copper potts — Unlikely that shipping costs can account for the difference; ocean vessels are extremely efficient on a tonne-kilometer basis.

it must be the difference is how the oil is shipped around from the tar sands versus shipped from the middle east. I am not saying that data is correct, just that that’s what could account for it.

You omitted part of the Wikipedia quotation: Here’s the full quote:

Environmentalists state that their main concerns with tar sands are land damage, greenhouse gas emissions, and water use. Tar sands extraction is generally held to be more environmentally damaging than conventional crude oil – carbon dioxide emissions, for example, are roughly three to five times greater with tar sands extraction.. On a life-cycle basis, including emissions related to transportation by pipeline or tanker, refining, and end use, tar sands are about 10 per cent more carbon intensive than Middle East crude oils.[citation needed]

These two claims (note the “citation needed”) comment are obviously mutually absurd. How can something that produces 3-5 times the carbon in the extraction process only by 10% more carbon intensive than Middle Eastern crude? Plus, huge forest carbon sinks are destroyed in the process of extraction.

See the following for more info:

http://www.panda.org/ about_wwf/ where_we_work/ north_america/ canada/ oil_sands/ index.cfm

http://www.independent.co.uk/ environment/ the-biggest-environmental-crime-in-history-764102.html

and particularlly the Tyndal Centre report (PDF) which calculates that developing Canadian tar sands in accordance with the modest goals of the Kyoto treaty would require that Canada use 65% of the worlds carbon credits (CDM) established under the Kyoto Treaty.

http://www.wwf.org.uk/ filelibrary/ pdf/ oilsands_report.pdf

Blogging for the future at Climaticide Chronicles

What exactly do we do Joe? stop investing in the tar sands? just foresake all those billions of dollars in investment? what about the jobs that pay people from the economically depressed canadian east coast? where will they get jobs? how will they save those old fishing communities on the east coast?

Speaking as one of those people who lives in a fishing town on the economically depressed east coast, (Lunenburg, Nova Scotia), I don’t want to be saved by Alberta Tar Sands Oil. And I don’t know anyone in Atlantic Canada who wants to go down the road for a job in the oil patch. They’d rather stay here.

I hold the view that others have expressed here: the Alberta Tar Sands are the world’s worst environmental disaster, and our country is doing nothing about it. The current Conservative government has buried its head so deep in the Tar Sands that they are willing do anything to make the West into Canada’s new center of power. And they are sacrificing the prosperity of the country to do so.

I can sit out on my back deck, and look out at the blustery Atlantic. In Nova Scotia, the ocean is our alpha and omega. No one lives more than 50 km from the sea, and most of us can walk there easily. It really is lovely, and capricious. Strong storms, huge waves. The world’s highest tides are found in the Bay of Fundy, where whales frolic. It’s an unspoiled wilderness. Nova Scotia, just one of four Atlantic provinces, has more than 4,500 miles of undulating coastline, and less than one million inhabitants.

And yet, in the last federal budget, the government sent $5 million (if memory serves) to our provincial government so we could research carbon capture and sequestration. Do you see where I am going?

We should be the Saudi Arabia of wind and wave power, more than enough to power eastern Canada and most of the Northeastern US, I’d wager. We should be planting wind farms everywhere, along the coast — and off our coast, with its gently sloping 200 mile continental shelf.

We also have two of the three deepest harbors in the world, so we should be building wind turbines and shipping them all over the world.

But our government doesn’t believe that global warming is a serious problem, and doesn’t believe that Canada should meet its international obligations, so we’re putting all our money into the oil patch, with nothing left over for clean, safe renewable energy.

So I would like to see a serious, progressive carbon tax that would make oil companies pay for the right to pollute or, better still, start cleaning up their operations so we wouldn’t need to be an international laughing stock. And I hope that Americans will stop buying oil sands crude.

And then, the government should take all that carbon tax money and pour it into clean energy and green technologies so that Canada — all of Canada — is ready for the new low-carbon economy.

I’m sure others here can make the point more eloquently. We didn’t inherit this land from our parents, we’re borrowing it from our children and our grandchildren. If we keep sending CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with nary a care for their world, then they will remember us for the rest of our lives as the Selfish Generation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands

Which, by the way, might be done in the Global South for around half that cost.

secondly, according to wikipedia there is 173 billion recoverable barrels barrels.

$115 X 173=around $20 trillion dollars of oil. it’s just not probable, unless oil gets to $20, that the sands won’t be developed. taking it off the market would probably mean $200 oil and $5-6 dollar gasoline. we already saw both obama and mccain flip-flop over offshore drilling because of high gas prices. what will the canadian government do when the world is beating on their door for tar sands oil at $300 per barrel? if the canadian government were to ban the tar sands it would probably have to pay in the hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe even trillions, to pay off the companies who have tens of billions invested. then we need to cut a deal with the Provincial governments who are drowning in oil and then pay of the tar sands workers too. remember, there is probably $20 trillion dollars of oil in the tar sands. plus companies are investing tens of billions each as we speak. they would have to be compensated.

I would love to not develop that oil but it probably isn’t feasible given the money at stake. so what do we do? we do everything that john says above. but his goals for 2015 or 2025 don’t help us in the next few years and we’d still be using coal for our electricity in a big way.

we also try to make the tar sands as green as possilbe. canada would have to process the tar sands with green energy. they’d have to find a way to control pollution. that’s what we can do until we get to 2015 or 2025. acting like the tar sands doesn’t exist isn’t feasible.

“The real question, Mr. copperpotts, is what would we do if we introduced all the CO2 from tar sands into the atmosphere — about 3 times as much per gallon as conventional oil.”

I would like to see some hard facts behind this.

What we do is a no-brainer. We start ratcheting up mileage standards immediately, and require all cars sold after 2015 to be PHEVs that get 80 or more MPG, with 100 mpg equivalent by 2020. At that rate we’d be getting negabarrels at on fourth the price of oil — and we’d be getting more of them, particularly if we bought back the worst gas pigs and retired them, enabling people to get more efficient cars. With monthly gasoline costs of $400 or more dollars for a typical pig- mobile, consumers could even save money while they saved gas. If we did this, we would not need to import oil — from Canadians or anyone else — by 2025.

The real question, Mr. copperpotts, is what would we do if we introduced all the CO2 from tar sands into the atmosphere — about 3 times as much per gallon as conventional oil. That would likely trigger runaway methane emissions from the Tundra, and we’d be toast — nothing we could do would make a damn bit of difference at that point, as 3000 gigatons of methane at 20 times the warming strength of CO2 started a self-reinforcing feedback.

It’s worth thinking about those questions, too, Mr. copperpotts, as you whine about doing without “our” oil.

There’s a solution — PHEVS and EVs — the alternative to not using them is untenable. So what exactly is your point?

I can’t see it lasting once Obama gets in.

It’s up to you Americans to reject dirty oil.