Tar Sands Action Plans To Encircle The White House

Good

We should be circling the executive offices of BP, Shell, Chevron, etc and really putting it on the line. Obama will look out the window if he is even there, smile, and walk away. Sorry, but I think this is too soft for what we are dealing with. We might as well bring him a plate of cookies too.

He has GOT to see THAT !

Tar sands are the most polluting fossil fuel to extract, requiring billions of gallons of fresh water to extract. "Making liquid fuels from oil sands requires energy for steam injection and refining. This process generates two to four times the amount of greenhouse gases per barrel of final product as the "production" of conventional oil.[3] If combustion of the final products is included, the so-called "Well to Wheels" approach, oil sands extraction, upgrade and use emits 10 to 45% more greenhouse gases than conventional crude.[4]".

"Between 2 to 4.5 volume units of water are used to produce each volume unit of synthetic crude oil (SCO) in an ex-situ mining operation. Despite recycling, almost all of it ends up in tailings ponds, which, as of 2007, covered an area of approximately 50 km2 (19 sq mi). In SAGD operations, 90 to 95 percent of the water is recycled and only about 0.2 volume units of water is used per volume unit of bitumen produced.[67] Large amounts of water are used for oil sands operations – Greenpeace gives the number as 349 million cubic metres per year, twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary".

Production also require huge amount of energy to turn this think tar into a flowing liquid and then into usable oil. This energy has been provided by burning natural gas. The technology is not their for large scale use of syngas created from tar sands. The costs are too high. Increased tar sands production will mean reduced natural gas available to the US from Canada, increasing the cost of natural gas. This is a lose/lose proposition and the money being spent to develop this energy would be better spent deploying proven renewable energy today.

3. ^ Joseph J. Romm (2008). Hell and High Water: The Global Warming Solution. New York: Harper Perrenial. pp. 181–82. ISBN 9780061172137
4. ^ Bob Weber (10 December 2009). "Alberta's oilsands: well-managed necessity or ecological disaster?". Moose Jaw Herald Times. Canadian Press. Retrieved 29 March 2010.
67. ^ Canada's oil sands - opportunities and challenges to 2015: an update. National Energy Board. June 2006. p. 38. Retrieved 2007-08-14