The Alberta government is trying desperately to make sure that oil sands oil doesn’t get blocked from the US market when new fuel policies come into effect.  As it stands, oil from Alberta’s oil sands will likely be blocked from California under the world-leading Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

In its efforts, the Government of Alberta commissioned two studies (TIAX – Executive Summary and Full Study -  and Jacobs - Executive Summary and Full Study) to analyse the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with various types of crude oil – including crude processed from Canadian oil sands.  They found that some oil sands oil has lifecycle emissions comparable to some conventional crude oil (although most oil sands results turned out to be considerably higher than most conventional crude oils).  The attached image, from the Jacobs consultancy report, summarizes the findings.  Note that 70 gCO2e/MJ gasoline, which make up the bulk of the emissions, are embodied in the actual fuel.  The variation seen in this image is attributed to different production life cycles.  “Thermal” and “mining” refer to different development styles for oil sands in Canada.

Now, these reports have come under considerable criticism from organizations who don’t want to see oil sands / tar sands oil flowing into the US anymore, such as the Natural Resource Defence Council’s blog on the issue.  Honestly, this isn’t the interesting discussion for me.

The interesting thing for me is that different conventional crude oils have different lifecycle GHG emissions, possibly differing up to 10%, such as in the case between Arab Medium and Bonny Light, as illustrated above.

This means that any transport sector GHG emission analyses that assume one value for crude oil WTW emissions might be off by several percentage points, depending on the difference between the assumed weighted average of crude oil LCA GHG emissions, and the actual weighted average.

I like advanced biofuels as a means of reducing lifecycle GHG emissions in the transport sector, but if significant emission reductions can be achieved by simply shifting sources of crude oil from one supplier to another, this is also an important consideration to make, given that advanced biofuel technology is not quite commercialized yet.

It would be incumbent on China energy analysts to understand the relative sources of crude oil to China, and to undertake LCAs on each of those sources so as to minimize GHG emissions from the transport sector during this time of transition to alternative sources of energy.  Similarly, analyses on different sources of coal should be undertaken in order to accomplish the same lower carbon shifting of conventional energy sources.

The First Nations have also pulled out of CEMA, in fact stating that they may go to court over any new approvals that may come to pass.

“Our message is plain and clear…We have to slow down industry to let us catch up . . . if we continue to let industry and government behave the way they’ve been behaving the last 40 years, there will be no turn back because it will be the total destruction of the land.”

Adam said if the Chipewyan, Cree and Metis people of Fort Chipewyan don’t act now, the entire community will have to be moved in 50 years because there won’t be anything left to sustain them.

“We’ll be refugees in our own land,” he said.

These shocking and lucid words are a clear threat to anybody interested in investing in the Albertan tar sands.  I hope that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates also heard this message loud and clear on their recent trip.

The Calgary Herald reported today that Imperial Oil (whose parent company, Exxon, is one of the biggest corporate “climate change disblievers” out there) has demonstrated how good and selfless they are in developing the oil sands – for the sake of all the poor people in all the undeveloped countries out there.

Imperial’s new chief executive, Bruce March, described the oilsands as a vital global energy source in a world where billions of people live with poor sanitation, unsafe drinking water and inadequate or no electricity.

Call me naive.  Call me crazy.  But there are a few things that disturb me about this – and in my rage, I might not get this in quite the right order, so forgive me.

1. Oil sands contribute a large percentage of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions – maybe around 20% between 1990 and 2005.
2. Canada, according to recent government reports (I’ve got to cite a Reuters report for the time being stating that although Canada’s population makes up only 0.5% of the world’s total, it pumps out 2% of the worlds GHG emissions.
3. GHG emissions are putting poor starvign people in “undeveloped countries” under water, under sand (desertified) or under hurricanes/typhoons and other extreme weather conditions.  Pushing ahead with super-carbon intensive petroleum development like oilsands using current technology isn’t going to help them one iota.
4. Oil sands exports go to fuel US and Canada-based SUVs.  They don’t go to fuel poor starving people in ‘undeveloped countries.’  Please.  I know plans have been rekindled for Enbridge’s gateway pipeline, but there still nothing on the ground there.

I think Imperial’s got to take a good look in the mirror if they think they are doing the world a big huge favour by using present technology to develop oil sands.  Nobody – especially the poorest people in the world – needs more GHG emissions than are absolutely necessary.  And Alberta’s oil sands have time after time been proven to be a huge source of such gasses.

Let’s push Imperial, and all the other oil sands developers – to use the most cutting edge technology to reduce GHG and other emissions (including tailings). Let’s push the Alberta government to resist approving new development until new technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage are developed and commericalized.  The world doesn’t have time to be grandfathering carbon-intense technology just because the price of oil is high today.