As most easily accessible oil is found and extracted, oil production becomes an increasingly dirty process, like production from the deep Gulf, or Canada's Tar Sands.
Canada's tar sands: a dangerous solution to offshore oil
Alberta is the 'safe' option for US oil needs – but its tar sands are far more environmentally damaging than Deep Horizon
The problem comes if California shifts its consumption of oil to a more carbon-intensive source. David Hughes of the Post Carbon Initiative has noted that, even if offshore drilling is banned in California, it will have little positive environmental impact if the state's current demand for oil is just met from other sources. One likely source in particular will only worsen the situation: oil from the Canadian tar sands are already the biggest source of US oil imports, and Alberta's recoverable reserves are now estimated to be the second-largest worldwide after Saudi Arabia. And unlike oil from Saudi Arabia, Albertan oil is literally in the sand itself, so refining it is up to five times as energy-intensive as refining crude oil.
Oil companies are planning to spend a staggering $379 billion ramping up Canadian Tar Sands oil production for export, mostly to the US through new pipelines now under construction (see: Why did U.S. just OK new pipeline to import Tar Sands Oil?). That's likely to transform much of northern Canada's forests into vast toxic wastelands. These sterile moonscapes, dotted with leaking toxic waste ponds, have already poisoned whole river systems in Canada.
Alberta premier Ed Stelmach wasted little time visiting Washington to promote Canadian oil sands as a "safer" option in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster – referring to the oil sands as an "unconventional" source, as though one of the most destructive variants of fossil fuel extraction was merely a friendly alternative.
This is the moment that Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper has presumably been waiting for. While the US has, at least so far, resisted a complete dependency on Albertan sand oil, this environmentally disastrous from of petrol is widening its share of the global market.
Sacrificing Canada's Taiga is NOT an acceptable way to satisfy Americans' super sized thirst for oil, any more than befouling the Gulf of Mexico is. Taiga is the world's largest land biome, and it makes up over a quarter of the worlds forests. That makes Taiga one of the Earth's vitally important carbon sinks. An acre of Taiga can sequester much more carbon than an acre of tropical rainforest.
Promise and peril of Canada's oil sands
CALGARY, Alberta, May 21 (UPI) -- The Canadian oil sands are likely to become the largest single source of imported oil to the United States this year and could ultimately supply more than a third of America's foreign oil by 2030, says a new report.
During the last 10 years, production from oil sands more than doubled, from 600,000 barrels per day in 2000 to 1.35 million barrels per day in 2009, the report from IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates released Wednesday shows.
Americans are rapidly increasing their consumption of (and their dependence on) the world's dirtiest, and most carbon intensive oil from Canada's Tar Sands.
companies Tar sands oil extraction spreading rapidly, report warns
The successful development of Canada's tar sands has triggered a rush by Shell and other oil companies to set up similar operations in Russia, Congo and even Madagascar, a new report reveals.
BP is developing tar sands in Alberta and also in Venezuela, the world's second largest reserves after Canada, where it is active on the Petromonagas block and is also considering the Ayacucho 2 block.
Shell, which led the charge into Alberta, has been working with Tatneft to produce tar sands crude at the Ashalchinskoye field in Tatarstan, in the Russian Federation.
The Taiga isn't the only thing being harmed, Canada's First Nations People have suffered grievously as their traditional lands are being stripped and left in ruins for Tar Sands oil production.
First Nations and Tar Sands Industry Clash in the Courts and the Hague
This week, the small Cree community walked into Canada's top court and the Hague Netherlands to take on the Government of Alberta and Royal Dutch Shell over the impacts of tar sands developments and trampling of their Constitutionally protected Rights.
The Duncan's First Nation and the Horse Lake First Nation's lawyer presented at the Supreme Court of Canada's hearing in the matter of the Carrier Sekani and Rio Tinto case - a case that will determine how Canada's energy regulators are to deal with the conflict between First Nations' rights and major energy projects such as the Tar Sands.
The two First Nations are representative of a growing number of First Nations opting to take on Alberta, Canada and the tar sands industry in the courts and on the home turf of the world's most powerful oil corporations. Testawich adds, "First Nations are tired of Alberta's "song and dance about how they responsibly regulate the oil industry and protect the environment and our rights. The reality is that there are two environmental oil related disasters unfolding in North America today - the Gulf spill and that caused by Alberta and its "results based", hands off approach with the tar sands industry.
The World Wildlife Fund studied the opportunity costs of devoting such vast sums of money to perusing such an environmentally destructive energy path.
Tar sands billions could be better spent
WWF-UK and The Co-operative have launched a report showing how the massive resources being poured into environmentally damaging tar sands could instead be used to create green energy or to help meet global development goals.
The thought-provoking new WWF/Co-op report, Opportunity Cost of the Tar Sands (pdf file), puts into perspective the estimated £254 billion ($379 billion) that the big oil companies are planning to invest in tar sands between now and 2025.
"If Canada extracts its probable reserves of oil from tar sands, this will almost single-handedly commit the world to dangerous levels of CO2 in the atmosphere – contributing to dangerous climate change, destroying ecosystems and habitats around the world. We cannot afford for this to happen.
Warnings don't get much more dire than that. A scenario that devastating in its magnitude would make the Deepwater Horizon disaster seem trivial by comparison.
We ignore it at our peril, or I should say our grandchildren's peril.
Where our fuel comes from makes a difference, just as how much fuel we use makes a difference. We need to pay attention to both sides of the equation. America shouldn't be increasing our consumption of oil from Canada's Tar Sands.