Loïc Welch

Tar Sands : Summary

Chapter 5: The Water Barons
Canada enjoys the luxuries of a resource rich country, yet its spoiling an
immensely important and undervalued wealth, that of water. In his book, Tar Sands:
Dirty oil and the future of a continent, Andrew Nikiforuk lays out in great detail the
impacts of bitumen, a dirtier alternative hydrocarbon. The Water Barons chapter touches
on the tremendous amounts of water being squandered in the extraction and refining of
tar sand. The Canadian government fails to adequately supervise big oil corporations’ use
of water; also, no federal or provincial entity has done any sort of assessment on the
impacts these giant industries are having on boreal wetlands and rivers. Consequently,
recent trends in the Athabasca’s flow and winter levels raised concerns to the point where
the National Energy Board has questioned the sustainability of water usage in bitumen
refining.
The tar sand operations in Alberta consume 76% of the Athabasca River’s flow,
which is equivalent to 2.3 billion barrels of fresh water a year. Currently, for every barrel
of bitumen produced three “net” barrels of water are needed to refine it (12 barrels are
actually used, but industries reuse the water several times). The winter levels of the
Athabasca River reach critical lows during the winter, when the flow is at its weakest, to
the point where it endangers fish habitat. An interim plan was designed to categorize with
Green, Yellow, or Red the levels of the river in order to regulate usage. The plan was
never implemented, because some years would have mandated severe water restrictions
(coded Red) for spans of forty-three weeks, which is unacceptable for oil companies. At
the current rate of water usage, by 2015 industries will remove 15% of the Athabasca
River flow. The problem escalates as excavation intensifies, easily accessible tar sand is
made scarce; corporations are digging deeper to access an even lower quality bitumen.
The demand for water will increase as the quality of the bitumen decreases. Also, global
warming is taking a toll on the river’s flow and quality, adding to the current problems.
All these elements combined predict that by 2050 the Athabasca will drop to 50% of its
present state.
Parallel to open-pit mining, another technology is being installed throughout
Alberta, its called Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD), aka situ drilling. There is a
patch of land leased for this technology that is the size of Vancouver Island and it will
Loïc Welch
Tar Sands : Summary
threaten 5000% more water then the current extraction technics do. The SAGD were
originally designed to have water to bitumen ration lower then 3:1; however, subsequent
field-testing proved the actual average ratio to be around 8:1. Situ melts bitumen from
underneath with the help of steam, and gravity drains the bitumen into a pump headed
towards the surface. The steam used comes from natural gas powered boilers. Injecting
tremendous heat underground liberates arsenic and other heavy metals from deep
sediments, which seeps into aquifers (underground layers of water within the earth).
Moreover, SAGD producers generate around 15 million Kg. of salts and water-solvent
carcinogens a year, which are dumped into landfills. The by-products of SAGD pose the
potential risks of either seeping into the ground and contaminating aquifers and/or
evaporating into the atmosphere to eventually fall as acid rain over Saskatchewan. The
rains render lifeless hundreds of lakes that cannot buffer such a large amount of acidity.
Furthermore, when a barrel of oil or natural gas is taken from the ground, it is replaced by
the equivalent amount of water from somewhere; in this case, it is replaced from the
provinces water-riches. Studies show that the extraction of natural gas alone could
eventually account for the disappearance of 350 to 530 billion ft. 3 of water in central
Alberta.
Affected communities and onlookers came to the realization that the frenetic
water usage is unsustainable and changes must be made. An imminent tug-of-war
opposing concerns for the environment and a need to protect communities from a major
loss of jobs is likely to stall any attempts made in restricting water usage. Besides, water
is a natural resource and imposing constraints on it breaches the North American Free
Trade Agreement (N.A.F.T.A.). Restricting the water would most likely see the
government of Alberta sued by the corporations for compensation.
As Nikiforuk quotes: “only a nation without a water policy could allow such rapid
development of the tar sands in the world’s third-largest water basin”(p.78). Indeed, the
only monitoring firm, the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP), receives it’s
funding directly from the oil corporations. The scientific community raised some
concerns regarding the validity and reliability of the monitoring conducted. Conversely, a
group of experts was appointed to examine the findings of RAMP and it found that the
organization was monitoring with no design and no plan. The scientists also discovered a
Loïc Welch
Tar Sands : Summary
lack of long-term data regarding downstream oil sands development and found the
monitoring sites too few and inadequate. The appointed group concluded that: “The
monitoring program had sampled so many different things from so many different places
over time that the data couldn’t measure, let alone detect, any kind of impact”(p.77).
Canada is a country with unimaginable wealth; unfortunately the government
seems hell bent on destroying them without the slightest remorse, or notice. In Tar
Sands, Andrew Nikiforuk states: “Environment Canada systematically fails to uphold
federal laws; 23% of Canada’s waterways can no longer support aquatic life”(p.76).
However, the government and companies are not only to blame; citizens of Canada are
also contributing to the problem with their endless consumerism. We need to take
responsibility and make a conscious effort to demand an alternative.