Stupid to the Last Drop
 

"In its desperate search for oil and gas riches, Alberta is destroying itself. As the world teeters on the edge of catastrophic climate change, Alberta plunges ahead with uncontrolled development of its fossil fuels, levelling its northern Boreal forest to get at the oil sands, and carpet-bombing its southern half with tens of thousands of gas wells. In so doing, it is running out of water, destroying its range land, wiping out its forests and wildlife and spewing huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, adding to global warming at a rate that is unrivalled in Canada or almost anywhere else in the world. It’s digging, drilling and blasting its way to oblivion, becoming the ultimate symbol of Canada’s – and the world’s – pathological will to self-destruct.

Nowhere has the world seen such colossal environmental destruction as is being wreaked on Alberta. At one point the province even went so far as to consider a scientist’s idea of nuking its underbelly to get at the tar sands. Stupid to the Last Drop looks at the increasingly violent geopolitical forces that are gathering as the world’s gas and oil dwindle and the Age of Oil begins its inevitable slide towards oblivion. As Canadians deplete their energy reserves, selling them off to Americans at bargain-basement prices, no thought is given to conservation or the long-term needs of the nation."

William Marsden.

Discuss.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Why dont you go first for once?

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Why change protocol?:p

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

The quote is a tad sensationalist and dramatic, it probably overstates a few examples, but in general I couldn't argue with it.

My point of view, though, is that Alberta (well, the oil companies) are not doing this for the hell of it. The oil sands projects are a symptom or a result of the insanity of our Western lifestyles.

It's all very well bemoaning the environmental destruction, but we're still building 3,000-4,000 ft2 houses with triple garages, centrally heated and air conditioned. We're still building F-350s and Yukons and Suburbans which are used for commuting.

We're still filling our houses with ever more electronic gadgets which are never turned off.

The real question isn't the why-oh-why's of the oil sands, it's the why-oh-why do we need to produce this oil.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

I was discussing this last night with a couple of friends - one who had just come back from a stint in Fort Mac.

He says the technology up there is just phenominal - the money being spent etc - they have just had 30 trucks delivered to their site alone at a cost of 4 million each and another plant is being built to increase the current production and it will go from 225k barrels a day to 550k by 2012.

We got on to discussing the ethanol alternative, and I may be wrong just relaying info - but if they took all of the barley, wheat etc currently in the states to produce ethanol, it would only cover 5% of what is currently being produced oilwise for automobile usage.

Where there's brass there's muck as the old saying goes and with guys being paid upwards of $2000 to work Canada day alone (in a normal mechanics job), and the revenue that the companies get, its not going to go away anytime soon.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Many think it is, though.

I agree with jings that the rhetoric is a bit over the top, but would add that in terms of the very useful metric Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI), the oils sands are a ridiculous waste of resources.

Link added: www.EROIE.com

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Interesting to see what the head of OPEC said on French TV today (I read about it in the Torygraph). I take one of his comments to be an instruction to the USA to put pressure on Israel not to attack Iran.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

link please?

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

www.telegraph.co.uk

Lazy git.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Ah. Merci.

Edit. I see what you mean.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

In what respect though? Because the companies aren't going to stop until they have exhausted the supply, which is currently good for about 50 years with todays technology.

My point was that just because its environmentally unfriendly will not stop the excavation - the whole lot running out is a different matter.

So if the many think soon is because of pressure due to the production ethics, I would suggest that the many might be wrong :(

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Yes, you are a lazy git.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

How much would energy costs have to go up before your consumption patterns and your lifestyle were seriously altered? What if gasoline prices here in Canada were the same as the UK at $2.60 per litre, or if domestic gas and electricity prices doubled?

What would it take to make you...

Move to a smaller house.
Get rid of a vehicle(s).
Only take local holidays.

etc. etc.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Wasnt he also saying that OPEC output was meeting current demand, and that increasing output was pointless lipservice.

Seems to me the current "high" cost of oil is due to speculation thats based on political instability in the oil producing regions, rather than true supply and demand market forces. Could be that bubble will burst and prices will come down again, or it could be that demand from China and other developing nations will keep the price high regardless.

I read somewhere that saudi oil costs less than $10 a barrel to get out of the ground and to the end user, but oil sand oil only starts to break even with the extraction cost at $70....and I dont know if they figured in the cost to return the landscape to the way they found it in that figure, which the oil companies are legally commited too. Given the way that they dragged their heels in cases like the Exxon Valdes cleanup, you have to wonder if they are really going to do that anyway.

I wouldnt say selling oil to the US at $136 a barrel is "bargain basement", and as oil prices increase north america WILL have to make changes in its energy use profile, as has happened in Europe as a result of higher taxation levels focusing minds on economy. Will that happen soon enough? Probably not Im afraid. If $136 is an inflated price, then better to sell to the US now at $66 a barrel profit, than to hold on to this resource and sell after the bubble burst for only $30 profit?

Never mind the economics of the situation, the global environmental effect is the real issue, and with china racing to catch up with a US style consumer society, Im afraid the outlook is very bleak for my childrens children. I first became aware of global warming in 1989, reading Ben Eltons book Stark, and frankly, what has changed in 20 years that will make enough difference to prevent us passing a tipping point at which point it will be too late?

Oil supply is not a concern in the short term, there is more extractable oil reserves known about now than there was 30 or 40 years ago when people first started to say it was running out. As the price increases, so does the level of technology available to to extract it where it was previously impractical or to make it from other sources, but thats a dangerous game, and even at $5000 a barrel, eventually you cant extract what is no longer there. However, it doesnt matter if oil runs out in 50 or 100 or 1000 years time. If we dont wean ourselves off carbon fuels in the much shorter term, it wont matter anyway.

It seems to me the North American majority seems to be pinning all its hopes on some sort of "Star Trek" solution..by which I mean they expect the engineers to pull some fantastic (unnamed) solution to the problem out of there arse at the last minute, to narrowly avert disaster. Unfortunately things on this planet seldom work out quite like that.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Fair enough mandy, what I meant is that the oil based economy is considered by many to be in its death throes.

And from souv's telegraph link...

"A litre of unleaded petrol currently costs an average of £1.18. Every dollar increase in the price of oil adds about 0.42p to a litre of petrol."

Eh? How does that work? If crude is now $130 US/barrel doing the conversions says that at 1.18 pounds a litre that cost of the crude is about 40% of the UK pump price. An increase of 0.42 p / litre corresponds to an increase of ~$US 6 per barrel. Somebody's telling porkies.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Link doesn't work for me, Novo. But I agree, the final product of the oil sands is synthetic crude, which takes about half a barrel of oil equivalent and two barrels of water to produce one barrel of synthetic crude. Ridiculously inefficient, but if there's a market for it willing to pay, then it will be produced.

That's why there is talk of building a nuclear power plant up there to produce the steam that's needed. But even if that happens, it's going to be 10 years away.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

By today's standards we already live in a relatively small home so a move wouldn't gain us much. We have replaced all of our windows for more up to date ones, replaced the furnace last year with a 94% efficient one. About the only thing left we could do is have the siding taken off the house, have foam board insulation applied and the siding replaced.

We could get rid of one vehicle but it's not driven much anyway so minor gain there. Bought a hybrid in 2006.

We normally don't take big holidays the recent Hawaii trip was our first trip of any significance since 1999.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Surely not!!!!!!!

The Alberta converters generate a large and growing amount of petroleum coke. Some is used as a fuel source but most is "stockpiled for future use".

Digging a sodding great hole in the ground, filling it with waste and then covering it over is, to my mind, a fairly loose interpretation of the word "stockpiling".

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

My bad. http://www.eroei.com/

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Let me throw a bit more fuel on the fire (sorry).

Short term: The fact that the price of crude is denominated in US $ and that said $ is down the tubes against a basket of other currencies is more or less being ignored in the discussion of current oil prices.
A favourite conspiracy theory around a couple of years ago was that it was Iraq's "threat" to price its crude exports in euro which prompted Cheney et al. to invade and overthrow SH.

Longer term: I know the convoluted history of all this (NEP and all), but why, oh why can a provincial government make decisions like the irresponsible exploitation of the oil sands without input from the ROC?

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

I feeling particularly dumb this a.m.

What is ROC?

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Oh, sorry. Rest of Canada. I've probably misused it, its normal meaning is Canada minus Quebec.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Rest of the country? Guessing here.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

I suspect there is a lot of truth in this. I don't think it is a coincidence that the recent spike in oil prices has happened at the same time as the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Investment funds taken out of the mortgage market have to go somewhere and a lot has ended up in commodities. It is basic economics that the price of a good will rise until it uses up all the money that is available to spend on it.

We are told that the liquidity crunch will take 2-3 years to work its way through the world's financial markets so I can see oil prices remaining artificially high for some time to come, but they will eventually return to a price that keeps demand and supply in balance. I wish I knew what price that will be.

Seven or eight years ago I remember someone saying that the oil sands oil cost $40 a barrel to extract, but I can't remember who or have a source. If they were right then $70 may include remediation.

There was a report on this on the radio last night. Exxon were originally ordered to pay $5 billion in compensation. 16 years later, by appealing every court decision against them they have managed to whittle this down to $500 million (not yet paid). Last year they made $41 billion profit.

This is so true as well. There is more than enough oil in the world. Much more important is a) how much are we prepared to pay for it and b) how are we going to live with the consequences of using it.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

<whispers> Russian Orthodox Church.



or maybe Rest of Canada.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Because they pay for the rest of Canada?

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Thank you both. ;)

The answer lies in the fact that it is in the constitution (I believe) that the provinces not the federal government are responsible for their resources.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Unfortunately this says more about the idiocy and impotence of the US legal system than it does about oil companies.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Good point...

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

One might say that the oil companies have us over a barrel........:rofl:

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

They are. Whether or not they have the final say on environmental fallout from resource exploitation, which may affect other parts of the country, I do not know.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

As I said, I know the history, but it still makes me shake my head in bemusement.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Why? Is it because you don't believe that people really are greedy short-termists?

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

I read the other day about US mayors putting pressure on Canada about 'dirty oil'.

First thought of course is Pot, Kettle, Black, but then I wondered if the US might actually resent being dependent on and enriching Canadian oil producers even more than it does OPEC producers?

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Not really. I think that its because I'm an internationalist at heart.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Bleeding-heart pinko.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Isn't the US military - a big oil consumer - also getting stroppy about dirty oil?

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Enough about me. :)

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

There's a considerable lobby in Washington who are very much against it. It is at least a strong possibility that after the Presidential election, the market in the US for oil sands product will dry up.

Re: Stupid to the Last Drop
 

Weeeee-eeellll... perhaps Alberta might soon find itself being included in the same Pentagon memos as Iran and North Korea!