Utah has little problem with their oil sands, yet Alberta’s oil sands and the Key Stone Pipeline is trashed around the world as an environmental nightmare. Why the hypocrisy? This is a question no one seems to want to tackle. Oil sands are the same around the world. You can’t have good and bad oil sand. So why is the world just picking on Alberta?
Oilsands mine image Credit Jennifer Grant, Pembina Institute Flickr
Since other oil sands around the world are not being attacked by the same environmental groups with the same gusto as those attacking Alberta, how can it possibly be an environmental motive that drives the push to shut down the Alberta Oil Sands. Just the idea of an environmentalist having two different views on oil sands depending on the country is ludicrous. The drive to shut down the Alberta Oil Sands must have another motive.
Venezuela is now producing more extra heavy crude than its four upgraders can handle.
graphic courtesy Price of Oil
The mostly in-situ operations, in Venezuela are massive and very carbon intensive projects, so where is the protest to shut down Orinoco. Where is the outrage and the news coverage. The largest oil sands deposit on earth being mined with little to no CO2 emissions regulations and hardly a word.
The USA also has its oil sands production going on in the Uinta Basin in Utah. Although the Utah’s Uinta Basin bitumen deposits contain 90% less sulfur than the bitumen found in Alberta’s Athabasca region and Venezuela which averages about 5%, it is still Oil sands and comes with all the environmental problems all oil sands come with.
We could go on with examples around the world from Russian oil sands to Kazakhstan. The bottom line, Alberta is the only oil sand producing country getting the shaft from the environmental community. Why do so many factions want Alberta Oil Sands and the Keystone pipeline shut down or reduced to limited production. The answer has little to do with the environment and much more as to who is going to get the oil business and make the money. Venezuela is going to be a big winner with the Alberta oil sands stalled. With its business dwindling to the US and oil accounting for 90% of its export business , Venezuela has sold China on their oil sands resulting in China dramatically altering its international investment policy, pulling back on its plans for direct participation in Canada’s oil sands.
As David Hannum once said “there’s a sucker Born every minute”. Guess they all ended up in Canada since we’re the biggest dupe’s and losers in the oil sands environmental game. We coulda , woulda been a world-class oil-producing nation if only we had known what game we were playing.
Leave a Reply