Buried in the sands….

Human greed can never be satisfied. Even if it means to abuse the very place we live in. Every single day, our activities make this place more unsuitable for the future generations to live in. The next biggest activity that is added to this list is the oil/tar sands mining. With the oil reaching more than $100 a barrel, the pace of this activity has only increased.

The biggest deposits of tar sands (bitumenous sands) are found in Alberta in Canada and Venezuala. With the existing technology, there are about 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil sands reserves beneath the 8,000 square kilometres in Northern Alberta. The combined reserves of oil sands can be equal to the existing crude oil reserves. The biggest concern is the environmental scar left by the oil extraction process.

The Alberta oil sand mining involves extraction of the 10-12% bitumen stored in the sands using hot water and other lighter hydrocarbons like naptha in a process that uses about 2 – 4 barrels of water for every single barrel of oil. You can find more info on this here. This process utilises huge quantities of the river water, releases more than twice the greenhouse gases as conventional process and also destroys the boreal forest area which contains these sands. The oily wastewater produced is stored in huge reservoirs in an area as wide as 50 sq. km. The polluting water seeps into the existing ecosystem, killing fishes and endangering human life.

With oil prices surging upwards of 100$, the situation is even grimmer. The huge profits generated by these projects can overrule the necessary actions required to stop the abuse of our fragile ecosystem. Until the oil refining process is improved to recycle the waste and manage the resources effectively, we will push the existence of life on earth to the edge.

More info on this topic can be found at – GlobeandMail.com