The Heavy Toll of Imported Oil

November 11, 2009 – Vol.14 No.34

THE HEAVY TOLL OF IMPORTED OIL.
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News

In October 2009, still in the midst of job losses unprecedented since the Great Depression, the United States exported more than $850 million a day, in cash, to buy oil. True, that’s less than $3 a day for every man, woman and child in the country. That’s more than $90 per person for the month. For a family of four that’s nearly $375 for the 31 day month.

Energy expert T. Boone Pickens likes to use more dramatic numbers saying the nation sent more than $ 594,359 per minute overseas to foreign governments. Pickens wants the nation to switch to natural gas, which it has in abundance, and/or to renewable energy.

The nation imports 60 percent of its oil. In October 2009 more than 350 million barrels arrived in U.S. ports representing about $26.5 billion. October was no anomaly. That figure has been roughly the same all year, and even higher in 2008. Imagine what $26.5 billion every month would do for the U.S. economy if it stayed here and was not sent overseas?

Much, but not a majority, of our exported cash for oil goes to OPEC nations. Right now our friendly northern and southern neighbors are the top one and two exporting nations for the oil we consume.

Some of the crude oil the U.S. imports from Canada comes from the oil sands of Alberta. For green-leaning Canada the oil sands projects should be at least an embarrassment for the nation. However, the Canadian government says the mining can be clean. (It’s hard to imagine the U.S., or many other nations, allowing the kind of mining operations now being performed there.)

The tar sands are considered the biggest reserve of oil outside Saudi Arabia. Deposits are spread out over an area the size of Florida in a landscape that’s now being permanently altered and possibly permanently polluted.

Before it became technologically and economically feasible to extract the oil, the area was mostly covered in Boreal forest. The extraction process begins with the removal of those carbon-capturing, carbon-storing trees. After the trees are cut and hauled away, the top soil and other vegetation is removed to reveal sand coated in a mix of water and bitumen, a heavy oil.

oilsands526

Satellite view of an oil sands project on the Athabasca River in Alberta, Canada.
The dark green is remaining Boreal forest. Note how close the tailing pond is to the river.
Courtesy NASA

In one project (there are many in the region) oily sands are washed with heated water from the nearby Athabasca River. Oil and water don’t mix, of course, so the oil can be skimmed off. The process isn’t perfect. The water used to cleanse the sand of its oil is contaminated and can’t be pumped back into the Athabasca. Instead, the water is pumped into tailing ponds where it sits, perhaps waiting for evaporation to remove it. That tainted water may get into the water table and the Athabasca and is a concern.

With luck the mines will all be reclaimed, with forest regrown. It will be decades before the truth is known.

Tar sands operations, continually growing, are now producing over a million barrels of oil per day. What tar sands oil that isn’t being consumed in Canada is being shipped to the U.S. and elsewhere.

Americans go on their merry way each day not realizing that money shipped overseas may do little to improve their lives. Nor do they realize how much keeping $850 million every day would do for their country and themselves. Nor do they realize the permanent damage to the planet they are leaving behind for their children to deal with, simply because they refuse to demand something different or conserve the source of energy they have.