Given that the tar sands are

Donal — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:03:21 +0000

Given that the tar sands are in Alberta, I doubt that they have much access to salt water. I wouldn't be surprised if they reused fresh water, but I'm not sure if there is enough residential gray water in the area to make a difference, and it's probably easier to pipe it in from the Athabasca River or lake. Wikipedia being what it is, there are conflicting claims about water usage:

Between 2 to 4.5 volume units of water are used to produce each volume unit of synthetic crude oil (SCO) in an ex-situ mining operation. Despite recycling, almost all of it ends up in tailings ponds, which, as of 2007, covered an area of approximately 50 km² (19 sq mi). In SAGD [Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage] operations, 90 to 95 percent of the water is recycled and only about 0.2 volume units of water is used per volume unit of bitumen produced.Large amounts of water are used for oil sands operations – Greenpeace gives the number as 349 million cubic metres per year, twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary.

I hope you know me well

Verified Atheist — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:27:55 +0000

In reply to The Lash or the Pipeline

I hope you know me well enough by now to know that I completely support what you're saying. However, I feel the need to nitpick on something (although it might simply be me not understanding something):

It takes 3-5 barrels of fresh water to get a single barrel of oil from the tar sands. 350 million cubic metres is the volume of water currently allocated to the tar sands, the equivalent to the water required by a city of two million people.

Why fresh water? Couldn't salt water or grey water be used for this? If so, why did they add the word "fresh"?

dagblog - Comments for "The Lash or the Pipeline"

Given that the tar sands are

I hope you know me well