Tar Sands Oil Production, An Industrial Bonanza, Poses Major Water Use Challenges

[JohnWxy]

This article deserves it's own post:

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/tar-sands-oil-production-is-an-industrial-bonanza-poses-major-water-use-challenges/



Regarding the Athabasca tar sands:
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Polluted Water, Limits on Water

Just 10 percent is returned to the river, which a number of independent studies say is visibly depleted and rapidly deteriorating. The balance is poured into toxic tailing ponds as big as lakes, containing more than 1 trillion gallons of waste water combined and so polluted that at least 1,600 ducks that inadvertently landed in them have died, drowned by the tarry water.
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.....then there is development of oil-shale in the U.S. ....
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Similarly, water scarcity will limit oil shale development. Much of the oil shale in the United States occurs in the deserts of the Rocky Mountain West, where climate change, according to an analysis by the EPA earlier this year, is reducing snowmelt and rainfall resulting in less moisture in rivers and aquifers. Philip Smith, a professor of chemical engineering and director of the Institute for Clean and Secure Energy at the University of Utah, said his state’s shale oil can’t be tapped using water-intensive technologies.

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Refineries on Dry Land

Moreover, building new American refineries that are closest to the shales and tar sands also means siting them on the water-scarce Great Plains, putting new pressure on surface and underground water supplies. The proposed Hyperion refinery in southeast South Dakota, which sits just across the Missouri River from Iowa, would use 12 million gallons of water a day for oil processing and cooling. The source of the water is an aquifer that the U.S.G.S. said is stressed from over pumping by farms. The plant’s wastewater will (after processing) be poured into the Missouri River.

Both phases of the plant’s water use have come under new scrutiny. Water managers in South Dakota have already told investigators with the General Accounting Office, a unit of Congress, that they anticipated shortages of water over the next decade. And last month Richard Leopold, director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, sent a letter to the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources, as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that called for a more thorough assessment of the plant’s risks to the environment, including from its water discharges.

(more)
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[leveymg]

1. Tar sand production converts LPG into the dirtiest petroleum source, shale oil.

It makes absolutely no sense environmentally or economically to pipe in petroleum gas, which is a relatively clean energy source, and use it to cook slurry out of tar sands in Alberta and South Dakota. This is being done because it's cheaper to ship shale oil to China, which now owns half the tar sands deposits in Canada and the U.S.

The U.S. and Canada are turning themselves into Third World countries, and are being treated as such.

[JohnWxy]

2. but this is preferable (to OIl companies) to a genuine commitment to renewable fuels development.