“Until the world weans itself from oil, Canada should continue to produce, reducing the market share available to (other) competitors,” writes the science columnist.
A few hundred million years ago, Earth had many shallow seas. Blue-green algae bloomed in its warm, solar-powered waters.
Other creatures grazed on these algae, eating their carbohydrates, fats and proteins for nourishment, just as sheep and cattle graze on grass. The grazers and predators that ate them were tiny, single-celled animals as well as larger ones like shrimp. (The fish didn’t exist yet.)
For thousands of years, these animals lived, multiplied and died, creating thick deposits of organic matter at the bottom of these seas. Atmospheric dust and water-borne sediments mixed with the organics, eventually burying everything to a depth of several kilometers.
Under great pressure, caused by the weight of the material above, and the high temperature, at this depth, the underground gradually consolidated into sedimentary rock, rock with different layers, each corresponding to the material from which it was formed.
Meanwhile, the buried organics decomposed, losing carbon dioxide, water, methane, and other organics like propane, leaving behind an oily liquid inside a porous rocky reservoir.
This oily material could remain where it formed, or migrate into neighboring rock layers, if these were porous.
In some places, the movements of the Earth’s crust caused the rock layers to bend and collapse. Occasionally, they formed domes where the oily material could accumulate.
If these oil accumulations were covered by impermeable rocks, the organics remained trapped, to be discovered by oil hunters of the 20th century.
Typically, the oily material in your porous rock reservoir is sandwiched between water below and natural gas above. Salt water is a remnant of the sea in which the organic matter was formed, plus the water lost during decomposition.
As the organic material breaks down, methane and propane gas, along with other minor hydrocarbon gases, try to escape, but the impermeable rock keeps them in the reservoir. In some places, geological movement and erosion expose the edges of an oil reservoir allowing the oily material to flow out. This was used by the ancients to waterproof roofs and boats, or to glue bricks together. Some streets in Baghdad were paved with it.
They named the material petroleum or “rock oil” from the Greek petra (equal to “rock”) and elaion (equal to “oleum” or “oil”). Drilling into a “conventional” oil reservoir, the oil is often under great pressure and is pushed to the surface by itself. As the oil is extracted, the pressure drops. Subsequent extraction may require mechanical pumping. Owners decide if there is enough material left to justify the investment. They also have to guess the future world price of oil.
As oil rises to the surface, dissolved gases are released, just like those that form when beer or soda is opened. They are what we call “natural gas” plus CO2. Its composition is approximately 80% to 90% methane and 10% to 20% propane with small amounts of butane, ethane and other gaseous hydrocarbons.
Refineries remove everything but the methane, which is sent to us by pipeline to heat buildings and for industrial purposes. The rest of the hydrocarbons are sold separately: propane in portable tanks, butane in small disposable lighters, while ethane is used to make plastics such as polyethylene.
Large amounts of bitumen-impregnated sand are found in northeastern Alberta. Although this huge field began in the same way as the conventional oil field described above, it was not buried deep enough to create the pressure necessary to consolidate the sand into rock. No impervious layer formed above the sand.
In the absence of an impermeable rock layer, hydrocarbon gases seeped out of the reservoir.
Low-boiling liquids such as pentane, hexane, and octane also escaped, leaving behind the semisolid, tar-like bitumen.
Originally called “tar sands”, the name was sanitized to “tar sands”. The near-surface material is mined and transported to a facility where it is heated to melt the bitumen and separate it from the sand.
Bitumen is obtained from deeper deposits by high-temperature steam injection. The bitumen melts, goes down a previously made channel to a collection point.
Alberta’s deposits are approximately 85 percent sand, 10 percent bitumen, and five percent water. The high sand content means that a large amount of heat must be applied to achieve the separation, creating high carbon emissions. By competing claims, it takes about 20 percent more energy to win this unconventional oil, but it’s still not oil.
Bitumen must be “upgraded” by “cracking” the long, tarry molecules into shorter, oily ones to form synthetic crude oil.
About 20 tons of tar sands must be processed to produce one ton of synthetic crude. Unfortunately, the mining process, extracting bitumen from the sand and making synthetic crude oil, requires a lot of water, which becomes polluted. This water is held in “waste ponds” while engineers work on methods to clean it up
enough to return it to the Athabaska River.
Under their agreement with the Alberta government, tar sands miners must restore disturbed land to its original state. This work is very late. Environmental groups and First Nations people worry it will never be completed.
And they have plenty of reason to worry. Many conventional oil and gas producers escaped, leaving behind thousands of properties in play whose wells have never been properly capped.
Environmental groups (full disclosure: I consider myself an environmentalist) campaign against oil sands mining for the above reasons. They also claim that the commercialization of Canadian oil contributes to continued consumption and associated carbon emissions.
However, his suggestion that Canadian oil production is somehow increasing the global burning of liquid fuels by prolonging the “Age of Oil” is unlikely to be true. Whether a Ghanaian, Indonesian or American decides to buy and drive an internal combustion engine vehicle is not up to Canada. Their decision-making takes little, if any, account of environmental issues.
New car showrooms in North America and Europe will be filled with electric cars within a decade. This will put a serious crime on the demand for gasoline and lubricants.
I would say that the oil Canada produces displaces oil that would otherwise come from Russia or Saudi Arabia. Russia uses oil revenues to wage war on its neighbor, Ukraine. This war produces far greater carbon emissions than tar sands mining in Canada! Saudi Arabia uses its oil wealth to suppress women and wage war in Yemen! Iran used its oil revenues to build nuclear weapons.
Many oil producers, such as Venezuela, Angola and Algeria, have unsavory governments that are kept in office by military might.
Canada’s tar sands oil is not carbon-free, but its production is quite ethical. Until the world weans itself from oil, Canada would have to continue production, reducing the market share available to these competitors.
Peter Bursztyn is a self-proclaimed “recovery scientist” with a passion for all things science-based and the environment. The now retired former university academic has taught and conducted research at universities in Africa, Britain and Canada. As a member of the BarrieToday Community Advisory Board, he also writes a semi-regular column. If you have a question that Peter can answer or something that interests you, please email us at [email protected].
