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June 2008 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: A river to ruin Feature: Brothers in biology Feature: Scar sands Feature: Simply Superior The Inside Story Editor's Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

It was a broad spectrum of unforeseeable conditions that allowed for today’s large-scale exploitation of the resource: high oil prices, dwindling conventional oil, increasing worldwide demand and rising market instability (call it the Chávez Factor, after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez). As a result, Alberta now sits atop one of the world’s most soughtafter resources, though the seat is hardly comfortable. Questions of national self-determination, controversies over royalty rates and profound environmental concerns have made the oil sands one of Canada’s touchstone issues.

The questions are many. Are the environmental criticisms focused enough to engender change? Is the current level of scientific and technological research deep enough to improve efficiency and ease the environmental impact of the industry? And do Alberta’s regulators have the steel, and transparency, to maintain the province’s economic advantage while remaining well placed to one day heal the ragged scar being left on the planet?

If this were a poker game of Texas Hold ’Em, you would say that every player is all in. There is so much oil, and it’s worth so much money, and so many people want it that it would be politically impossible to shut off the taps. Yet it is so environmentally troubling — both on the ground and as a symbol of where we’re headed — that it’s becoming ever more obvious the current business model will eventually fail us all. Does a path exist to lead us away from this end-game?

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“THERE ARE FIVE MAJOR THINGS that the oil-sands companies need to do if they really truly do care about the environment,” says Simon Dyer, director of the oil sands program for the Pembina Institute, a respected environmental research and education non-profit organization based in Calgary. “And the amazing thing is that all five are achievable, not all that expensive, and all use already existing technology.”

Dyer rhymes them off: (1) Carbon capture and storage; (2) making a move to dry tailings instead of wet tailings; (3) reducing the overall water usage of the plants, particularly during winter’s low flow, for the sake of the ecological health of the Athabasca River and for downstream communities; (4) clamping down on the level of acidifying emissions released through the stacks; (5) establishing large areas of boreal forest that are off limits, which even some oil companies themselves have called for in recent months.

“Don’t get me wrong,” says Dyer, “there are many, many more things I could list. But these five would demonstrate a huge commitment on industry’s part toward the environment.”

Although Dyer personally believes tailings and water usage are the highest priority, a combination of urgency, level of damage and “do-ability” makes carbon capture and storage (CCS) the most immediate step the industry could take to at least start reducing its environmental imprint. In its broad outlines, CCS is not complicated. Carbon emissions are captured at their release location, piped to a different location, then injected into the cracks and strata of deep formations for long-term “storage,” often using old oil or gas wells as entry points.

Industry and environmentalists are talking about CCS, as is the federal government (in March, Environment Minister John Baird announced a plan to make CCS mandatory as of 2018), but the technology, and even the industry’s willingness to experiment with it, has been available for decades. One of the largest CCS projects in the world is in Weyburn, Sask. (see “Carbon cemetery,” Jan/Feb 2008). Operating since 2000, it has allowed scientists and industry to develop considerable expertise in the technology, an expertise that is taking shape despite years of governmental foot-dragging.

“Industry isn’t doing any carbon capture and storage right now,” says Dyer, “because nobody’s forcing it to, so it’s hard for industry to justify the cost to its shareholders. But the oil sands are so high in emissions and operate in such a concentrated area that it’s actually the perfect place to do carbon capture.”