Pictures: Satellite Views of Canada's Oil Sands Over Time

Into the Woods

Image courtesy Robert Simmon, NASA/Landsat/USGS

By August 2001, this Landsat satellite image shows that operations along the Athabasca had grown considerably.

Producing oil sands crude here means first clear-cutting boreal forest and then removing as much as 100 feet (30 meters) of underlying soil and peat—up to four tons for each barrel of oil.

This heavy lifting is just the first step in an energy-intensive production process. The thick, viscous oil called bitumen must be separated from the sand using water or steam, and then it must be further processed into crude oil. As a result, producing oil here releases more greenhouse gases than conventional oil production. Environmental groups dub this the "world's dirtiest oil," while the industry and Canada's national and provincial governments have pursued projects like large-scale carbon capture to try to "green" the product.

"If the oil sands are ever going to be produced responsibly there needs to be an adequate environmental management program in place that takes into account the cumulative environmental effects on things like water, land use, and greenhouse gases," says Nathan Lemphers, a policy analyst with Pembina Institute, the Canadian environmental organization that monitors the industry via www.oilsandswatch.org.

Lemphers argues that appropriate regulation is not yet in place. "There have been half a dozen independent, expert panels which concluded that the current environmental monitoring system which assesses impact of the oil sands is not adequate for the current amount of development let alone what's projected to come in the future," he says. "We're only at the tip of the iceberg given the size of this resource."

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates the proven, recoverable oil sands reserves at more than 170 billion barrels—more than the total reserves of any other nation except Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Published December 22, 2011

Feeding the World’s Growing Demand

Image courtesy Robert Simmon, NASA/Landsat/USGS

This 2011 satellite image of the same Athabasca River mining site shows massive expansion, fueled by the early 21st century's sustained surge in oil prices. And production in the oil sands region is on track to continue growing, deterred only by the difficulty in getting oil to markets from these sites 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of the U.S. border.

The IEA's 2011 World Outlook says global oil demand is on track to rise 24 percent by 2035, driven almost entirely by developing nations like China and India. (If nations live up to the greenhouse gas commitments they've made so far—by no means a sure thing—IEA's projects oil demand still will increase 15 percent over that period.) The IEA report stressed that "policy action to curb demand and a continuing ability to develop new supplies will be critical." Relatively little has been done to reduce demand in the industrialized world or to curb its growth in the developing world—but Canada's oil sands have become an enormous new supply source.

The oil sands cover an area about the size of New York State (55,000 square miles or 142,000 square kilometers), but mining projects have currently uncovered only about 232 square miles (602 square kilometers). Much of the bitumen, perhaps 80 percent, is too deep for surface mining and will have to be melted "in situ," with underground steam pipes and slurry-collecting wells. This process spares more forest and produces no tailings ponds, but consumes  even more energy.

Published December 22, 2011

Mining for Fuel

Photograph by Peter Essick, National Geographic

Dust clouds the sunset above this open-pit mine, a close-up view of a small fraction of the areas surveyed in the Landsat satellite images. Oil sands mining operations are conducted on a massive scale. Electric shovels five stories high gouge bitumen-rich sand from the ground in open pit mines. Hot water and mixtures of caustic soda then separate bitumen from sand before the bitumen is cooked in an "upgrader" facility that transforms it into a type of synthetic crude.

Holding ponds store the resulting toxic slurry, which can be fatal to birds that land on the surface. Water is cleaned and reused while sand settles out quickly for use in retaining dikes, but other particles produce a toxic goo laden with chemicals like naphthenic acid and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). The industry is under a mandate to reclaim the ponds by backfilling and planting them, but the process is long and uncertain, and only a single 104-hectare (257-acre) site has been certified "reclaimed" by the Alberta government.

Alberta tailings ponds cover perhaps 50 square miles (130 square kilometers)—an area about twice the size of Manhattan. Some studies have suggested they routinely leak contaminants and some downstream samplings have shown elevated levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury. The government of Alberta counters that the water is tainted by natural seeps, unleashed as the river naturally erodes its way though ancient layers of oil sands, and that waters downstream from mine sites evidence no unusual industrial contribution.

(Related: The Canadian Oil Boom)

Published December 22, 2011

Stoking an Economic Engine

Photograph by Peter Essick, National Geographic

Dump trucks like this one can haul 400 tons and burn through 50 gallons (190 liters) of diesel every hour.

These jumbo vehicles often are driven by recent transplants to the region, workers eager to become part of an economic windfall that has fueled boom-town growth in the oil sands epicenter of Fort McMurray. Government of Alberta statistics report that more than 135,000 people were employed in mining, oil, and gas extraction across the province in 2009.

"Oil sands have really come to the fore in terms of what the province makes in royalties and also in terms of job creation," said Alberta Energy Department spokesman Tim Markle. "We're even talking about possible job shortages with the amount of expansion that's projected to occur in the coming years." Oil sands backers also tout the resources as essential in an increasingly energy-thirsty world, and stress the advantage of its location in a stable Western democracy. Among the world's top five nations in terms of oil reserves, Canada is the only one that is not a member of OPEC.

Debate over the oil sands is especially heated in the United States, where Canada is the largest oil supplier and is responsible for some 25 percent of all imports. The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that the oil sands are fast becoming the largest single source of U.S. crude imports. The Keystone XL pipeline project, if approved by the U.S. government, would connect the sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast—positioning Alberta's resources for a prominent place in America's energy future.

(Related: Top Energy Stories of 2011)

Published December 22, 2011