Pure politics. If the people behind this "science" would actually look at the density of oil-sands operations, which is the only reason they are so visible in the first place, they would find that oil sands oil is actually not any more "dirty" than conventional oil.
All of the ~2 million barrels per day are concentrated in a very small area.
Imagine the infrastructure required for 2 million barrels worth of conventional onshore oil production.
Do these political scientists take into account the savings made due to reduced need for roadways, reduced cut-lines, no need for destructive seismic lines, reduced electric transmission lines, far fewer support vehicles, no pump-jacks, etc, etc, etc.?
I doubt it.
Tens of thousands of miles of new roads and cut-lines, through forests and farm land, are required to attain 2 million barrels of conventional oil production. I see no mention of this in any of these so called scientific "dirty oil" papers.
The CDN oil sands footprint is tiny for the level of production.
I, for one, recognize that you are not referencing hard science in your article. You are referencing political science. It is science with an agenda, funded by political animals.
S&P |
