Full Title: Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands
Author(s): Lorne Stockman, with contributions from David Turnbull and Stephen Kretzmann
Publisher(s): Oil Change International
Publication Date: January 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The Canadian tar sands have been called the “most environmentally destructive project on earth”, with good reason. Extracting tar sands bitumen from under the boreal forests of Alberta, Canada requires huge amounts of energy and water. It has cleared vast tracts of forest, left scars on the land that are visible from space and threatened the health and livelihoods of indigenous First Nations communities across the region.
It is a well established fact that full exploitation of the tar sands is a grave threat to the climate. Emissions from tar sands extraction and upgrading are between 3.2 and 4.5 times higher than the equivalent emissions from conventional oil produced in North America. On a lifecycle basis, the average gallon of tar sands bitumen derived fuel has between 14 and 37 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the average gallon of fuel from conventional oil.
But as bad as these impacts already are, existing analyses of the impacts of tar sands fail to account for a byproduct of the process that is a major source of climate change causing carbon emissions: petroleum coke – known as petcoke. Petcoke is the coal hiding in North America’s tar sands oil boom.
This report explores one of the inherent risks of exploiting the hydrocarbons within Canada’s tar sands. It highlights the fact that what lies below the boreal forests of Alberta is bitumen, a substance that due to its high carbon content resembles coal more than oil.