Number of words: 369

Canada is seen as the great saviour by oil enthusiasts. Canada has the world’s most extensive oil sands, estimated by some to be capable of producing 2.5 trillion barrels of oil! Sound too good to be true? It is. Oil (or tar) sands are a mix of asphalt (bitumen), earth, sand and water. Asphalt does not flow except at high temperatures. Refining it is an ugly business involving a huge amount of strip- mining. The sand is mixed with chemicals and steam in giant vats to bubble the bitumen to the top and the contaminated waste water is then dumped into huge ponds. In the short term, and realistically, the maximum level of oil expected from Canadian sands would probably add about 1% to global oil production.

 The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) for oil sands poses a real problem. Vast amounts of energy, supplied by natural gas, are needed to produce the steam required to free up the asphalt from the clay and sand. So, as gas prices rise, then the cost of separating the asphalt from the clay, sand and water rises as well. Analysts question whether the natural gas supply in North America will be sufficient to supply the energy to lift Canadian tar-sand oil to 3 mbpd by 2025. Only about a fifth of the oil sands are easy to access. The rest are small, fragmented deposits and uneconomical to mine. Massive amounts of toxic waste water are produced as a by-product, which may take 200 years to detoxify in vast, man- made lakes. 

Oil shale is similar to oil sands and the largest deposits of this resource are in the United States. To get bitumen from oil shale, it is necessary to free the mixture of organic chemical compounds, known as kerogen, within the rock. This is done by putting an electrical current into the ground to heat the rocks to a temperature of around 370°C for several years, a process that requires a huge amount of energy. So, given the economic logic of energy return on energy invested, it appears that oil shale, like oil sands, are dubious at best as solutions.

Excerpted from pages 101to 103 of ‘Energise, by Eddie Hobbs