Besides the environmental devastation now taking place in Canada (as detailed in the video), there is the elevated risk of pipeline spills throughout both nations as a result of new corrosive oil products being increasingly delivered to the United States.
Tar sands oil is significantly more acidic and corrosive than standard oil, and requires increased heat and pressure to move through pipelines. These unique characteristics brings with them new liabilities to the integrity of the American oil pipeline system that is currently unprepared to handle this product, and new threats to the waterways and aquifers that cross paths with these pipelines.
This new product has a significantly different chemical composition from other petroleums that creates difficulty in transportation and cleanup when spills occur. Tar sands diluted bitumen has five-to-ten times as much sulfur as conventional crude and more chloride salts. Both substances can weaken pipelines and make them more likely to break during a pressure spike. Refiners have reported finding more quartz sand and other solid material in tar sands diluted bitumen. At high pressure, this material basically sandblasts the inside of the pipe.
Naturally occurring or crude bitumen is a sticky, tar-like form of petroleum that is so thick and heavy that it must be heated before it will flow. At room temperature, it has a consistency much like cold molasses. Most natural bitumens contain sulfur and several heavy metals such as nickel, vanadium, lead, chromium, mercury and also arsenic, selenium, and other toxic elements.
Naturally occurring crude bitumen impregnated in sedimentary rock is the prime feed stock for petroleum production from "oil sands", currently under development in Alberta.
Oil Sands Create Energy Boom and Environmental Problems
Canada has most of the world's supply of natural bitumen, covering 140,000 square kilometres (an area larger than England), giving it the second largest proven oil reserves in the world. The Athabasca oil sands is the largest bitumen deposit in Canada and the only one accessible to surface mining, although recent technological breakthroughs have resulted in deeper deposits becoming producible by in-situ methods (recovery techniques which apply heat or solvents to heavy oil or bitumen reservoirs beneath the earth... the ones which work best in the oil sands use heat).
As of 2006 Canadian crude bitumen production averaged about 1.1 million barrels per day and was projected to rise to 4.4 million barrels per day by 2020. The total amount of crude bitumen in Alberta which could be extracted is estimated to be about 310 billion barrels which at a rate of 4,400,000 barrels per day would last about 200 years.
Because of oil price increases since 2003, upgrading bitumen to synthetic crude oil has become highly profitable... increased speculation pushing prices even higher will only make it more so!
Note:
This is what the tar sands area looks like on Google Maps ... (remember these images are always months behind 'real time').
Tell Obama to reject Canada tar sands!!
