Written by Deb Henry

Did you know Canada is now the biggest oil supplier to the United States?

The Alberta Tar Sands are one of the most horrific environmental catastrophes of all time — yet bring Shell and it’s Big Oil bandwagon record profits at the expense of the local population, world population and landscape. The area in Canada that has been devastated is larger than the state of
Florida and has diagnosed unprecedented numbers of rare cancers occurring in the same area. Fuel from the oil sands is the dirtiest in the world, producing three times the global warming
pollution as conventional oil.

Tar Sands have never been thought to be economically viable in the USA. I’m not even really sure they make sense now, but there is a company called Earth Energy Resources that is going to try to find
out. They’re opening the first tar sands mine in the United States…and it’s going to be here in Utah. The process itself is extremely energy intensive producing a low energy return on investment compared to the original energy investment. It’s one thing if an investment is energy intensive to produce a cleaner energy source…but tar sands use a dirty energy investment to produce a even dirtier energy product. This is a huge step in the wrong direction.

“A nation that does not innovate has no wings. A country that does not innovate, stagnates.” – Joe Biden

Tar Sands (also called Oil Sands in Canada) produce an unconventional fossil fuel from bitumen, a “thick tar-like substance” that is the lowest grade of crude oil. According to Earth Energy Resources, after strip-mining, the ore will be heated and treated with chemicals into a slurry with the “consistency of a thick gritty milkshake.” One the bitumen is separated from this slurry, it is cooked and upgraded to a synthetic crude oil and trucked to refineries. Refineries remove and store toxic pollutants such as arsenic, cyanide, benzene, salt, lead,
mercury and nickel before finally processing the crude into gasoline or diesel fuel.

This process is going to consume other dirty fossil fuels …to produce more fossil fuels. There is a natural gas pipeline nearby which will help run the machinery that makes this mining possible. Natural gas in and of itself is a gross process that uses the under-regulated hydraulic fracturing, and the so-called clean energy it produces is being used to mine one of the ugliest forms of energy that exists. The mine will also have diesel generators on hand just in case the supply of natural gas is unavailable. The materials
will be trucked in on a dirt road (that is not designed for large trucks) to haul these materials. This will produce large amounts of dust which will blow right into neighboring states (if even more water is not used to constantly spray down the roads), potentially compromising their ski resorts. The only way that EER is going to be able to make this a profitable enterprise is by externalizing the consequences onto us.

For each barrel of oil that is produced, two barrels of water will be used (4,000 barrels per day, total). These means that water rights which would have typically gone to down-stream farmers, are going to be used by EER. The PR Spring Mine Tar Sands Mine site is situated right between the Colorado River, Green River and White River. The potential contamination of a river system that funnels down into Lake Mead and Lake Powell, not to mention Mexico is very real. We don’t need a disaster like the mess in the Gulf of Mexico poisoning such a critical water source.

Is this the best innovation we can come up with for energy? Are we really willing to endure the consequences of all of these byproducts, not to mention water consumption? The production capacity is only going to be 2,000 barrels of oil per day. Contrast this against 19,500,000 barrels per day that the USA consumes.
This isn’t even going to be a drop in the bucket and Utah is going to be the place that endures the consequences for the over-consumption of the USA as a whole.

Beyond Earth Energy Resources, several other companies are lining up to mine tar sands in Utah, including Nevtah, Korea Technology Industry of America (KTIA), and Red Leaf Resources. The outcome of the Earth Energy Resources PR Spring Mine will set the tone for future tar sands development in Utah and the country. If the mine is constructed, it will ease the way for increased future tar sands extraction. But if we stop the PR Spring Mine, it will send a message to investors that Utahns do not want tar sand mines in our state.

Utah deserves better.

Why not just create good-paying, lasting American jobs that wind and solar and efficiency projects create — the kind of jobs that can’t be outsourced. Instead of investing in these strip-mine-sinkholes of temporary solutions to energy, Utah could be creating real, constant sources of energy and jobs. We could be creating new markets and new technology for alternatives but instead we continue to spin our wheels by clinging to our oil dependency.

What you can do:

• Come see the movie H2Oil on 7/20, at
  7:30pm in SLC, location currently at the Unitarian Church, but may
  change to a larger venue.
• Come to the meeting at 7/27, 2pm, at the DOGM
• Join the mailing list at Peaceful Uprising.
• Help us get local businesses to sign on that they don’t want tar
  sand mines in Utah.

Links:

• The Energy Return of Tar Sands
• Love
  Winter, Hate the Oil Sands
• DirtyOilSands.org
• AlterNet: Save Winter – Stop Tar Sands, the Dirtiest
  Form of Oil
• Alberta researchers receive apology for attack on oil
  sands study

[This was originally posted on It's Getting Hot in Here by Juliana Williams on March 18, 2010]

A good friend (and talented organizer) recently told me that direct action wasn’t going to accomplish change on the scale that we need.  The point is that if we want national (and global) change, solutions need to be applied across the country, not in a piecemeal fashion.  For example, it’s a lot more efficient to fight for national vehicle mileage or emissions standards than trying to do the same thing state by state.  A national renewable standard would build on the successes of over half of the states in the US and apply to those states that for various reasons lack a renewable standard, creating market certainty for the growing but tenuous renewable energy sector.

Much can be accomplished through policy venues.  But we should not delude ourselves that policy alone will solve the problem.  Good policy is nothing without good implementation.  But what happens when implementation fails, when the structures we have created are broken?  What recourse do we have?  As far as I can see we have two options: 1) reform/transform political structures through further policy change and 2) take direct action to stop those failures.

These options are not and should not be exclusive; they are both necessary.

Direct Action is a safety net between well-intended policy and political failure and corruption.

[Originally posted on Daily Kos by RJMiller on March 19, 2010]

“At least there’s no tar sands mining in the United States.”  We’ve all heard the horror stories from Canada.  The Alberta tar sands project is among the most environmentally destructive projects in the world: strip mining and pulverizing rock, heating it to 700 degrees, gobbling up water, consuming far more energy than is created, manufacturing four times as much carbon emissions as conventional oil, and spewing poison into the earth, water, and sky.

However, a tar sands project, the first of its kind in the United States, is happening here in the eastern Utah desert, not far from Moab, Arches National Park, and Dinosaur National Monument.  It’s about to break ground…unless you speak up.

[This was originally posted on It's Getting Hot in Here on March 17, 2010]

In Grand County, Utah, people are thirsty. Utah is a desert state; it’s a thirsty place. What we love about Utah is its unique, gorgeous, otherworldly geography, which keeps us coming back or sticking around. So explain this logic to me: a horrifying and unprecedented project could put Utah’s Canyonlands National Park and Glen Canyon Recreation Area at serious risk, while at the same time thrusting a new source of water-depleting, CO2-billowing, filthy, and geographically destructive (but pseudoprofitable!) business into the equation.

I’m talking about the first ever bona fide tar sands extraction project in the United States of America–right here, in my own backyard!

You might have heard about the tar sands extraction happening in Canada. This nightmarish debacle has transformed countless acres of priceless Canadian biodiversity into a sticky black cesspool, for primarily America consumption. Don’t take my word for it; do a simple Google image search for “Canadian Tar Sands.” After you’ve done that, imagine the effect these proposed tar pits would have on the land immediately adjacent to the sites. Now picture that land as Canyonlands National Park. I’m not making this up.

The citizens of the areas where the proposed pits would be created have had absolutely no say in the permit acquisition and decision-making surrounding this project—and the pits might potentially break ground this year. Did I mention the entire operation would be run by Canada-based Earth Energy Resources? The company made their excited announcement in November of 2009, although Grand County citizens weren’t made aware of the impending project until this month.

Utah Clean Energy, an independent organization devoted to exploring Utah’s potential for alternative and renewable energy resources, recently released a study that explains, in detail, how exactly Utah could create hundreds of new jobs and bring in millions of dollars in new GDP by exploring alternative energy and beefing up our energy efficiency standards. And yet, here in Utah, while 95% of our electricity depends on coal-fired power, our geographical uniqueness is fundamental to our state pride and one main source of tourism revenue, and water scarcity is fast becoming a frightening illustration of some of the foreseeable impacts of climate change, we (and by “we”” I mean a wealthy-but-desperate handful of powerful and shady Utah businesses) want to welcome an industry that would use between twice and five times as much water per barrel to produce oil–oil that wouldn’t even be ready for use before undergoing  an expensive and emissions-rich cultivation process.

Using tar sands, also known as oil sands, as a “cheap” source of fuel is a joke. According to the Pembina Institute, mining tar sands requires between 750 and 1500 cubic feet of natural gas for each barrel of oil. I’m not great at math, but that doesn’t seem terribly economical to my mind. The tar sands mining and extraction process produces three times as many CO2 emissions as regular oil production; the Alberta tar sands project is Canada’s number one source for CO2 emissions. As far as I can see, the only positive thing about introducing tar sands mining into the United States it that it might (and this is a BIG might) reduce our dependence on, and merciless exploitation of, Canada’s tar sands resources, which we are currently reaping without remorse to fuel our morning commute. Why import Canadian tar sands fuel, and the technology to destroy our own land and water for American tar sands?

When you assess the fact that it takes five liters of water to produce one of usable petrol via tar sands extraction, this starts to seem blatantly criminal in a desert state. The privatization of water is a scary dream that is slowly folding itself into our reality, and when you realize that water is required every step of the way with tar sands extraction—to move gas, to build new tar pits, and to provide a waste receptacle for the filthy pits once they are up and running—you start to wonder where all this water will come from, in Utah. Colorado and Nevada are not too excited about sharing their drinkable water with us, of late.

So, what will it be, America? Should we urge Utah to become a leader on the alternative energy frontier, securing our economic and environmental future for our children—or shall we allow her to regress a decade or three, and become the nation’s very first home to tar sands extraction—and its subsequent leader in toxic emissions and contributions to global climate change? My decision is made. We are exploring every avenue for ways to stop this project, and we will update you on how you can take action to help. The tar sands nightmare will not be allowed into my beloved home state and our fine nation, if I have anything at all to do with it.

[Note: We are still trying to figure out the best ways to take action, so as soon as we have a good outlet, we will let you know.]

Other resources:
www.nodirtyenergy.org/
http://oilsandstruth.org/
http://www.tarsandswatch.org/