Posted by: Fast Freddy | Dec 2, 2014 10:15:22 AM | 87

fast freddy is a hoax

Posted by: brian | Dec 3 2014 20:33 utc | 101

@MRW #97 You said: "If the Oil Sands are more polluting than "regular drilled oil," then why are the CO2 emissions for the whole of Canada (larger country than the US) less per capita than Saudi Arabia? How could the whole of Canada's CO2 emissions (1.48% of the world's total in 2010) be effectively the same as Saudi Arabia's (1.36% of the world's total in 2010)?"

Well, for one thing, Saudi Arabia is hardly a model of a low emissions society. It is exactly like comparing a stereotypical alcoholic Russian vs. the stereotypical alcoholic Irishman. Both Canada and Saudi Arabia are very high in the world per capita emissions rankings although Saudi Arabia has less excuse - not having snow.

Secondly, the pollution due to refining is only one factor in the entire process.

@MRW #97 You said: "They use trucks to haul the sand, c1ue. (BTW, thanks for the pdf, much appreciated.) That's the "additional effort." Then steam to get the oil out of the sand. Then they put the steamed sludge back into a tailing pond to reclaim it back to where it was, which takes 15 years. Or they do it 'in situ', way below the ground, and nothing has to go into a tailing pond."

I don't dispute what you say here. What I don't understand is how you can say that all this extra effort: excavating sand, trucking sand, heating it to extract the hydrocarbons, dumping the huge loads of sand elsewhere - is in any way comparable to a drilled well in the exact same spot.

Note I didn't say it was necessarily uneconomic. There are a lot of factors which go into the economic viability of oil in any given location in any given form. At $60/barrel, the tar sands are not profitable to operate - to my understanding. In Saudi Arabia, the cost per barrel is far lower. For deep offshore drilling, the costs to find, drill, and transport are tremendous and risk is high.

@MRW #97 You said: "The process they used to clean up the BP oil spill on Florida beaches is THE EXACT SAME PROCESS they use with the sand in Alberta. Exactly."

I don't think they use dispersants in Canada, do they?

Posted by: c1ue | Dec 4 2014 0:31 utc | 102