Nostalgia for the Athabaskan Tar Sands

Submitted by robin on Sun, 25/04/2010 - 11:36pm.

 I am watching "Burn Up"  ABC Sunday night (April 25).  What a crock of oily green rubbish.  I was about to switch it off when they brought the Tar Sands into the plot.
 
I have a certain nostalgic fondness for the ole Tar Sands.  I worked in the (Great Canadian Oil Sands) mines over two long university breaks. Six day week, ten hour day.  Great Canadian Oil Money!  Oil definitely paid my way through university. Oh, how I loved the smell of oil in the morning.
 
Even back then - mid 1960s - the scale of the oil reserves was known to be staggering.  To quote from an article I wrote on the oil/tar sands forty years ago, it was calculated there was sufficient oil in the sands to meet the needs of North America (read USA) for one hundred years.  It's only been in the last ten or so years that production has been ramped up to commercial levels.  So, lots of oil there still for Yank Tanks.
 
This silly TV programme is correct in saying it is demanding in energy to produce petroleum from the sands.  The extraction process is environmentally nasty.  It  involves strip mining  that makes Hunter Valley coal mining look like a kiddies' sandbox.  The waste products are highly toxic - and there is no where safe to put them.    You can never rehabilitate the land mined to anything even barely resembling its original form (muskeg).  And then you have to produce a synthetic petroleum from the tar extracted, basically this involves adding hydrogen atoms to the molecules. Hence it is called "synthetic crude".  That takes energy.  Lots of energy.  It is an environmental, carbon making disaster - before you put the petrol in your tank.
 
But it can be done.  It is being done.  And it will be done. Mr Obama has said as much.
 
Oil people get things done.  Perhaps not nicely, perhaps even nastily.  But done.
 
Perhaps that's the plot line in Burn Up.  I bet the oil executive that is now shagging the greenie on my screen  is going to defect to the greens and help lead their campaign against the oil industry.
 
It's called fantasy, I think.  Good (bad) TV.  But not real life.  If this programme is where ABC is in terms of developing public awareness in climate change issues, I can't say I am much impressed.
 
What about you?