Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent [Unknown Binding]

 

 

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To provide some background on my opinion on this book: I currently study natural resource conservation and am committed to stopping climate change through a reduction of greenhouse gasses including CO2. That being said, I also spent 8 months working for Syncrude in their environmental research department and living in Fort McMurray. I bought this book along with 2 others (both are in the suggested panel on this page and I speak of them below) to try to gain a bit more perspective on the industry as a whole and to get some information I was not exposed to.

I honestly don't think there was a single chapter in Nikifourk's book which didn't utterly dumbfound me. Not only does he trivialize important and peer reviewed studies such as those by David Schindler and Erin Kelly (giving them a paragraph in certain sections) but he blows certain ones (such as John O'Conners misdiagnosis) way out of proportion.

What really riles me is how he portrays the city of Fort McMurray. While it is not the place for me and not somewhere I have any intention of moving to, I met dozens of people who loved it there. The bars there are just as trashy as any one I have been to in Vancouver, the traffic is horrible (but only in the morning and evening, Monday - Thursday), but that is due to some serious municipal/provincial bickering, the city itself just feels like a town which exploded. It certainly has problems, and I feel for mayor Blake who is doing her best to make it a great city but the way Nikifourk portrayed it, you would think it is like living in a slum. I'm not sure what to say other than that is simply not the case. At all.

There are scores of biases throughout the book but one of my favourites is on the top of page 105, I won't quote the entire passage since you can read it yourself in the "look inside" feature of Amazon. Basically he implies that the Emergency Meeting Point (which is a giant blue C if you ever drive by it on the high way) is use for toxic spills and upgrader fires. That is 100% true, but it is the same as saying the "Muster Point" for whatever office or school you may work in is used for the same purpose. That meeting point (like every meeting point) is used for any emergency and is a way to increase site safety (safety in the oil sands is also something Nikifourk blasts). Every time we left the truck to do any work, we had to fill out a safety card with our meeting point listed so that we could meet emergency responders in case anything happend (which for us was usually related to tripping and falling our bear attacks, but if you asked Nikifourk, he would say that every black bear in the oil sands was killed by the toxic ponds). In the same paragraph, he speaks about the bison raised on Syncrude land and how he doubts anybody eats them. The bison ranch is actually run by the Fort McKay Group of Companies (and the ranch is run by a few First Nations guys from the company/band) and the bison are consumed regularly.

I don't like the idea of "defending" the oil sands, I feel strongly that there is a serious lack of monitoring in the area and that the royalties paid to the government are totally inadequate. Not to mention the issue of our countries massive overconsumption of oil and, well, everything else. However, if you want to learn something about the oil sands, this book is a HORRIBLE way to start. Look at James Marsden's "Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care)". It is just as opinionated as this book but at least does it in a much more logical and factual way (if that is possible). Then pick up Ezra Levants "Ethical Oil: A case for Canadas Oil Sands", you will undoubtedly disagree with many, if not all, of its principles (as I did), but it is always important to look at the same data, same information, just interpreted in a different way. After you have doen that, flip through the reference section and read over a few reports, it takes time but you will be able to form your own opinion, rather than spewing the same garbage and turning people AWAY from environmentalism as people like Nikifourk do.

One of the more enlightening sections of the book was all about the money of it all. Alberta is not charging the kind of royalties it should be and this needs to change. However, in the great cluster-frack that this book is, Nikifourk talks about Norway as a model nation for collecting fees for long term savings for the country. What he does not mention is how the government owned Statoil in Norway has invested HEAVILY in... The oilsands! So is Alberta supposed to do the same? Collect money from industry only to invest it in dirty oil? I think that is a rather foolish comparison.

The "dirty oil" also really gets me. There is very little evidence shown for just how dirty the oil is in Alberta. Number are shown yes, but many of them represent unrealistic or outdated information. Many oil producers around the globe are guilty of misrepresenting their emissions (such as by burning natural gas found with crude oil underground) and I really do believe that the oil sands are not "that bad". Of course no oil is clean oil, it just sort of grinds my gears that people have this view of the oil sands as being 20 times worse than conventional crude.

Finally, if you really hate what is going on in the oil sands, stop driving, stop taking vacations halfway around the world, stop buying garbage you don't need to impress people you don't care about from the other side of the world and generally try to reduce your overall consumption of oil. To his credit, Nikifourk does devote one of the last sections of the book to this idea of practical solutions to the problem. He looks at James Hansens idea of a dividend based carbon tax and speaks to the idea of reducing consumption to help slow increase in supply. But then in the "Afterword" he goes on a two page tirade about the criticisms of his book he has received and does so in a very undignified mannor, one which seems to be more akin to a juvenile throwing a temper tantrum at his poorly done essay. Nikifourk needs to realize that there are those who will criticize him, and they will do a good job of it. He needs to just ignore it and keep doing what hes doing as long as people (like me) keep buying his book.

*Also, somebody please get Nikifourk a dictionary. There he will find that the name given to the oil sands is correct, if you want to be more specific you can start calling them the asphalt sands or bitumen sands, tar sands is just incorrect. That kind of bugs me.

The tar sands is an important topic. But this book isn't the place to learn about it. You'd have to double check everything so you might as well go other sources and ignore this.

I study climate change and wanted to know more about the tar sands as it is a significant deposit of fossil fuel. But in one section of this book Nikiforuk writes on carbon capture, a topic I know something about. I realized how poorly researched this entire book might well be.

Nikiforuk, on carbon dioxide: "many tar sand projects puff out nearly a million tons of carbon dioxide a year.... ... a million tons - a megaton - is enough lethal carbon dioxide to fill one million two-storey, three-bedroom homes and suffocate every occupant".

If this type of overblowing is your cup of tea you'll love this book. If someone stacked up a megaton's worth of copies of Nikiforuk's book and toppled them on a three-bedroom home, no doubt these lethal books would suffocate or at least crush everyone inside as well.

When it comes to inaccuracy, he comes up with wild figures and contradicts himself on CO2 within a few paragraphs. He states, citing no source: "no infrastructure currently exists to bury carbon. To inject twenty megatons... will cost anywhere from $10 billion to $16 billion". This works out to $500 - $800 a ton. Then he points to a supposed source, as if to confirm this ballpark figure: "the Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage... requested $2 billion in public funds to explore how to effectively bury just five megatons" which works out to $400 a ton.

No one else in the world is publishing figures like this.

Then, a few paragraphs later, Nikiforuk brings up an authority, the I.P.C.C. and states they say capturing "just one ton of carbon ranges anywhere from $25(U.S.) to $115(U.S.). So, within a few paragraphs, Nikiforuk goes from $500, to $800, then to $25 - $115 for either "injecting" a ton, or "capturing" a ton of CO2. Nikiforuk is just throwing numbers around, and using language loosely enough its hard to decypher exactly what he is claiming. Carbon capture "defies economics" he writes, even as his writing defies understanding.

He ignores that the I.P.C.C. states carbon capture will be an important part of future carbon dioxide emitting power sources for civilization even as he claims to be familiar with their work.

Near the end of this topic, he blithely pronounces the entire concept of carbon capture to be "morally bankrupt".

I don't find it that useful to be told that a technology that removes a pollutant is somehow "morally bankrupt". As far as his pronouncement that carbon capture "defies economics" it would be far more useful to publish a meaningful figure. What would cost to remove the CO2 from the emissions of the energy source used to process a barrel of oil from tar sand? If he just stated a range of estimates for this, then anyone could understand what it might cost to put tar sand oil on a more level playing field with conventional oil. It is the carbon emissions from the processing fuel that has analysts saying that tar sand oil results in more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil. Nikiforuk carefully avoids stating any figures in this most meaningful form.

I've seen a study stating less than $10 a barrel, i.e. the Rand study. But Nikiforuk has an axe to grind, this is the "dirtiest" possible oil, and he isn't interested in providing any figures anyone can use to see the issue in any way other than what he says the issue is.

An on and on.

It is not long into the book before the reader realizes that the Canadian environmentalist, Andrew Nikiforuk, has more than a few bones to pick with the Canadian petroleum industry over the future expansion of the Tar Sands. In this short study on the state of this megaproject as it unfolds in the boreal forests of northern Alberta, Nikiforuk believes that the technology used to extract and convert bitumen from deep in the ground is extremely hazardous to the environment and expensive to Canadian taxpayers. As mentioned in the book, there are friendlier, albeit more expensive, energy alternatives that big government and big oil need to pursue in order to save the environment and the future of the country. For Nikiforuk, a notable left-wing political activist, the real beneficiaries of this huge government investment in the Tar Sands are the right-wing neocons who are profiting from major kickbacks from the likes of Suncor in the rush to expand the production of dirty oil. He includes chapters in the book that deal specifically with how Ottawa and Edmonton have teamed up to make Canada a leading exporter of underpriced oil to the US at the expense of damaging the wildlife and waterways of the indigenous people of northern Alberta. Furthermore, Alberta charges Suncor and its affiliates some of the lowest oil royalties in the country while paying out its own pockets hundreds of millions of public money for building critical public infrastructure for processing centers like Ft.McMurray. As a result of the big spending, anti-environment policies of the successive governments of Ralph Klein and Ed Stelmach, Alberta is in the process of squandering its future as one of the wealthier provinces in Confederation. Nikiforuk maintains that it is time for the federal government to start shifting its energy priorities away from harmful and wasteful oil production to greener alternatives. To this end, a national carbon tax, fewer agriculture subsidies, higher royalties and a national heritage fund similar to Norway's could pave the way to a more sustainable economy that is not dependent on fossil fuels as its one key energy source. While I sympathize to a degree with Nikiforuk's message on the need to step back from developing the Tar Sands, I don't think it will happen the way Nikiforuk imagines it will. There are powerful economic forces at work here that have the attention of government and are prepared to do anything possible to see the Tar Sands expand over the next decade, even it uses up over 70% of the province's water and pollutes most of its northern waterways for generations to come. Well-written and worth the read just to learn how fragile this region is in terms of heavy industrial development.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Superficial, Misleading, and Politically Slanted
You wouldn't want to read this book if you wanted other than a superficial picture of the oil sands. Read more

Published on Aug 4 2009 by David Moe

4.0 out of 5 stars Debunkers have their heads buried in the (tar) sand
This is a must-read for anyone interested in the planet's future. Some facts and figures may be suspect, but the overall report is accurate, similar to what the courts said about... Read more

Published on Mar 20 2009 by Red Green

5.0 out of 5 stars The stupidity of man kind.
I am now in my winter years and a keen observer of the world around me and how humankind has destroyed so much of our planet. Read more

Published on Feb 13 2009 by Johnny Boy

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read!
Enlightening, well researched and written. This has been very helpful for me in understanding tar sands development.

Published on Feb 11 2009 by PBA

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sweeping Expose of an Environmental Disaster in the Making
Nikiforuk, most famous for his book on Wiebo Ludwig, "Saboteurs", now returns with a book that looks at the massive oil sands development in Northern Alberta and shows how the... Read more

Published on Nov 18 2008 by Gordon Neufeld

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