Athabasca Tar Sands Env

Question 1

What are tar sands?

Answer 1

An unconventional form of gathering oil where sands, clays and other minerals are mixed with bitumen.

Question 2

Athabasca tar sands basic facts:

Answer 2

Produces 3 million barrels of oil per day.
Covers area of140,000km3
20% of this is near the surface
Estimated to contain 180 billion barrels or 10% of global oil reserves.

Question 3

What is the Keystone Pipeline?

Answer 3

A Canada to USA pipeline travelling 1180 miles where the US owned oil refineries are located.

Question 4

Why does this project cause environmental damage?

Answer 4

This type of oil produces more GHG when extracted and significantly more when refined - 3x more overall.

The pipeline brings people closer to toxic chemicals, water and air pollution.

Large areas of Boreal forest had to be destroyed to gather the oil.

Question 5

Environmental impacts -Water pollution and abstraction:

Answer 5

Trailing pools large areas of contaminated lakes estimated to be 1.4 trillion litres of water.
These tailing pools are slowly causing more water pollution by leaking into the Athabasca river.

For each barrel of oil extracted and refined it takes 5 barrels of water.
Already permitted to abstract 350 million m3/year of water.