Canada’s Latest Oil Extraction Methods Put New Pressures on Environment

The [Cold Lake Air Weapons Range] overlaps with the Cold Lake deposits of Alberta’s oil sands.  In the past two decades, every major multinational company has set up shop in this province, reaping trillions in revenues from the tarry, semisolid form of oil beneath.  To date, much of the crude, known as bitumen, has been removed through surface mining, the process of digging oil from the ground that creates the giant moonscapes that have dominated media coverage of the oil sands.  But here, on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, another means of extraction is used:  thermal-steam injection.

These methods, also known as in-situ technologies, are seen as the future of oil-sands development.  Approximately 80 percent of Alberta’s oil sands are too deep to be mined, and much of what can be removed via mining has already been extracted.  By injecting steam into the ground and effectively liquefying the oil so it can be pumped back out, companies that employ the in-situ technologies are able to reach far deeper than surface mining.  In 2013, for the first time, the number of barrels extracted in Alberta by steam injection surpassed those removed by mining.

Oil companies tout in-situ technologies as less destructive than surface mining.  The methods forgo the need for open-pit mines, smoke-spewing purification facilities and toxic dumping sites.  By contrast, steam-injection sites look like clearings in the woods with a lattice of pipes sprouting from the ground.  But environmentalists and other critics say the technologies raise their own set of concerns.  To build steaming facilities and oil well pads, patches of forest need to be cleared.  The roads, pipes and power lines that connect the facilities cut across rivers and lakes, wildlife habitats and migration routes — swaths of land much larger than those affected by surface mining.  Steam technologies also produce significant amounts of natural gas; one in-situ method known as steam-assisted gravity drainage releases three times as much carbon dioxide as mining.  And, in recent years, a pattern of leaks at steam-injection sites has raised serious questions about the technologies’ safety, particularly in light of a geological formation under much of Alberta that aggravates the risks.

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