The all-day conference is being webcast here now. The subject:
Refineries in the Great Lakes Basin are rapidly expanding to accommodate crude oil from the Alberta oil sands. This conference, How the Oil Sands Got to the Great Lakes Basin: Pipelines, Refineries and Emissions to Air And Water, is intended to provide an opportunity … to inform public opinion about the impacts of refinery expansion in the Basin…. Emphasis will be placed on the cumulative effect of refinery expansions on water quality, air quality and human and non-human downwind communities in the Basin.
The agenda is here. The panel discussion going on now and the next one on “Accelerated energy development in the Great Lakes basin and cleaner air and water: can we have both?” are the ones to catch.
The conference paper is here. It is a very interesting discussion of issues like:
- Peak Oil and what it means
- North America’s Pollution Delivery System: the pipelines
- Why the tar sands are coming East: filling the US gas tank
- Is pollution delivery inevitable?
- The climate change imperative
The conclusion begins intriguingly:
The Washington-based organization Environmental Integrity Project raises an intriguing idea: “When permitting the pipelines to carry tar sands crude to U.S. refineries, the responsible U.S. environmental and public lands agencies should consider the cumulative effects on air quality and global warming of all U.S. refineries which process tar sands oil, as well as the global warming impacts of extraction of tar sands crude in Canada on the United States.”
My apologies that I did not learn of this to post it earlier.
Related Posts:
- The tar sands — Canada’s version of liquid coal
- The Energy Department’s Strategic Unconventional Fuels Fantasy
- Gates and Buffet to invest in tar sands and spawn more two-headed fish?
- BP proves Beyond Petroleum was greenwashing, joins “biggest global warming crime ever seen”
- Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence
- Peak Oil? Bring it on!
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Joe, it’s tar sands, not oil sands.
“Oil sands” is a direct quote here.
I realize that, Joe, but “tar sands” is a much more accurate term. “Oil sands” makes it sound like you just have to strain sand out of oil, rather than expend enormous quantities of heat energy and water to separate bitumen from the matrix.
“Tar sands” was in fact the term in general usage in Canada until relatively recently. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to speculate that the change to “oil sands” was deliberate.
You guys need to stop fallowing the cool aid drinkers “Al Gore” We have the first spotless sun in centuries = Cooling. Mars’s ice caps didn’t shrink by our co2 ( life gas). Be concerned about some real issues “burning mercury filled coal, mass genetic splicing GMO.