Canada's Tar Sands Pollution Could Be 60 Times Worse Than Industry Reports

Canada’s Tar Sands Pollution Could Be 60 Times Worse Than Industry Reports

Dangerous pollutants associated with mining some of the world’s dirtiest oil could severely harm human health

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Dave Levitan

A general view shows an oil sands mining operation and facility near Fort McKay, Alberta, on September 7, 2022. ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images

Dangerous emissions from the extraction of oil from Canada’s tar sands region in Alberta have been dramatically underestimated, according to a study published in Science on Thursday.

The pollutants, known as gaseous organic compounds, can generate smog and create particulate matter known to be severely hazardous to human health. While many governments mandate monitoring and reporting of these pollutants, they don’t always cover the full range of emitted compounds and could underestimate the true impact of some mining and drilling operations.

“Over recent decades, global petroleum production has shifted to more unconventional sources,” wrote study authors led by graduate student Megan He, formerly of Yale University and now at Harvard University. One such source is the Alberta tar sands, from which a particularly dirty kind of oil known as bitumen is extracted.

The tar sands, also called oil sands, in Alberta produce around 3 million barrels of oil each day; that’s most of Canada’s overall oil production. The researchers used a series of aircraft-based measurements over the vast tar sands region to measure the pollution from that extraction, and found the official reports are severely underestimated.

Overall, the emissions of the various sites they sampled ranged between 20 and 64 times greater than those in the Alberta Emissions Inventory Report and the National Pollutant Release Inventory. The emissions came from both combustion of fossil fuels — in the huge vehicles and other equipment used in tar sands extraction, for example — and from noncombustion sources such as evaporation from the tailings ponds where drilling and mining waste have been dumped for decades.

Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, and its oil and gas sector accounts for more than a quarter of all the country’s emissions. The tar sands have been a source of controversy in Canada for many years, with environmental and climate advocates claiming the industry is at odds with national goals and pledges. The local pollution being so drastically worse than reported will undoubtedly add fuel to that fire.

The authors wrote that a better accounting of operations like those in Alberta are sorely needed. “Effective emissions mitigation to achieve co-benefits across air quality-, health-, climate-, and energy-related goals requires accurate representation in inventories,” they wrote.