AFP reports: The amount of harmful pollutants released in the process of recovering oil from tar sands in western Canada is likely far higher than corporate interests say, university researchers said Monday.
Actual levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emissions into the air may be two to three times higher than estimated, said the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.
The study raises new questions about the accuracy of environmental impact assessments on the tar sands, just days after a US State Department report said the controversial Keystone pipeline project to bring oil from Canada to Texas would have little impact on climate change or the environment.
Current government-accepted estimates do not account for the evaporation of PAHs from wastewater pools known as tailing ponds, which are believed to be a major source of pollution, said researchers at the University of Toronto.
According to corporate interests which are responsible for projecting their environmental impact, the Athabasca oil sands beneath Alberta, Canada — which hold the third largest reserve of crude oil known in the world — are only spewing as much pollution into the air as sparsely populated Greenland, where no big industry exists.
Lead study author Frank Wania, a professor in the department of physical and environmental sciences, described the corporate estimates as “inadequate and incomplete.”
“If you use these officially reported emissions for the oil sands area you get an emissions density that is lower than just about anywhere else in the world,” he told AFP. [Continue reading…]
Re: Alberta and climate change.
I am okay with the concept of climate change being real.
I am not okay with populists telling me how to live my life.
As a non-USA person, the Alberta ‘dirty oil’ pissing contest is merely another way for uncle sam to muscle countries the USA populists think are inferior.
As a non USA resident of this continent, I have no problem with investors coming into Canada and making $ for themselves and others working in the patch, and conforming to the current Environmental regulations (made in Alberta, not USA).
Also I have nothing but respect for the current U of Toronto Study about PAH levels in the ‘oil patch’. If the populists look into Professor Wania’s research, they will be very hard pressed to find room for their populist ideas there.
Thanks Professor Wania for the breath of fresh air.
As a person who watches the destruction of a land, such as what’s taking place in Alberta, I have problems with trying to understand why humans think they have the right to destroy the land so as to make it uninhabitable for what may come later, after they’ve extracted the minerals, be it open pit mining such as in Alberta, or any other country. As for the laws to pollute, it’s as one may say, money talks, everything gets left in the garbage dump.