Tar Sands critically examines the frenzied development in the Canadian tar sands and the far-reaching implications for all of North America. Bitumen, the sticky stuff that ancients used to glue the Tower of Babel together, is the world’s most expensive hydrocarbon. This difficult-to-find resource has made Canada the number-one supplier of oil to the United States, and every major oil company now owns a lease in the Alberta tar sands. The region has become a global Deadwood, complete with rapturous engineers, cut-throat cocaine dealers, Muslim extremists, and a huge population of homeless individuals. In this award-winning book, a Canadian bestseller, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands, arguing forcefully for change. This updated edition includes new chapters on the most energy-inefficient tar sands projects (the steam plants), as well as new material on the controversial carbon cemeteries and nuclear proposals to accelerate bitumen production.
Tar Sands
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"Andrew Nikiforuk paints an alarming picture ... As oil reserves dwindle worldwide, this book sheds frightening new light on the future of energy"— Society of Environmental Journalists
"Nikiforuk lands a knockout blow on the kissers of the oil industry, oil-friendly bureaucrats, and petrol-guzzling North Americans"— Sustainablog
"Required reading for the President in preparation for his first foreign trip"— Huffington Post
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
A real eye opener to the envionmentalTar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Revised and Updated Edition impact of strip mining
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Owen Lloyd
Format:Paperback
A thorough examination of the consequences of the tar sands project in Alberta. The author looks at this situation from a number of angles, including the project's water and methane usage, the wasting of the Athabascan watershed and millions of acres of boreal forest, the ruinous air quality in the area where the bitumen is refined, the devastation of community and economy in the area surrounding Fort McMurray, the contribution dirty oil makes to climate change, the possibility of nuclear reactors being used simply to help power the project, the failure of the project to benefit the citizens of Alberta, the redirection of the oil itself to the United States, and the growing "Saudi Arabization" of Canada and particularly of Alberta.
My biggest complaint with the book is that the author all but ignored making any consideration for the Dene people, whose ancestral land is being turned into a moonscape in the name of "energy security". I also disliked the author's nonsensical belief that driving less is an effective means of helping to halt the tar sands project. As a non-driver, I do not believe this. I can understand a corporation using the "It's up to individual consumers to change things" remedy to social and environmental ills, but it's depressing to hear it come from the social and environmental activists themselves.
My biggest complaint with the book is that the author all but ignored making any consideration for the Dene people, whose ancestral land is being turned into a moonscape in the name of "energy security". I also disliked the author's nonsensical belief that driving less is an effective means of helping to halt the tar sands project. As a non-driver, I do not believe this. I can understand a corporation using the "It's up to individual consumers to change things" remedy to social and environmental ills, but it's depressing to hear it come from the social and environmental activists themselves.
34 of 54 people found the following review helpful
By David Moe
Format:Paperback
You wouldn't want to read this book if you wanted other than a superficial picture of the oil sands. The author is a left-leaning Canadian nationalist with a strong anti-American bias, has a definite political agenda, and is not averse to slanting the facts and statistics to support it. Even the title is misleading. Chemically speaking, TAR is a man-made substance, produced by destructive distillation of organic matter, but the "tar sands" actually contain BITUMEN, an extremely heavy grade of crude oil. (Since I have a degree in chemistry, I find the mislabeling annoying.) The difference between tar and bitumen is important, since an oil refinery would be unable to process tar, whereas it can handle bitumen by using more sophisticated refining processes.
Nikiforuk calls the oil sands "dirty oil", but this is misleading, since there is really no such thing as clean oil - it's all dirty to some degree. Crude oil is usually black, sticky, full of salt water and sand, contains varying amounts of sulfur, and is often contaminated with heavy metals. What you see when you buy a can of motor oil is a refined product, with all the contaminants removed. The author's claim that, "Each barrel of bitumen produces three times as much greenhouse gas as a barrel of conventional oil" is highly misleading. He's comparing it to Arab oil production circa 1960. Even the Arabs need to use more energy these days, and the difference between producing Alberta bitumen versus California Kern River heavy oil is in the range of 10 to 20 percent. More importantly, the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions occur when you burn it in your car, not when it is produced.
Nikiforuk titles one of his chapters, "It Ain't Oil", but Canadians are turning it into oil in large quantities and American refineries are buying it because there's less and less light to medium oil available every year. U.S. oil production has been declining since 1973 and most of its suppliers are also in a state of decline. Even the Arabs are having to resort to their reserves of heavy, high sulfur, vanadium-contaminated oil to meet demand. There's not much of what the author calls "clean oil" left on this planet, and Canada is one of the few countries capable of increasing production, as the result of its vast oil sands.
The section on water use includes a misleading map implying all of the enormous Mackenzie River basin (about the size of the Mississippi) is involved in oil sands development, when only the Athabasca River and (to a lesser extent) the Peace River are. Comparing them to rivers running through Denver and Calgary is misleading since they are much, much bigger, have few industrial users, and there is little need for irrigation that far north. According to the current Alberta government web site data (automatically generated by remote equipment), while the Bow River through Calgary was running at 90 m3/sec, the Athabasca River was flowing at 760 m3/sec - over 8 times as much water. As for the South Platte River in Denver, "Treated wastewater effluent can account for as much as 100 percent of streamflow" - it all flows through people's toilets. In contrast, over 95% of the water in the Athabasca flows into the Arctic Ocean unused, even with oil sands development - it's one of the least used rivers in the world. By the way, Canada is a metric county and oil, gas and water are measured in cubic metres (note spelling), with conversion to U.S. units at the U.S. border, but the book converts everything to U.S. units with no sign of metric - and uses U.S. spelling as well. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is to disguise the fact that the data doesn't match the original numbers very well.
The tailing ponds used to settle out fine silt from the mining operations are certainly an environmental concern, but are not much more toxic than the original oil sands. Nikiforuk talks about destruction of the "wetlands" of northern Canada, but the stuff is better known up north as muskeg - vast peat bogs which make building roads and cultivating farms difficult. It's one of the reasons that Canada has more land area than the U.S. but fewer people than California. The forest he describes as untouched has burned down repeatedly in massive forest fires once or twice per century, and last burned down in the 1960s, but it bounces back rapidly every time it is destroyed. It is true that the oil companies would have trouble restoring its natural bogginess after mining, but they intend to turn it into grazing land, bring in herds of buffalo, and put picnic tables on it. Since agriculture and tourism are more valuable industries than forestry, the Alberta government has approved this conversion. It's not exactly the mountaintop removal that the author compares it to.
Nikiforuk rails against the idea of disposing of carbon dioxide using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but the oil companies love it because injecting CO2 into a depleted oil field improves the oil recovery rate. The Weyburn, Saskatchewan project he mentions actually injects CO2 from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota, was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, and is estimated to have doubled the oil recovery rate of the field. Similar, but much bigger CO2 injection projects exist in Texas, but they are injecting gas from CO2 fields in the area, not disposing of greenhouse gases.
The author condemns Alberta's low royalty rates as a corporate rip-off, but does not compare them to Saskatchewan and British Columbia, which are its immediate competitors for investment money - when Alberta raised its royalties recently, it caused a stampede of drilling rigs to those two other provinces. He also makes the ludicrous statement that the U.S. Gulf states don't have any taxes. Of course they have taxes, just not necessarily income taxes. Texas has a sales tax but no income tax (neither does Florida), Alberta has an income tax but no sales tax (neither does Montana or Oregon), but neither government can get by on oil revenues alone. However, having oil revenues certainly helps governments pay their expenses without raising taxes.
When he talks about politics, the authors leftist biases come to the fore. His characterization of Alberta as a "petrotyranny" is ridiculous because Alberta voters have elected the type of government they want - quite different from the type of government Nikiforuk would like them to have. The Alberta government could best be described as populist, rather than "neoconservative", as he would have it. Alberta voters are generally conservative, at least by Canadian standards, and prefer a combination of low taxes, high quality schools, and good roads, without a lot of government interference in business. Nikiforuk would like the people to have higher taxes, (particularly sales taxes, which Albertans traditionally hate), not to make any money from their vast natural resources, and to support a wide variety of socialist goals that they don't like. Albertans don't support these goals, hence his contention that they must have been misled because otherwise they would agree with him.
At the end of it all, the author comes up with a series of recommendations that would probably be disastrous for Canada and the U.S. The reality is that the world's conventional oil reserves are badly depleted, all the major oil fields are in rapid decline, and oil sands are the only game left in town. Despite what he says, its major oil suppliers (other than Canada and Saudi Arabia) are suffering declining production rates, and China is becoming a major competitor for imports. The U.S. is out of options, out of time, and out of money, so it has a choice between oil sands or nothing. Canada will probably take advantage of the global economic downturn to reduce the rate of development somewhat, but despite Nikiforuk's rhetoric, having some oil sands development is probably better for Canada and the U.S. than having none at all.
Nikiforuk calls the oil sands "dirty oil", but this is misleading, since there is really no such thing as clean oil - it's all dirty to some degree. Crude oil is usually black, sticky, full of salt water and sand, contains varying amounts of sulfur, and is often contaminated with heavy metals. What you see when you buy a can of motor oil is a refined product, with all the contaminants removed. The author's claim that, "Each barrel of bitumen produces three times as much greenhouse gas as a barrel of conventional oil" is highly misleading. He's comparing it to Arab oil production circa 1960. Even the Arabs need to use more energy these days, and the difference between producing Alberta bitumen versus California Kern River heavy oil is in the range of 10 to 20 percent. More importantly, the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions occur when you burn it in your car, not when it is produced.
Nikiforuk titles one of his chapters, "It Ain't Oil", but Canadians are turning it into oil in large quantities and American refineries are buying it because there's less and less light to medium oil available every year. U.S. oil production has been declining since 1973 and most of its suppliers are also in a state of decline. Even the Arabs are having to resort to their reserves of heavy, high sulfur, vanadium-contaminated oil to meet demand. There's not much of what the author calls "clean oil" left on this planet, and Canada is one of the few countries capable of increasing production, as the result of its vast oil sands.
The section on water use includes a misleading map implying all of the enormous Mackenzie River basin (about the size of the Mississippi) is involved in oil sands development, when only the Athabasca River and (to a lesser extent) the Peace River are. Comparing them to rivers running through Denver and Calgary is misleading since they are much, much bigger, have few industrial users, and there is little need for irrigation that far north. According to the current Alberta government web site data (automatically generated by remote equipment), while the Bow River through Calgary was running at 90 m3/sec, the Athabasca River was flowing at 760 m3/sec - over 8 times as much water. As for the South Platte River in Denver, "Treated wastewater effluent can account for as much as 100 percent of streamflow" - it all flows through people's toilets. In contrast, over 95% of the water in the Athabasca flows into the Arctic Ocean unused, even with oil sands development - it's one of the least used rivers in the world. By the way, Canada is a metric county and oil, gas and water are measured in cubic metres (note spelling), with conversion to U.S. units at the U.S. border, but the book converts everything to U.S. units with no sign of metric - and uses U.S. spelling as well. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is to disguise the fact that the data doesn't match the original numbers very well.
The tailing ponds used to settle out fine silt from the mining operations are certainly an environmental concern, but are not much more toxic than the original oil sands. Nikiforuk talks about destruction of the "wetlands" of northern Canada, but the stuff is better known up north as muskeg - vast peat bogs which make building roads and cultivating farms difficult. It's one of the reasons that Canada has more land area than the U.S. but fewer people than California. The forest he describes as untouched has burned down repeatedly in massive forest fires once or twice per century, and last burned down in the 1960s, but it bounces back rapidly every time it is destroyed. It is true that the oil companies would have trouble restoring its natural bogginess after mining, but they intend to turn it into grazing land, bring in herds of buffalo, and put picnic tables on it. Since agriculture and tourism are more valuable industries than forestry, the Alberta government has approved this conversion. It's not exactly the mountaintop removal that the author compares it to.
Nikiforuk rails against the idea of disposing of carbon dioxide using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but the oil companies love it because injecting CO2 into a depleted oil field improves the oil recovery rate. The Weyburn, Saskatchewan project he mentions actually injects CO2 from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota, was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, and is estimated to have doubled the oil recovery rate of the field. Similar, but much bigger CO2 injection projects exist in Texas, but they are injecting gas from CO2 fields in the area, not disposing of greenhouse gases.
The author condemns Alberta's low royalty rates as a corporate rip-off, but does not compare them to Saskatchewan and British Columbia, which are its immediate competitors for investment money - when Alberta raised its royalties recently, it caused a stampede of drilling rigs to those two other provinces. He also makes the ludicrous statement that the U.S. Gulf states don't have any taxes. Of course they have taxes, just not necessarily income taxes. Texas has a sales tax but no income tax (neither does Florida), Alberta has an income tax but no sales tax (neither does Montana or Oregon), but neither government can get by on oil revenues alone. However, having oil revenues certainly helps governments pay their expenses without raising taxes.
When he talks about politics, the authors leftist biases come to the fore. His characterization of Alberta as a "petrotyranny" is ridiculous because Alberta voters have elected the type of government they want - quite different from the type of government Nikiforuk would like them to have. The Alberta government could best be described as populist, rather than "neoconservative", as he would have it. Alberta voters are generally conservative, at least by Canadian standards, and prefer a combination of low taxes, high quality schools, and good roads, without a lot of government interference in business. Nikiforuk would like the people to have higher taxes, (particularly sales taxes, which Albertans traditionally hate), not to make any money from their vast natural resources, and to support a wide variety of socialist goals that they don't like. Albertans don't support these goals, hence his contention that they must have been misled because otherwise they would agree with him.
At the end of it all, the author comes up with a series of recommendations that would probably be disastrous for Canada and the U.S. The reality is that the world's conventional oil reserves are badly depleted, all the major oil fields are in rapid decline, and oil sands are the only game left in town. Despite what he says, its major oil suppliers (other than Canada and Saudi Arabia) are suffering declining production rates, and China is becoming a major competitor for imports. The U.S. is out of options, out of time, and out of money, so it has a choice between oil sands or nothing. Canada will probably take advantage of the global economic downturn to reduce the rate of development somewhat, but despite Nikiforuk's rhetoric, having some oil sands development is probably better for Canada and the U.S. than having none at all.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Objective, Not so much.
As someone living in the "impact zone", though not directly employed in the oilsand production stream, I find this book woefully inacurate and misleading. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Upstream
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tar sands
This is an important book. Well researched and written, it should be read by all Canadians and by those who have any concerns about our stewardship of this planet. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Dr. Michael Kaye
5.0 out of 5 stars
some noteworthy points to ponder
It takes over three times as much fossil fuels to extract tar sands oil as it does for extracting oil from conventional sources. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Treehugger©
4.0 out of 5 stars
A non-romanticized review of oil addiction and ecological holocaust
I am drawn to write a review of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent after reading the negative reviews of Nikiforuk's book. Read more
Published on May 23, 2011 by teacher
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Important Subject
Tar Sands is one of those books that cause action for change. Although bias, this novel is an eye opener to what takes place behind the scenes to filling up your car at the pump... Read more
Published on May 23, 2011 by JHartman
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book will make you angry
[This review covers the 2010 Revised and Updated version]
Given the upcoming Canadian election, in which the subject matter may
figure strongly, I felt it was... Read more
Given the upcoming Canadian election, in which the subject matter may
figure strongly, I felt it was... Read more
Published on April 15, 2011 by M. Ramshaw
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dick Cheney comes to Canada
Andrew Nikiforuk has done us all a great favour in writing this impassioned book about the Alberta Tar Sands and the social, environmental and political devestation they are... Read more
Published on December 29, 2008 by Steven Forth
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