Athabasca case study

Question 1

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Location

Answer 1

• The Canadian tar sounds rival the conventional oil in Saudi Arabia and unconventional heavy oils in Venezuela as the largest proven reserves of oil in the world.
• The portion of land which is currently mined is around 5000km2
• They underlie 140,000 km2 of boreal forest, an area that is approximately the size of the state of Florida.

Question 2

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Background figures

Answer 2

• More than a million barrels of crude flow out of Alberta’s oil sand plants every day
• The sands are estimated to contain 175 billion barrels of recoverable reserves of crude bitumen.

Question 3

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Environmental Impacts The process itself

Answer 3

• Extracting the bitumen from the sand is an extremely dirty process
• The technology used is a hot-water-based separation process that requires large quantities of water + energy

Question 4

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Environmental Impacts Location of the process

Answer 4

• Most current production takes place in vast open-pit mines where the sands are strip-mined layer by layer from the surface.
• Some of these open-pit mines can be 150km2 and 90m deep
• Around 4 tonnes of material has to be removed to produce each barrel of bitumen
• Before strip-mining begins, the boreal forest is clear felled, rivers and streams have to be diverted, and wetlands drained.

Question 5

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Environmental Impacts Climate Change - global scale

Answer 5

• The mining and upgrading procedure releases at least three times the carbon dioxide emissions of conventional oil production
• The single largest industrial contributor in North America to climate change
• Ironically, the effects of increased temperatures caused by CO2 emissions can be seen visibly within the melting of the Athabasca Glacier upstream in Jasper National Park

Question 6

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Environmental Impacts Water abstraction and pollution

Answer 6

• Current operations are permitted to withdraw 350 million m3/year, equivalent to the amount used by a city of 2 million people
• Water over extraction poses a threat to the sustainability of fish populations In the Athabasca River and also to the Peace-Athabasca Delta, the largest boreal delta on earth and a world heritage site
• 6 barrels of tailings to each barrel of bitumen
• Liquid tailings contain toxic metals which makes them poisonous to aquatic organisms and mammals.
• As operations are sometimes a distance from rivers, they rely on using groundwater aquifers, which lowers the water table in the region and threatened surface freshwater
• For each barrel of oil produced, 5 barrels of water are used in extraction

Question 7

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Environmental Impacts Loss of forests and wildlife habitats

Answer 7

• Planned tar sand development projects are expected to see at least 5000km2 of forest cleared, Canada’s boreal forest is globally significant
• As it is a complex ecosystem of trees, weapons and lakes representing 25% of the worlds intact forests
• Considered to be the cause of the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet after the Amazon

Question 8

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Environmental Impacts Air Quality

Answer 8

• Criteria Air Contaminants are the most common pollutants released by heavy industry
• They include lead, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and sulphur dioxide.
• These are all emitted in large volumes by tar sand operations and they affect human health and contribute to acid rain

Question 9

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Impacts on humans

Answer 9

• Human health in many communities has taken significant turn for the worse.
• Production has led to many serious social issues throughout Alberta, from housing problems to the vast expansion of temporary foreign worker programmes that exploit so-called “non-citizens”
• Water abstraction and pollution of the Athabasca River also jeopardises subsistence and commercial fishing by local aborigines

Question 10

Athabasca Tar Sands Case Study: Cumulative impacts and reclamation

Answer 10

• Pipeline infrastructure to refineries and to supertanker ports crosses the continent to all 3 major oceans
• Very little of the area directly affected by mining operations has been reclaimed and tailings ponds are expected to grow.
• UNEP identified the tar sands as one of the 100 global hotspots for environmental degradation.