Alberta Tar Sands

Above pictures of the transformation from pristine Boreal Forest to'toxic fuels' refinery.
The tar sand deposits sit beneath Canada's pristine boreal forest, the world's largest terrestrial carbon store. Tar sands cover 140,000 sq km in the primary Boreal forest of Canada, an area larger than England. The most easily accessible reserves are extracted via open cast mining. This emits on average three times more carbon dioxide than conventional oil extraction, not including the emissions resulting from deforestation. For every barrel of oil produced in this way at least 2 tonnes of material is mined. Some of these open cast mines are large enough to be seen from space The material from the mines is washed with warm water to remove the oil. On average, 3 barrels of water are used to produce 1 barrel of oil. Sourced from local rivers, most of this water becomes too toxic to be returned and collects in massive tailings ponds. Tailings ponds are acutely toxic to all life that come into contact with them, in November 2008, 500 migrating birds landed on a tailings pond and died almost instantly. Furthermore, a recent report found that 11 million litres of toxic waste water is leaking from these tailings into the water table and local rivers everyday. The oil extracted from tar sands is of low quality and therefore needs upgrading before it can be refined into petroleum products. This is a very dirty and energy intensive process and adds to the local pollution and carbon dioxide emissions from tar sand operations.