Questions over tar sands

Tuesday, February 17 2009
http://newsday.co.tt/editorial/0,95309.html

ENERGY Minister Conrad Enill has opened the proverbial can of worms by his proposal at last Thursday’s post-Cabinet media conference to try to produce crude-oil from tar sand deposits at the Parrylands/Guapo field near La Brea.

He said Cabinet had agreed to licence Petrotrin to explore this possibility in order to maintain the country’s energy revenues in the medium to long term.

However things are not so simple.

The extraction and processing of tar sands in Alberta, Canada over an area the size of Florida has been widely criticised for destroying the local ecology, plus worsening global-warming by using three times as much energy (and generating thrice as much carbon dioxide) as is used in pumping out conventional heavy-oil.

To strip-mine the tar sands, the covering forest is first bulldozed away, destroying trees, soil, waterways and wildlife. Massive amounts of tar-sands are then dug out, with two tons of tar sands yielding just one barrel of oil. The tar sands are then processed in factories using huge amounts of water and energy to separate the bitumen from the sand particles. The resulting by- product of toxic sludge must be disposed of — again threatening local flora, fauna and aquifers — while corrosive sulphur dioxide gas may be emitted as a side-product, to the detriment of nearby residents. Last April 28, some 500 wild ducks were poisoned in a tar sands waste-pond in Alberta, showing the toxicity of this industry.

It is astounding that the Government would likewise want to exploit tar sands in little Trinidad whose citizens will be far closer to the toxic effluent — airborne and waterborne - than are the residents of Alberta, Canada.

Further, despite Mr Enill’s claims, we wonder whether Trinidad and Tobago’s tar sands are abundant enough to produce the economies of scale enjoyed in Alberta.

Is it really two billion barrels as Mr Enill claims, an amount equal to the sum of all of this country’s other oil-fields - onshore and offshore — or is it less? If two tons of tar sands produces one barrel of oil as reported elsewhere, by Mr Enill’s arithmetic the extraction of the Parrylands/Guapo field would involve excavation of some four billion tons of earth. Even with the best will in the world and the most conscientious efforts at land rehabilitation, surely the scale of this operation would in itself almost certainly assure massive environmental degradation.

What are the policy implications of Government’s daring to chase one of the world’s dirtiest and most controversial energy-sources?

Firstly, the mining of tar sands would likely require the burning of natural gas, and so signal a shift of sorts from Trinidad and Tobago selling the cleanest hydrocarbon to one of the dirtiest.

Further, in looking towards tar sands Mr Enill may well be signalling his doubt as to the size of this country’s reserves of traditional or heavy-oil.

Also, in this era of low oil-prices including over $200 million lost by Petrotrin last year, where is the money coming from to invest in tar sands?

Due to the costly inputs of energy, tar sands are only economical to mine in an era of high oil- prices, so we wonder why Government is exploring this option in this time of record low oil- prices.

Who will invest in this dirty oil, and to whom will we sell it?

The US Congress has banned Federal agencies from using oil from tar sands, and expectations are high among US environmentalists that the “green” Obama Administration may extend this law to a blanket ban across the US.

So, we are yet to be given more details from Mr Enill to convince us of the environmental and economic viability of exploiting the tar sands for oil.