Tar sands extraction has been going on for 35-plus years, but few studies of toxicity
and other impacts have been completed.
The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans has produced several versions of a draft report on the environmental hazards of oil and bitumen pipelines. But none of them has been published. That's ticked off some political leaders and environmental advocates. “We are being sold a bill of goods by this government,” New Democrat environment critic Megan Leslie
said Monday.
Bitumen is the form of petroleum being extracted from the Alberta tar sands and shipped by pipeline and rail to U.S. refineries, mostly in the Midwest. In industry jargon, it's heavy, sour crude oil. If the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, it would join with the already operational southern leg to carry up to 830,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen—dilbit—through the U.S. heartland to Texas Gulf Coast refineries.
As expected, industry spokespeople offer some version of "no problem." Francois Poirier, president of TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline project, said: “There have been a number of studies by reputable third-party and scientific organizations … that demonstrate that diluted bitumen behaves just like any other type of crude oil product that’s transported through our pipeline.” Such behavior is hardly the key concern.
The unpublished 61-page draft report focuses most of its attention on what's not known about bitumen's properties. There's quite a lot that's not: no peer-reviewed reports on possible toxic biological effects; little on how bitumen or dilbut behaves in water; no studies on how the different concentrations of metals in bitumen behave compared with those in conventional oil; little known on how condensate used to dilute bitumen for transport behaves in a body of water; no studies on the specific ways bitumen interact with living organisms; not enough research on airborne toxicity associated with the tar sands; few studies about the impacts of hydrocarbon spills into the Great Lakes; not enough research on the interaction of bitumen, the environment and dispersants (chemicals that break up oil spills); and little known about behavior of bitumen in the icy, dark waters of the Canadian Arctic.
Some of what has been learned, the report states, is not encouraging. Bob Weber writes:
The early draft of the report examines research on Orimulsion, a Venezuelan product about two-thirds bitumen and one-third water.
Studies say Orimulsion tends to sink in fresh water, but remain[s] suspended throughout the water column in salt water. It is also "highly toxic to fish"—300 times more toxic to embryos than heavy fuel oil. […]
Prominent ecologist David Schindler, whose work is cited in the review, said the real state of knowledge about the potential effects of a bitumen spill is even sketchier than the review suggests.
Although officials say an extensive scientific report is slated for completion—and publication—sometime in the next few months, it isn't hard to figure out why so few studies have been done so far on the products of an industry that has been in operation for four decades and is now
producing around 1.3 million barrels a day of bitumen and synthetic crude, with the chance of doubling that in the next two years depending on the price of oil. Such studies can play havoc with the bottom line.