Oil

Removing overburden at the Athabasca Oil Sands operation.

Further to yesterday's post, there was some good news regarding the opposition to Canada's oil sands operation. As you may know, there is a large movement in Europe to declare this oil 'dirty' and encourage a Europe wide ban on its import. Our good friends in the UK, Netherlands, Spain and Poland are supporting us because they recognize the hypocrisy for what it is. I get the feeling the powerful environmental lobby is trying to punish Canada for its stand on Kyoto. (see yesterday's post)

Ooze!

Apart from the misinformation out there about the oil sands, I see the whole situation in a different light.

Imagine for a moment, that there was a large oil tanker truck travelling the roads north of Edmonton, and it left the road, tipped over, split open and spewed its contents into the ditch. There would be a haz-mat team there in an instant and there would be no cost prohibition, nor stone unturned to make certain that every last drop of oil was mopped up and no damage done to the environment.

The photo above is natural bitumen oozing out of the bank on the Athabasca River. The ditches along the highways look very similar to this. There is oil oozing everywhere in that country.

So, let's look at the oil sands as the most ambitious reclamation, or oil cleanup in the history of mankind. They are taking dirty, oily, gooey sand and cleaning it up, removing all traces of oil, and returning it to nature as clean sand. This, to me, is something the environmentalists should be embracing.  

Down town Ft. McMurray Alberta

Why do I even care about this? Because I own property in Ft. McMurray (a chunk of the high rises on the right hand side of the above photo) and as an owner, I have been there. I have seen what goes on there, and I keep myself informed about the situation. I have what you call a vested interest. When I hear that the USA is bowing down to the environmentalists to delay building a pipeline, that would bring them a non-stop supply of oil, from a friendly neighbour, as opposed to some middle eastern quasi enemy, I get more than irritated.