I just posted this over on the Peak Oil board but it deserves re-posting here. It brings a cold breath of realism to the discussion of Canadian oil sands.
Will the Canadian oil sands save us? The boys from Uppsala say noFrom the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Group comes a long and detailed look at the potential for Canadian oil sands to act as a medium term bridge energy source
in this paper. The introduction says,
The report "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management", by Robert L. Hirsch et al., concludes that Peak Oil is going to happen and that worldwide large-scale mitigation efforts are necessary to avoid its possible devastating effects for the world economy. These efforts include accelerated production, referred to as crash program production, from Canada’s oil sands. The objective of this article is to investigate and analyse what production levels that might be reasonable to expect from a crash program for the Canadian oil sands industry, within the time frame 2006-2018 and 2006-2050.
After much detailed analysis, here is the conclusion:
By evaluating the short-term crash program production forecast together with the long-term crash program production forecast, it is possible to make some predictions. Based on the presented assumptions and definitions, a short-term crash program starting at 2006, by 2018 achieves a production of 3.6 mb/d of bitumen, of which 2.9 mb/d is SCO. Of the total production of 3.6 mb/d, upgraded bitumen from mining accounts for 2.3 mb/d, upgraded in situ production for 0.61 mb/d and non upgraded in situ produced bitumen for 0.73 mb/d.
Unfortunately, while the theoretical future oil supply from the oil sands is huge, the potential ability for the Canadian oil sands industry to meet expectations of bridging a future oil supply gap is not based on reality. Even if a Canadian crash program were immediately implemented it may only barely offset the combined declining conventional crude oil production in Canada and the North Sea. The more long-term oil sands production scenario outlined in this report, does not even manage to compensate for the decline by 2030.
(...)
Finally it may be of interest to recapitulate that the International Energy Agency claims that 37 mb/d of unconventional oil must be produced by 2030. Canada has by far the largest unconventional oil reserves. By 2030, in a very optimistic scenario, Canada may produce 5 mb/d. Venezuela may perhaps achieve a production of 6 mb/d. Who will be the producers of the remaining 26 mb/d? It is obvious that the forecast presented by the IEA has no basis in reality.
For this result we Canadians are polluting our air, land and water, and sickening our people? It's worthy of note that one of the significant factors in Canada falling behind its Kyoto commitment is our government's subsidizing the oil sands industry. The more I learn about the negative externalities of oil sands production, the more Fort McMurray appears to be another Upper Silesia in the making.
This is from a Globe and Mail article in late May:
A generation ago, Lake Athabasca was clear and clean enough that Fort Chipewyan residents drew their drinking water straight from it, and thought nothing about dipping a cup over the side of a canoe during hunting trips. Those days are long gone, as industrial development -- particularly the explosive growth of the oil sands -- accelerates along the Athabasca River, the main tributary of Lake Athabasca.
The belief -- only that, for the moment -- in Fort Chipewyan is that something from the oil sands is contaminating the Athabasca and ravaging the health of the people who live downstream.
Nearly four years after the hamlet's only doctor first voiced concern about the cluster of cancer cases, the provincial and federal governments have launched a joint investigation into the illness that seems to be sweeping Fort Chipewyan.
The Athabasca and Mikisew people are waiting for answers from those officials, but in the meantime, they have their own explanations.
"It is speculation to say it's the water. But for me, it's common sense," said Lorraine Mercredi, who bought a water-filtration system after her aunt and a cousin, still in his early thirties, died from cancers of the digestive tract. Other Fort Chipewyan residents, too afraid to drink from their taps at all, are paying to have bottled water flown in.
When Ivy Simpson was diagnosed as having cervical cancer, her doctors did not tell her what had made her ill. But the Fort Chipewyan resident, who now lives about 250 kilometres to the south in Fort McMurray, has no doubt about what caused her cancer.
"It had to have been something from the water, air or land," said the 27-year-old, who was just 17 when she contracted cervical cancer, a disease usually found in much older women.
Her extended family in Fort Chipewyan has been hit hard by cancer. Her mother, Mary Simpson, said a cousin, Warren, got testicular cancer. An aunt died of uterine cancer in the late 1980s, and Ivy Simpson's 41-year-old sister has terminal cervical cancer.
Like many in Fort Chipewyan, the Simpsons began to suspect their surroundings were making them sick after the town's fly-in doctor, John O'Connor, began to push for an official inquiry into what he saw as an astonishingly high number of cancer cases.
A few months after arriving in 2001, Dr. O'Connor noticed a set of disturbing symptoms in a patient: yellowed eyes, fatigue and abdominal discomfort. It was disturbing not only because it pointed to cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and deadly cancer of the bile duct. The symptoms were all too familiar for Dr. O'Connor, whose father died of the cancer 13 years ago in Ireland.
"I know a lot about it, but I never expected to see it again," he said. "Without treatment, you're dead in about a month. My dad lasted six weeks." Dr. O'Connor said at least three residents of Fort Chipewyan, and likely another two, have died of the disease within the past five years. Statistically speaking, there should be only one case for every 100,000 people, and none at all for a community the size of Fort Chipewyan, he said.
The full story is
here.
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