Category Archives: Oil sands

Posts relating to the oil sands

Blocking the Northern Gateway pipeline

With the Keystone XL pipeline at least temporarily blocked, the next target for those hoping to limit the climatic damage done by Canada’s oil sands should probably be the Northern Gateway pipeline. This pipeline is intended to run from Alberta to Kitimat, in British Columbia, and allow the export of synthetic crude from the oil sands to Asia.

Many people have argued that blocking Keystone XL would have no tangible effect, because all the oil that would have flowed through it to the US would just end up going to Asia instead. This analysis is dubious on its face – it is surely an expensive proposition to ship oil sands products across the Pacific, and cutting off any market is likely to reduce the total level of oil sands exploitation. The argument becomes even more untenable if pipelines for export to Asia can be blocked as well.

A big part of the effort to block the Northern Gateway pipeline is being made by First Nations communities with territory that would be crossed by the pipe.

Objection: problems with Kyoto

Every time there is a Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), people who want Canada to continue to do little or nothing about climate change bring up the flaws of the Kyoto Protocol as an argument against action.

This argument is flawed. The problems with Kyoto make it more important to develop an effective global agreement now, and that requires countries like Canada to lead the way in reducing their domestic greenhouse gas pollution.

The UNFCCC and Kyoto

To explain briefly, the 1992 UNFCCC is a framework convention that sets out the world’s general objective when it comes to climate change: preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was the first major attempt to make concrete progress toward that objective. Some (rich) states got emission reduction targets which they agreed to meet by 2012. Other (poorer) states did not have targets, but there were systems established to encourage them to reduce emissions as well, partly through financial help from richer countries directed through institutions like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Kyoto was an experiment in coordinated global action on climate change, and many things have gone wrong with it. The United States never joined the agreement. Some countries (like Canada) have ignored the targets they agreed to and are now producing much more pollution than they were meant to at this point. Countries like India and China, which had no targets, have seen their emissions grow rapidly. There have been problems with the CDM, such as dubious transactions involving HFC-23. Kyoto also ignores the major issue of pollution that is effectively ’embedded’ in imports.

Whole books could be (and have been) written about the flaws of Kyoto. That being said, it is wrong to see those flaws and conclude that it is no problem for Canada to ignore its Kyoto obligations, or for the UNFCCC process to fall apart. The fact of the matter is that dealing with climate change requires global action. Countries like Canada have become rich on the basis of burning fossil fuels, and currently produce an excessively high level of greenhouse gas emissions per person. It makes sense that countries like Canada lead the way on emissions reduction – a general policy known as contraction and convergence.

The challenge of climate change

If the world continues on the path of carbon-intensive economic activity, we are setting ourselves up to dramatically transform the planet’s climate by the end of this century, with severe consequences for people all over the world. Preventing dangerous or catastrophic climate change requires limiting how much greenhouse gas pollution gets added to the atmosphere; that, in turn, requires that the world abandon fossil fuels and move on to zero-carbon forms of energy. Achieving that transition will be challenging and costly, but so is our continued dependence on fossil fuels. Instead of spending billions developing deepwater oil fields off the coast of Brazil, fracking shale gas in North America, or exploiting Canada’s oil sands, we could be investing our money and effort on the transition to a renewably-based zero-carbon economy of the sort described by David MacKay.

In summary: yes, there are problems with Kyoto. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore climate change. Dealing with the problem requires coordinated international action, and it requires that countries like Canada:

  • (a) take responsibility for the harm they have already caused by altering the climate through fossil fuel use,
  • (b) take the lead in developing a domestic energy system that is compatible with a stable climate, while phasing out fossil fuels, and
  • (c) help the rest of the world to achieve the same transition.

Doing our part in a fair global deal requires a willingness to compensate countries that will suffer from the climate change we have caused, and help them to develop on a safer trajectory than we did.

Our current approach doesn’t even make sense from the perspective of pure economic calculation. At some point in the future, the world as a whole will finally realize just how damaging and dangerous climate change is. When that happens, there will be a collective realization that extracting fossil fuels from shale gas and the oil sands is absolutely the last thing we should be doing. The billions of dollars invested in the technology and the infrastructure used to do that will be wasted when those facilities are forced to close down. On top of that, we will suffer the expense of the additional climate harms that arise because of our delay. Finally, we will need to deploy a zero-carbon energy basis for our economy on a compressed timeline, which is sure to be more expensive than undertaking the task over a longer span of time. It is far more intelligent to build the right thing in the first place than it is to:

  • build the wrong thing (at great expense),
  • suffer the consequences of that choice (at great expense),
  • and then build the right thing in a hurry (at great expense).

There are also major additional benefits associated with an early transition away from fossil fuels: greater geopolitical stability, less air pollution, less water pollution, less destruction of land, etc.

The failure of the Kyoto Protocol to curb the growth in global emissions means we face a bigger problem now than in 1997 and that we have less time to deal with it. The way to do that is to engage constructively with the international community and help drive the emergence of a fair deal, while taking meaningful steps domestically to decarbonize our economy. What we absolutely not do is use the problems with Kyoto as an excuse to continue on a carbon-intensive path of economic development that sacrifices the vital interests of future generations for the short-term profit of those alive and making decisions right now.

The magnitude of GHG emissions from the oil sands

I saw this tweet earlier, and thought it would be a good thing to verify:

RT @climatehawk1: @ClimateReality: Annual #CO2 emissions from Alberta’s #tarsands highr thn emissions of 145 nations: ow.ly/1AjccWj

In the linked document (PDF), it says:

This equates to more carbon emissions than many countries, with the current tar sands emissions outranking 145 out of 207 nations, sitting between the emissions of New Zealand and Denmark.

Wikipedia has a list of countries by greenhouse gas emissions, which places Canada in 10th place with 1.83% of global emissions (note that we have about 0.4% of the global population). Canada’s absolute emissions are listed as 808.2 million tonnes (MT) of CO2 equivalent (CO2e). The Wikipedia list contains 186 countries, with the bottom 145 starting with Vietnam at 178.5 megatonnes CO2e and 0.4% of global emissions. Just adding up Vietnam and the five countries below it produces a sum of 944.8 megatonnes – more than all of Canada’s emissions. Oil sands emissions are still a minority of Canadian emissions, despite rapid expansion.

Wikipedia also lists New Zealand’s emissions as 82.5 megatonnes CO2e, and those of Denmark as 68.3 MT CO2e.

Canada’s latest National Inventory Report (zip) was submitted to the UNFCCC on 15 April 2010. It lists Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2008 as 734 MT CO2e. It lists fossil fuel industries as the source of 65.3 MT of emissions, along with 23.7 MT for mining and oil and gas extraction. Together, that is 89 MT of emissions. It seems incorrect to say that emissions from just the oil sands are greater than those from 145 countries, given that just Vietnam emits significantly more than Canada’s entire oil, gas, and mining sectors put together.

The Pembina Institute claims: “About five per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from oilsands plants and upgraders” and “Oilsands plants and upgraders produced 37.2 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2008”. That is significantly less than either New Zealand or Denmark, much less than Vietnam, and even smaller compared with the cumulative total of the bottom 145 states.

All that being said, oil and gas production are a rapidly expanding area of Canadian emissions and the potential cumulative emissions from the huge quantity of oil in the oil sands is definitely something that should be taken seriously from a climatic perspective.

[Update: 10:45pm] I misunderstood the claim in the original document. The author (Shannon Walsh) was claiming that emissions associated with all fuels produced in the oil sands are greater than the emissions from 145 countries individually, not 145 countries all added together. As the discussion below elaborates upon, this is a more plausible claim.

RealClimate on the Keystone XL ‘carbon bomb’

I am personally a bit uncomfortable with the James Hansen’s much-repeated claim that approving the Keystone XL pipeline would be ‘game over’ for the climate. While the amount of greenhouse gas pollution facilitated by the pipeline is large, I am not sure if it is large enough to justify that particular piece of rhetoric.

As such, I was glad to see a new post on the RealClimate blog that fleshes out and evaluates this claim. In it, the author crunches the numbers and basically concludes that Hansen’s argument is defensible. The huge amount of carbon in the oil sands is cause enough to be concerned about their extraction:

Are the oil sands really the “biggest carbon bomb on the planet”? As a point of reference, let’s compare its net carbon content with the Gillette Coalfield in the Powder river basin, one of the largest coal deposits in the world. There are 150 billion metric tons left in this deposit, according to the USGS. How much of that is economically recoverable depends on price and technology. The USGS estimates that about half can be economically mined if coal fetches $60 per ton on the market, but let’s assume that all of the Gillette coal can be eventually recovered. Powder River coal is sub-bituminous, and contains only 45% carbon by weight. (Don’t take that as good news, because it has correspondingly lower energy content so you burn more of it as compared to higher carbon coal like Anthracite; Powder River coal is mined largely because of its low sulfur content). Thus, the carbon in the Powder River coal amounts to 67.5 gigatonnes, far below the carbon content of the Athabasca Oil Sands. So yes, the Keystone XL pipeline does tap into a very big carbon bomb indeed.

But comparison of the Athabaska Oil Sands to an individual coal deposit isn’t really fair, since there are only two major oil sands deposits (the other being in Venezuela) while coal deposits are widespread. Nehring (2009) estimates that world economically recoverable coal amounts to 846 gigatonnes, based on 2005 prices and technology. Using a mean carbon ratio of .75 (again from Table 6 here), that’s 634 gigatonnes of carbon, which all by itself is more than enough to bring us well past “game-over.” The accessible carbon pool in coal is sure to rise as prices increase and extraction technology advances, but the real imponderable is how much coal remains to be discovered. But any way you slice it, coal is still the 800-gigatonne gorilla at the carbon party..

Commentators who argue that the Keystone XL pipeline is no big deal tend to focus on the rate at which the pipeline delivers oil to users (and thence as CO2 to the atmosphere). To an extent, they have a point. The pipeline would carry 500,000 barrels per day, and assuming that we’re talking about lighter crude by the time it gets in the pipeline that adds up to a piddling 2 gigatonnes carbon in a hundred years (exercise: Work this out for yourself given the numbers I stated earlier in this post). However, building Keystone XL lets the camel’s nose in the tent. It is more than a little disingenuous to say the carbon in the Athabasca Oil Sands mostly has to be left in the ground, but before we’ll do this, we’ll just use a bit of it. It’s like an alcoholic who says he’ll leave the vodka in the kitchen cupboard, but first just take “one little sip.”.

So the pipeline itself is really just a skirmish in the battle to protect climate, and if the pipeline gets built despite Bill McKibben’s dedicated army of protesters, that does not mean in and of itself that it’s “game over” for holding warming to 2C. Further, if we do hit a trillion tonnes, it may be “game-over” for holding warming to 2C (apart from praying for low climate sensitivity), but it’s not “game-over” for avoiding the second trillion tonnes, which would bring the likely warming up to 4C. The fight over Keystone XL may be only a skirmish, but for those (like the fellow in this arresting photo ) who seek to limit global warming, it is an important one. It may be too late to halt existing oil sands projects, but the exploitation of this carbon pool has just barely begun. If the Keystone XL pipeline is built, it surely smooths the way for further expansions of the market for oil sands crude. Turning down XL, in contrast, draws a line in the oil sands, and affirms the principle that this carbon shall not pass into the atmosphere.

I find this analysis convincing. If approved, Keystone XL would certainly feed the process of oil sands development. Being able to export and process more bitumen would justify digging up more of the stuff. It would also justify continued investment in research and development of oil sands technologies.

By exploiting the oil sands, we are riding the last desperate coat-tails of fossil fuel dependence. Instead, we should be investing our wealth and energy and intelligence into developing truly sustainable sources of energy that are compatible with a stable climate.

Surrounding the White House

Right now, protestors opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline are surrounding the White House, in Washington DC:

For more information, see: Tar Sands Action.

See also:

[Update: 8:45pm] My friend Rebeka, who was actually at the event today, tells me that the ring of people around the White House was even larger than I thought:

The organizers estimate that 12,000 people participated, based on this sampling methodology. Comparable numbers have been reported in the media.

Nervousness in oil sands boardrooms

Apparently, oil sands companies are starting to take seriously the possibility that Keystone XL will be successfully blocked:

Oil sands boardrooms are starting to resemble war rooms these days as companies begin to seriously weigh their options in the event that the Obama administration says no to TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL expansion. The proposed $7-billion pipeline has dominated quarterly conference calls hosted by the big industry names over the past two weeks. Will it be built? What will you do if it’s not? Are rail shipments an option? What of Nebraska’s zealous legislators?

For the sake of future generations, I hope their worst fears are fully realized.

IPCC presentation on climate and renewables

Renate Christ recently gave a good presentation on climate change and renewable energy (PDF) on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The charts on page 4 and 5 are especially stark. The first shows the huge extent to which the global energy system remains dominated by fossil fuels. The second is a re-affirmation of the chart on this page showing the relative size of different fossil fuel reserves, and showing how reserves of coal dwarf those of oil and gas in terms of how much climate change they can generate. It also shows how large portions of the world’s remaining oil and gas reserves are of an unconventional variety, such as shale gas and oil sands crude.

Joe Oliver on the right to protest

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver expressed an encouragingly democratic view on the recent Keystone XL protest on Parliament Hill: “I’m not saying everyone who’s protesting is (an extremist). And everyone who’s protesting has a democratic right to get out there and express their view in the public square. This is Canada. I don’t have any quarrel with that at all.”

Blocking in the oil sands

In reporting on the protests against the Keystone XL pipeline, some news sources have argued that since there will be other routes for exporting the oil from the oil sands, there is no sense in opposing this particular one.

What this ignores is the reality that every time a potential export route is closed down, the total quantity of oil burned is likely to diminish. If there are two pipelines – one from the oil sands to the Pacific coast for export (Northern Gateway) and another down to the U.S. Gulf Coast for refining (Keystone XL) – the greenhouse gas pollution related to oil sands production will be greater than in a scenario where only one pipeline gets built, or none at all get built and the industry has to rely on less economical means like shipping bitumen by rail.

If the government of Alberta will not impose limits on the quantity of greenhouse gas pollution being produced by their industries, it will be up to more responsible neighbouring jurisdictions to block the export of the dirty, dangerous fuels being produced.