Refining Oil Sands CrudeWill Pollute Great Lakes, Study Warns

Extracting crude oil from Alberta’s vast Athabasca oil sands deposit is not only causing extensive environmental damage to the boreal forest but will bring air and water pollution to the Great Lakes, where numerous refineries are planned to process the thick crude from Canada’s largest oil deposit. That’s the conclusion of a study by Toronto’s Munk Center, which says that proposed pipelines from Alberta to the Great Lakes will act as a “pollution delivery system” to as many as 17 planned refinery projects on the lakes. The study says that special refineries need to be built to process the extremely heavy crude extracted from the oil sands deposit by open pit mining and drilling. Those refineries could “wipe out many of the pollution gains” made at the lakes since the 1970s, according to the study. The Athabasca oil sands consist of large deposits of a very heavy crude, known as bitumen, mixed with clay and sand. Covering an area the size of North Carolina, the oil sands deposits are so extensive that Canada’s oil reserves are now ranked second in the world, behind Saudi Arabia.