GREY:WSCEE - Post by User
Post by
elor2443on Mar 26, 2008 9:30am
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Post# 14836825
More Confirmation of Water Tech
More Confirmation of Water TechThe Reason Why Dirty Oil Sands Will Make You Filthy Rich
Energy & Capital excerpt from article by K. Kohl 3/25/2008
Trouble with the Oil Sands
Before the Canadian oil sands can take away our oil addiction to Middle Eastern oil, several obstacles need to be overcome.
For starters, extracting the bitumen is an energy-intensive effort. In other words, it takes a lot of energy to produce the energy from the oil sands. Take natural gas as an example. It takes roughly one thousand cubic feet of natural gas to extract a barrel of oil.
Water usage is also another problem. Even though many oil sands producers use a large amount of recycled water, there is still a huge draw from the Athabasca river. In the surface mining process, up to 4.5 cubic meters of water is needed to produce one cubic meter of synthetic crude.
As you can see, extracting the oil sands comes with a significant environmental impact. At least, enough for environmentalists to cry foul.