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Alberta can’t handle tar sands expansion, says new report

June 16, 2008
Posted by Stuart Trew

A new report out of Alberta today says the province “should not approve more oilsands upgraders near Edmonton until the province has a solid plan to limit the huge volume of fresh water they will use and to better manage the pollution they will produce,” according to CTV.

The report, Upgrader Alley: Oil Sands Fever Strikes Edmonton, “describes industry plans that will result in nine massive industrial plants just east of Edmonton,” according to a Pembina press release. “These upgraders will convert bitumen into synthetic crude oil for export to predominantly American markets. If all projects proceed as planned, the environmental impacts on the Edmonton region and Alberta will be significant.”

How significant? Pembina’s groundbreaking report says that such an expansion, which, we must add, is mandated in the Security and Prosperity Partnership, would:

• “Consume about 10 times as much fresh water as the entire City of Edmonton”
• “Require twice as much natural gas as is used to heat all the households in Edmonton”
• “Use more electricity than is produced by the entire EPCOR Genesee coal-fired power facility, equivalent to the electricity needed to power all the homes in Alberta”
• “Increase emissions of major air pollutants by 30-40%, even with government caps”
• “Produce about 45 megatonnes of greenhouse gases per year, as much as would be produced by 10 million vehicles”

In a chicken-and-egg guessing game, it’s not clear whether the tar sands upgraders are being built to satisfy pipeline contracts for export to the United States or whether the pipelines are being built to satisfy projected increases in production.

What we do know, and what is again highlighted in this report, is that the environmental and social consequences if an SPP-mandated fivefold increase in production are unacceptable and inexcusable.

"How much new development can the region and the North Saskatchewan River sustain?” asks Simon Dyer, Oil Sands Program Director with the Pembina Institute. “These critical questions need to be answered before the government grants approvals for new upgrader projects. We need to take the time to do it right."