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Canadian oil sands a reasonable alternative to drilling
Opinion | Nashua Telegraph | V.K. Mathur | June 20, 2010
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With the Deepwater Horizon disaster having muddied the future of offshore drilling, energy companies are struggling to find other sources of oil.
One intriguing alternative is Canadian oil sands, which contains petroleum reserves second only to Saudi Arabia and could provide a reliable source of oil that would go a long way toward meeting U.S. needs.
But oil sands have aroused opposition from environmentalists equal in intensity to that induced by the sight of an offshore rig. Mined in western Canada, oil sands have a higher carbon content than conventional crude oil, and environmental groups concerned about climate change have been unrelenting in their attacks on its use.
In Washington, politicians are busy erecting hurdles to prevent the use of oil sands. Proposed legislation in Congress would ban the U.S. Defense Department and other government agencies from using oil products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel that are made from oil sands.
Although Congress rejected such a ban last year, after the Air Force pointed out that it would be unable to use jet fuel made from oil sands, the measure has popped up again.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is reviewing a Canadian company’s request to build a 2,000-mile underground pipeline that would run from western Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast and would significantly increase America’s access to the oil. Environmental groups are taking legal action to block the pipeline.
Simply pushing oil sands away does not solve the greenhouse gas problem. Although Canada has a longstanding trade partnership with the United States, it now has China as a backup customer for oil sands.
China recently purchased a major share of a Canadian oil company, and it’s investing heavily in oil sands. Plans are under way to build a pipeline from the oil-sands formations in Alberta to Canada’s west coast, where the oil would be shipped to Asia.
Instead of making it easier for U.S. oil companies to use Canada’s oil sands, we seem to be following our usual practice – doing nothing until an energy shortage forces last-minute action.
The United States cannot afford this approach with our energy security at risk. A severe oil shortage would have profound consequences for America’s national security and economic well- being.
Technology could be developed to control greenhouse-gas emissions from the production and refining of oil sands, even though they account for only 1 percent of global emissions. It’s a little-known fact that considerable progress has already been made.
New mining techniques being used to produce oil sands have resulted in a 27 percent emissions reduction per barrel of oil produced. While that stunning success was spurred by high energy prices, doing it again needn’t be.
The need for oil has helped create a market for oil sands. Currently, oil sands supply the United States with nearly 1 million barrels of oil daily – roughly equal to the combined imports from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a highly regarded consulting firm, says that oil sands have the potential to supply nearly 6 million barrels per day by 2030.
The availability of oil sands is important because the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects oil use to remain at the current level through 2050.
By using pipelines to transport crude oil from Canada’s oil sands, the United States is able to obtain a secure supply of oil, while offsetting declining production from U.S. wells.
Energy security need not be at odds with the environment. Instead of indiscriminately opposing the use of oil sands, environmentalists should insist that the government play a larger role in developing technology to capture some of the carbon emissions. Increased use of oil sands could be an inadvertent benefit from the Gulf spill.
V.K. Mathur is a professor in the chemical engineering department at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
Tagged with: gulf oil spill, nashua telegraph
