Keep lid on oil sand option

Saturday, February 21st 2009
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_opinion?id=161442723

Even the most primitive human societies rely on energy from combustion of carbon-rich natural materials such as wood. And certainly the economies of all countries today rely to a considerable extent on utilisation of the fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and natural gas.

Some countries also rely on modern variants of wind, hydro and geothermal power. It is true also that some countries of the developed world, particularly France and Japan, are heavily into nuclear energy and all are into developmental stages of alternative energy sources such as solar, tidal and wind energy.

Our economy continues, however, to be dominated by extraction of natural gas and petroleum, sources which whatever may be said, are finite resources of both known and unknown quantities. The Government must therefore be commended for its newest initiative of establishing a committee of experts to consider alternative energy resources and charged with producing, first, a Green Paper that after public and parliamentary debate will lead to a White Paper that defines national policy.

Clearly some alternative energy sources such as hydro or geothermal power are not likely prospects, nor do we expect that nuclear power in its present form is applicable in our circumstances. This leaves wind, solar and wave power as possible options, of which technologies of wind and solar power are already well developed.

At the same time we must express some puzzlement over Cabinet's decision to charge Petrotrin with conducting a study of the possibility of mining and refining comparatively large oil sand deposits in the Guapo area. Oil sand, otherwise called tar or bitumen sands, are found in many parts of the world. The largest deposits are to be found in Alberta, Canada and extend over an area of about 77,000 sq km, or about 14 times the size of Trinidad and Tobago. Other significant deposits occur in Venezuela.

Exploitation of oil sands is a costly and dirty business and only becomes economically viable when the price of crude oil rises above about US$20 per barrel. The oil sand is mined in open pits after removal of all vegetation and much water and energy is expended in separating the bitumen from the sand as well as in preliminary refining, while the crude product has to be further refined into a synthetic fuel that can be refined into different fuels.

Refining processes produce significant quantities of greenhouse and other toxic gases, as well as polluted tailing ponds. In theory the retrievable Alberta oil sands are reported to be in the order of 300 billion barrels. The Alberta oil sands occur in an extremely sparsely populated area. Our country is by contrast extremely densely populated and short of water resources and therefore simply cannot accommodate vast open pit mining, hence our puzzlement.