Tar Sands World for the week (December 10, 2013)
CNN ran a story, written elsewhere, detailing the long term energy from shale goals coming out of Estonia. Estonia, a country and region you might as well get used to reading me raise the alarm over so far as extreme energy plays, produces more electricity from oil shale pyrolysis that it currently consumes. Problem, of course, is that this energy development is dirtier than coal, never mind tar sands.
Perhaps the biggest news in extreme extraction in the last week comes from a tiny country. Estonia, the lone veteran nation-state of converting kerogen oil shale into mock fuel, has joined the International Energy Agency. A body that is only open to OECD countries, Estonia has not been a part of the organization in the past. Given requirements of 90 day stockpiling and the ability to implement 10% consumption “restraint” as a part of membership, Estonia– whose oil shale industry accounts for over 90% of local energy (both shale fired power plants as well as kerogen shale into oil)– is likely banking this “normalizes” oil from kerogen and shale-fired electricity.
The IEA coordinates energy policy, including stocks, & integrates energy across member countries to a large degree. Estonia is doing in Europe much the same as Canada’s tar sands lobbyists (otherwise known as the Harper Government). Advocating against the Fuel Quality Directive, Estonia has also argued against the inclusion of clauses that Canada is desperately trying to avoid.
The breakneck pace of tar sands development in Canada is well known; it is the sheer size of the multiple mines, in-situ plants, upgraders, pipelines, rail lines, refineries and more across all of North America that earned the nickname “the Gigaproject.” Now, what if we took the most destructive aspects of tar sands mining, combined that with the worst parts of in-situ, and put them together into a project that was even worse than any tar sands development for the climate?