air pollution warnings are long more than I ever remember growing up.
[+] [-] bawolff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsoktocry|2 years ago|reply
But the climate change discourse is so poisoned, and scientific research so politicized, I find this hard to believe. 63 times? It's a headline meant to grab attention. It's simply not possible this is the case without anyone ever noticing prior, or massive liability issues. Blame the companies, of course. But how could the government be so inept to allow it? It's extraordinary. To the point I can't even be bothered to look at the paper, since I have to assume they are measuring something completely different.
[+] [-] ActionHank|2 years ago|reply
It's not 63x more than estimated, or thought, or calculated. It's not an error somewhere in the process to calculate it. It is 63x worse than reported by an industry that has routinely lied about their impact on the climate. It is very, very possible.
[+] [-] bodiekane|2 years ago|reply
Only because the people profiting from fossil fuels completely lie and deny facts to make it "politicized".
No different than when young Earth creationists claimed that evolution or astronomy were "politicized" and demanded that schools "teach the controversy" or put warning stickers on biology textbooks to say that the science doesn't align to Biblical creation stories.
The rhetoric to deny climate change constantly moves the goal posts. First it's not real, then it's real but not human caused, then it's human caused but too late to change, then it's not too late to change but the proposed solutions are too expensive, then the solutions are reasonable but involve too much government intervention, etc.
The discourse isn't poisoned and the research isn't politicized. It's a fact, and pretending it's "politicized" is just the latest angle the fossil fuel profiteers are using in their propaganda campaign.
[+] [-] obsoletehippo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iOsiris|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nneonneo|2 years ago|reply
The paper is saying that the numbers reported by industry are made on the basis of a few pollutant species, but looking at a much wider set of potential pollutants yields this "6300%" figure.
[+] [-] creativeSlumber|2 years ago|reply
Why are they relying on the industry to self report these?
[+] [-] markerz|2 years ago|reply
> Past monitoring has failed to capture the full scope of organic carbon pollution because it wasn’t looking at a diverse enough range of molecular sizes often associated with heavy oil and bitumen deposits. Such deposits are expected to account for 40 per cent of global oil production by 2040, the study found.
[+] [-] sandworm101|2 years ago|reply
Typical example: in BC people turn on their head/taillights in bad weather. In Alberta, heck no. Lights don't come on until legally mandated at sunset. Freedom.
[+] [-] astrodust|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voisin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twoWhlsGud|2 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/books/review/how-to-tell-...
The fact that they managed to get everyone out of the path of the fire successfully impressed me given the circumstances
[+] [-] osigurdson|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Zitrax|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnbad|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antoniojtorres|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwayzzz|2 years ago|reply
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