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Why do the tar sands cause so many emissions?

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Why do the tar sands cause so many emissions?

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The oil that is being sought from the tar sands is literally stuck in tar and it is very difficult to separate them. Huge industrial machines are needed to dig the mineable tar sands out of the earth, and these burn a lot of fuel. As two tonnes of tar sands must be moved in order to create a single barrel of oil, this means that 35 kg of CO2 equivalent is emitted, making oil from the tar sands the most energy intensive type of oil available. If the tar sands are located deeper than 100 metres from the Earth’s surface, and cannot be mined, they are extracted by a process called steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), which creates even more emissions than mining: 55 kg of CO2 per single barrel of oil. In SAGD operations, steam is injected into the tar sands to make it flow, and then it is pumped to the surface. Heating the water for the steam greatly increases the amount of fossil fuels that are burned. As mentioned above, bitumen is the heaviest and worst quality oil available. It has

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