[fjorder]

That article is not good. Biased reporting based on a biased study. Yes, all writing is biased, but sometimes evidence suggests it's worse than usual, and this is one of those cases. From the cradle of the study to the grave of your mind, everything in the chain producing this article has a clear bias.

Study: Published by the "Post Carbon Institute". They're not even trying.

Article: Written by an author whose only credentials are a pretty face and a B.Sc. in biology. Can she spot bad stats? Probably not. Is she likely to take any damning claim about the oil sands the study makes at face value without a second thought? Yes.

Publisher: insideclimatenews.org. They're a little more cagey about revealing their biases than the Post Carbon Institute, which is to say they're still about as subtle as a club to the head.

Now, don't get me wrong. I live close to the oil sands and will pay a greater price than most reading this for that oil. I am not in the O&G industry, but I have deep concerns about how the oilsands are being extracted. Specifically, groundwater seepage from tailings ponds is probably one of the nastiest local consequences. Perhaps even more concerning is that accountability is going down as foreign ownership climbs. Just as no Hollywood blockbuster makes money on paper these days, my concern is that once the oilsands are no longer commercially viable, parent companies will quietly abscond with the profits while the oilsands companies go bankrupt and fail to follow through on the long-term cleanup that will be necessary.

However, all this is no excuse for giving a pass to blatantly biased articles. When we give attention to articles such as this it detracts attention from well-researched independent studies reported on by people who actually have the chops to spot bad stats and tease apart biased studies. It makes those who are against oilsands development look like a bunch of clueless tree-hugging hippies!

[mactitan]

Always good to be skeptical. what caught my eye is the EROI ratios which are in the ballpark. As pointed out below living with 3:1 ratio as compared to 15-20 : 1 is something people will feel. And this could be a trend since OPEC net exports are dropping due to more internal use of their own oil.