A bit of truth about oil sands and the Pathways Alliance
Sorry for the longer-than-usual post; but please read, as there’s a lot of stuff here!
If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen a lot of ads this winter from an organization called the Pathways Alliance, extolling all the virtues of the Alberta oil sands. The ads speak of the enormous economic benefits oil sands provide, and the great progress that is happening to make them more environmentally friendly.
It’s true that the oil sands employ a lot of people – 138,000, according to the Government of Alberta. It’s true that the oil sands generate a lot of wealth – $16.9 billion in royalties in 2022-23, twice as much as the royalties from everything else in the Alberta oil and gas sector combined (which may explain why they get so much political attention).
But beyond that, things get a little foggier. Here are a few facts to put the oil sands – and the Pathways Alliance – in perspective:
- According to Statistics Canada, nearly 21 million people are employed in Canada. The oil and gas sector employs 181,100 of them, or less than one per cent (page 102 here). The sector is also responsible for another 265,500 indirect jobs, for a total of 446,600 jobs, or 2.1 per cent of employment in Canada. In context, the construction and manufacturing sectors each employ about four times that many people. (Comment: it’s true that there’s more to this than simple job numbers; but perhaps the key takeaway should be that the oil and gas sector isn’t as large as we may be led to believe.)
- The Pathways Alliance consists of six large oil sands companies: Canadian Natural, Cenovus, Suncor, MEG Energy, Imperial and ConocoPhillips. The first four are headquartered in Calgary. Imperial is based in Calgary but is majority owned by ExxonMobil of Spring, Texas. ConocoPhillips is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
- The six companies of the Pathways Alliance represent 95 per cent of Canada’s oil sands production. They’re also responsible for a huge share of Canadian emissions. Consider: the six companies of the Pathways Alliance collectively operate nearly 10 per cent of Canada’s 1862 large industrial emitters – but that 10% is responsible for 40 per cent of the emissions of the entire group. In other words, Pathways Alliance members generate 40 per cent of all Canadian industrial facility emissions. Stepping back to the national level, in 2023, facilities operated by Pathways Alliance members generated 82.5 million tonnes of emissions, or 11.9 per cent of all Canadian emissions. That’s about two and a half times the emissions of all four Atlantic Provinces combined, or about 2.6 tonnes every second of the year.
- According to its website, the Pathways Alliance is dedicated to innovation in four key areas: tailings, water, land and greenhouse gases. Very little is mentioned about the first three. (Comment: very little progress was being made with tailings, land or water when I researched the oil sands more deeply several years ago, and this view would suggest that’s still the case.)
- Regarding greenhouse gas reduction, the Pathways Alliance’s foundational project is a proposed massive $16.5 billion carbon capture and storage project. However, in the not-so-fine print is this: “The project proceeding is contingent upon obtaining sufficient fiscal and policy supports and regulatory approval.” In other words, nothing is going to happen until governments provide significant taxpayer funding – for two-thirds of the total cost, according to a Pathways VP.
- Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has long been touted by the fossil fuel industry as a way to reduce the emissions of extracting fossil fuels so we can keep using fossil fuels (if you can find the logic in that reasoning, because even if extraction emissions were zero, there would still be enormous emissions from the burning of those fossil fuels). CCS is technically possible, but projects to date have been small and with mixed results. As well, costs per tonne captured and stored remains really high. (Comment: shouldn’t that lead us to wonder if it wouldn’t just be simpler and cheaper to leave the fossil fuels in the ground and use the money to install renewables that would then provide free energy from the sun, wind and water?)
- In the meantime, emissions from the oil sands continue to skyrocket, as the following two graphs show (from this LinkedIn post, based on recently released data from Environment and Climate Change Canada)
The takeaway from all this? I hope the above points offer a reasonable and evidence-based counterpoint to those soothing messages you may be hearing from the oil sands industry and the Pathways Alliance. It just ain’t so.
In the news:
Arctic sea ice reached its annual winter maximum on March 22 – unfortunately, the lowest minimum in the 47-year satellite record.
Cool: electric school buses, which like most vehicles are parked most of the day, will play a bigger role in buffering renewables on the power grid!
Ever wonder what a ‘net-zero home’ really means? Here’s a great overview from the Canadian Home Builders Association.
Quotable:
“The wealth of this world isn’t in the ground; it’s all around us.”
- Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), Avatar, 2009