Tar sands mining spreading to the USA

[auroraglacialis]

Why is it that every week there are more bad news coming in these days I really feel depressed. Here is the next one - tar sand mining is spreading to the US:

Debate stirred over 1st major US tar sands mine - Yahoo! News

Beneath the lush, green hills of eastern Utah's Uinta Basin, where elk, bear and bison outnumber people, the soil is saturated with a sticky tar that may soon provide a new domestic source of petroleum for the United States.
...
Alberta-based Earth Energy Resources Inc. aims to start with a roughly 62-acre mine here to produce bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum, from oil-soaked sands.
...
The company has over 7,800 acres of Utah state land under lease, with plans to acquire more, and estimates its current holdings contain more than 250 million barrels of recoverable oil.

And of course Colorado and Utah already have faced so much destruction and there is still (even though the advocatism has declined after Fukushima) some debate on Uranium mining there: Japan nuclear disaster sending tremors through Colorado uranium mining industry | The Colorado Independent

[Empty Glass]

They say that they have a citrus-based solvent that will not pollute, but I still feel wary...

And why are they not saying anything about wanting to start in Utah instead of Alberta...I don't get it.

[auroraglacialis]

The paragraph in question is this:

The initial Utah mine would be Earth Energy's first commercial effort at extracting oil from sands. It's unclear why the company chose Utah instead of staying closer to home where oil sands are bountiful. The company declined to say, but officials insist the project won't pollute anything and will leave Utah's oil sands as clean as beach sand after processing with a citrus-based solvent.

"We are insuring that we won't pollute by complying with the regulations and as indicated with the project being approved," said company CFO Glen Snarr

My opinion is, that even if there are other areas that are "more bountiful", it makes perfect sense for them to start in Utah as well for several reasons:
* future environmental regulations will probably be more restrictive, old projects usually are excluded from re-regulation, so to start now evades future restrictions
* Once a company makes a claim on a resource, it HAS to exploit it within a certain timeframe or it looses its claim and other companies may get it. Even a smallscale mining operation counts, so they may actually do this for ownership purposes to keep the claims on the resources
* National issues - the more bountiful areas are not in the USA and thus are considered imports which leads to various issues

The statement that they "won't pollute by complying with the regulations" is basically not much of a statement. They just say that they will follow the regulations. For that, they are legally obliged anyways. But almost all the projects that turned out to be disastrous followed local regulations - that in itself says nothing about the risks or pollution. One needs to know the regulations intimately to know what this exactly means.

And about the citrus based solvent - I am wary of this - if this is viable, why are they not using it in Alberta already and what part of the problem will it solve anyways. Just because the origin of a substance sounds natural does not mean that application on a massive scale is without problems and it will also not solve the major problems of the process - removing "overburden" (soil, trees, sediment), emitting a lot of CO2 during processing, tailing ponds & massive use of water which will be even worse in a desert area(!).

So I think this is one of the most horrible things they can do right now - they can only afford to do this if the USA does not agree to any CO2 emission cuts BTW - the Alberta tar sand with their high carbon emissions are the reason why Canada refused to sign binding regulations on CO2 emissions and starting the same project int he USA will prohibit the USA from signing any of them in the future as well.

[Human No More]

As little as I do know about this specific one, I think you answered your own question:

And about the citrus based solvent - I am wary of this - if this is viable, why are they not using it in Alberta already and what part of the problem will it solve anyways.

...

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

* future environmental regulations will probably be more restrictive, old projects usually are excluded from re-regulation, so to start now evades future restrictions

I agree about this, the world should be seeking to reduce dependence on oil, but I would say you did just answer your own question there.
either way, I hope there is something that can be done about this one.

[Raiden]

Crap.

Sometimes I think that I would turn very violent around the people who organize these things if I was given the opportunity.

[Sight Unseen]

^ this.

[Tsyal Makto]

^Seconded. All the time...