Calgary-based author Andrew Nikiforuk grew interested in Canada's tar sands when, as he says, 700,000 people poured into Alberta Province to make a killing.
Nikiforuk, a veteran investigative reporter, visited Portland this week to discuss his new book on the costs of wresting oil from vast deposits north of his hometown.
"Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent" exposes fallout from a $200 billion project that has propelled Canada past Saudi Arabia to become the largest exporter of oil to the United States.
Nikiforuk answered questions during an interview that has been edited for clarity and length.
What are the tar sands?
The tar sands are perhaps the second-largest reserve of hydrocarbons on the planet.
The resource is not oil floating on top of sand, as the government of Canada would like Americans to believe by calling it the "oil sands." It is bitumen, a messy, tarry substance trapped in sand and clay.
It takes brute force to pull it out of the ground. It takes more energy to upgrade it. Even then, synthetic crude still has to go through a refinery, and all that costs energy and creates tremendous clouds of carbon dioxide.
Why should people in the United States care about what goes on in such a far-away and isolated area?
Eighteen percent of the oil imported to the United States now comes from Canada. Of that, roughly 10 percent is directly coming from the tar sands.
The U.S. Midwest, the Rocky Mountain states and Washington state are now quite dependent on this resource.
A small fraction of your oil in Oregon is coming from the tar sands. You're just beginning to become part of a much bigger story. The long term plan is to accelerate the production rate and the export volume.
What environmental effects do the tar sands have?
Enormous. It takes about three barrels of fresh water to produce one barrel of bitumen. You put the bitumen in the industrial equivalent of a washing machine, add chemicals, and the bitumen floats to the top.
Wastewater goes in huge tailing ponds. The dams are seeping toxic waste into both groundwater and the Athabasca River.
In the areas of intense activities for the steam plants, you're going to lose 80 percent of the wildlife. Woodland caribou, bear, lynx, boreal songbirds and fish will all go.
The carbon emissions are anywhere from 20 to 30 percent higher than conventional oil. There's a huge work force being exposed to benzene and nitrogen oxides. We also have a cluster of very rare cancers downstream.
The Alberta government has become a petro state. It represents hydrocarbons. It no longer truly represents the people of Alberta. There's incompetence, negligence and patronage, and the other stuff we just don't know about.
I was just in Vancouver, and I kept meeting people who said they'd moved there from the tar sands because work was slowing.
The tar sands is in a state of meltdown because it is the world's most expensive oil. A lot of projects are not making any money at 40 bucks a barrel, especially the new projects and the steam plants.
We've had an enormous number of expansions and projects -- nearly $100 billion worth -- shelved or delayed until the price of oil goes up.
There are two methods of production. Open-pit mines are a truck-and-shovel operation. They're making money. But 70 percent of the steam plants' costs come from burning natural gas to boil water. Then you've got to pressurize that steam and inject it into the ground. For that they need 60 to 80 bucks a barrel to make money.
Every two days we're moving enough earth to fill Yankee Stadium. We've moved enough earth since the 1970s to build seven Panama Canals.
The scale of it just blows you away. It makes the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids and everything else look like Sunday projects.
Americans want to reduce reliance on Middle East oil. Isn't Canadian crude at least an alternative?
As long as you don't consider it anything more than an inconvenient interim solution.
Shifting from bloody oil to dirty oil is like taking your mortgage from Countrywide Financial to Bear Stearns. You still have the original problem, which is America's costly oil addiction.
You guys consume 25 percent of the world's oil, you know. How is America becoming more resilient if it becomes more dependent on an unconventional product with the water, energy and capital footprint of bitumen?
The world has consumed half of its oil -- the easy, light, cheap stuff. Canadian economist Jeff Rubin says when you have to schlep 2 tons of sand to produce one barrel of oil, you know you're at the bottom of the ninth inning.
You need to be investing your energy dollars locally in renewables.
Richard Read: 503-294-5135; richread@aol.comThe Oregonian
