Canadian Oil Sands Poised to Be Largest Source of Crude Oil for U.S.

Canadian Oil Sands Poised to Be Largest Source of Crude Oil for U.S.

By John O'Dell May 21, 2010

When talk turns to energy independence, someone always raises the specter of the U.S. having to import most of its oil, and much of that from countries that don't like us all that much.

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Open pit oil sands mining in Canada.

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Indeed, we do get a lot of oil from places where American policies - and sometimes Americans in general  - aren't much liked. But the biggest enabler of our dependence on imported oil is right next door and a close ally: Canada.

For the first two months this year, according to the latest data from the federal Energy Department, we received 1.9 million barrels of crude oil a day from Canada - about 10 percent of our daily consumption.

Mexico was the next biggest supplier, at 1.15 million barrels a day, followed by Nigeria, 948,000 barrels a day; Saudi Arabia (a reluctant ally) at 922,000 barrels a day and Venezuela (whose head of state certainly doesn't have any love for the U.S.) at 868,000 barrels daily.

These five nations accounted for 64 percent of the oil imported into the U.S. in January and February and they are typically our top 5 suppliers - although the bottom of the order often changes places.

But getting lots of oil from Canada isn't necessarily a great thing.

Much of the Canadian oil comes from the country's oil sands, and it is high-carbon and highly messy stuff with a pretty negative environmental impact.

A new study by energy consultants IHS CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) says that oil sands imports are likely to be the top source of imported oil in the U.S. this year and could double or even triple in volume by 2020.

Ceres Group, a major coalition of environmentally minded investment companies, issued its own report this week - prepared by RiskMetrics ESG Analytics - that calls the Canadian oil sands a "slow motion" version of the Gulf oil spill - an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen.

The IHS CERA report says that improving technology should mitigate the environmental impacts of what amounts to mining for oil - digging up the tightly packed sands, injecting high-pressure steam to flush out the oil and leaving behind oceans of polluted water and mountains of "tailings" - heaps of sand laden with toxic waste - which can leach into the soil and into ground-water supplies.

Additionally, as both Ceres and CERA point out, oil from tar sands is dirtier - has a higher carbon content - than oil from many other sources, and well-to-gas pump analyses show that  fuel from oil sands causes about 70 percent more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions than the average of all the other petroleum fuels used in the U.S.

IHS CERA, noting that its estimates are lower than other reports, says fuel from oil sands has up to 15 percent more greenhouse gas emissions that other fuels on a well-to-wheels basis, meaning from extraction through combustion in a vehicle or power plant.

Oil sands production also is land- and water intensive.

The IHS CERA report says mining and on-site production of crude from oil sands takes about 16 times as much water as extracting crude oil from a well, and the Ceres report cautions that toxic tailings from the mining leftovers means that none of the Canadian land used for tailing ponds (to leach the toxins out of the mine leavings) has been fully reclaimed in the 40 years since mining began in earnest.

With most of the Canadian oil sands crude destined for the U.S., the environmental dangers present yet another reason for Congress and the White House to take up the challenge of devising, finally, a national energy plan - one that encourages us to get off of oil, at least for personal transportation, as rapidly as possible.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.