• This ConocoPhillips coker drum, barged to the Port of Lewiston, ID before permits were issued for overland travel, is one of approximately 250 currently proposed for a new permanent industrial corridor through the Northwest. Over the next three decades, existing contracts between oil corporations and Asian manufacturers could result in thousands of shipments traveling this corridor, clogging roads on most days of the year.

  • Along the entire length of the route, the Heavy Haul will pass world-famous like fly fishing rivers like the Main Clearwater (pictured here), the Lochsa, Lolo Creek, the Big Blackfoot – made famous by Norman MacLeans’s “A River Runs Through It” – the Dearborn and the Sun.

  • “Alberta oil is conflict-free energy,” stated MT Governor Brian Schweitzer. Indigenous communities suffering elevated cancer rates would not agree. Leaks from tailings ponds and other sources are polluting local waterways and fish populations, and endangering residents downstream of Tar Sands development on the Athabasca River.

    Photo Credit: David Dodge, The Pembina Institute, oilsandswatch.org

  • Fully functioning boreal wetland ecosystems, like the one pictured here, are being ripped up to produce the costliest oil on the planet. It takes four tons of earth and four barrels of water to produce one barrel of tar sands oil. At full projected build-out, Tar Sands strip mining and drilling will devastate an area the size of Florida.

    Photo Credit: David Dodge, The Pembina Institute, oilsandswatch.org

  • The Columbia River Gorge, pictured here, marks the beginning of the Heavy Haul’s roughly 1,500 mile-long journey from the Port of Vancouver, Washington – where the modules are unloaded from container ships to barges – to the Kearl Oilsands Project in northern Alberta. Corporations like Exxon – the wealthiest in the world – have chosen this fragile route over existing and less controversial alternatives for no reason other than protecting their bottom line.

  • This bridge sits near the Port of Lewiston, ID, the terminus of barge traffic on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, made possible by salmon-blocking dams. The farthest-inland port in the Western US, Lewiston is located 465 miles East of the Pacific Ocean, and is the unloading location for Exxon and Conoco’s loads.

  • The Lower Granite Dam, pictured here, is one of the four lower-Snake River dams whose series of locks and reservoirs allow barge traffic to travel between Lewiston, ID and the West Coast. Salmon advocates, fishermen, and Northwest tribes have fought for years to restore a free-flowing river, and they fear the repercussions of Big Oil’s deep pockets getting behind keeping the dams in place.

  • Before dams along the length of the Columbia and Snake Rivers blocked their passage, upwards of twenty million salmon made the trip from the Pacific Ocean to spawning streams in the Cascades and the Rockies. Today, due to dams such as the Lower Granite, the most prodigious salmon runs in the world have been reduced to a tenth of their former greatness.

The Most Destructive Project on Earth

Already visible from space, the footprint of Tar Sands mining and drilling would cover a 55,000 square mile area at maximum projected build-out, equivalent in size to the state of Florida. The single largest source of greenhouse gasses in Canada, and the source of a string of pipeline disasters in recent years, it’s no wonder the Tar Sands have been dubbed “the most destructive project on earth.”

  1. The proposed industrial corridor through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana is the chosen route for Asian-made equipment that will be used to expand the Tar Sands’ next mining frontier, the Kearl Project. When fully developed the Kearl Project strip mine will cover approximately 125 square miles, and will be responsible for average emissions of 3.7 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. 1

  2. Tar sands are a combination of sand, clay, water and bitumen – a heavy, thick, black hydrocarbon that resembles tar. Canada contains the world’s largest tar sands deposits. 2

  3. It takes over three times as much fossil fuels to extract tar sands oil as it does for extracting oil from conventional sources. Each barrel of tar sands oil produced requires the consumption of four barrels of water and the equivalent energy to three barrels of oil. 3

  4. It takes four tons of earth from the tar sands to produce one barrel of oil. 4

  5. Canada contains the world’s largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. The tar sands represent approximately half of Canada’s total oil production, and the US is Canada’s largest tar-sands-oil importer. 5

  6. Ninety percent of water used in tar sands extraction cannot be returned to the Athabasca River due to quality issues. 6

  7. Between 1995 and 2006, there were a reported 51 cancers in 47 people in Fort Chipewyan. According to a study conducted by the Alberta Health Service, cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan, a town of 1,200 people, were 30% higher than expected. 7

  8. Tar sands could ultimately strip mine 2,000 square miles of Canada’s Boreal Forest, an area equivalent in size to Idaho and Montana’s vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness or the State of Delaware.9 Representing one-quarter of the earth’s remaining intact forests, the wetlands and woods of Canada’s Boreal Forest are home to 40% of North America’s waterfowl and 30% of its songbirds, and it comprises one of the world’s greatest carbon sinks. 9

    Over 99% of exported Canadian crude goes to the US through an increasingly complex and vulnerable network of pipelines and refineries. 10

    Since 1973, Enbridge Energy Partners, a pipeline company building tar sands pipelines in the US, has been responsible for spills that have released over five million gallons of hazardous liquids. Between 2003 and 2008, pipeline accidents caused by Enbridge were responsible for 29 injuries, 13 deaths, and $699 million in property damage. 11

    In 2009 alone, Enbridge reported 89 spills.12 In the summer of 2010, nearly one million gallons of tar sands fuel spilled into a tributary of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, and 250,000 gallons leaked out of an Enbridge pipe in a neighborhood near Chicago, Illinois. 13

  9. According to a study published in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology in September 2010, birds are dying in Tar Sands tailings ponds by at least 30 times the rate previously reported by the Alberta provincial government and industry. Over the 14 years included in the study, the median bird-death rate was 1,973 per year, and according to the study’s author, the number is probably far higher, since nighttime deaths and birds that sink under water were not counted. In a single disaster in 2008, 1,600 ducks died after landing in a tailings pond. 14

Citations

  1. Dyer, Simon. "Backgrounder – Imperial Kearl Oil Sands Mine Hearings." Pembina Institute. Issue Brief. 11 January 2008. Available upon request.
  2. Bruno, Kenny, Bruce Balzel, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Elizabeth Shope, and Kate Colarulli. Tar Sands Invasion: How Dirty and Expensive Oil from Canada Threatens America’s New Energy Economy. Issue Brief. Corporate Ethics International, Earthworks, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club. Print. May 2010.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Author unknown. "Tar Sands and Water." Greenpeace. Issue Brief. Date unknown. Available upon request.
  7. Darling, Stephanie. "Could tar sands be behind high rates of cancer in Fort Chipewyan?" Digital Journal. 29 June 2010. Web. Accessed 10 Oct. 2010.
  8. Bruno, Kenny, Bruce Balzel, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Elizabeth Shope, and Kate Colarulli. Tar Sands Invasion: How Dirty and Expensive Oil from Canada Threatens America’s New Energy Economy. Issue Brief. Corporate Ethics International, Earthworks, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club. Print. May 2010.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Ibid.
  12. Lydersen, Kari. “Another day, another Enbridge oil spill.” Natural Resources Defense Council: OnEarthMagazine. 20 Sept. 2010. Web. Accessed 10 Oct. 2010.
  13. Lyderson, Kari. “Nearby Oil Spill Highlights Hazards in Area’s Pipelines.” The New York Times. 16 Sept. 2010. Web. Accessed 10 Oct. 2010.
  14. Weber, Bob. “Birds dying in oilsands at 30 times the rate reported, says study.” The Toronto Star. 7 Sept. 2010. Web. Accessed 10 Oct. 2010.
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