Ford, Smith unveil plan for new ‘Northern Shield’ oil pipeline between Alberta and Ontario (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 14 hours ago by ValueSubtracted@startrek.website to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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The Manitoba government has refused to join the project

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[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca -3 points 14 hours ago

If this resolves our dependence on US pipeline to get Canadian oil to Canadian refineries, might be a good idea.

[-] ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 3 points 5 hours ago

You know what's an even better idea? Shifting to green energies, like the rest of the world.

We're already way behind the curve here.

And let's not even mention the impact it has on the global climate. Climate scientists are estimating that in about 10 years or so, maritime currents are going to stop because of the speed of global warming and the accelerated melting of the ice caps. This is going to fuck up the system that regulates temperatures across the globe. If we want ANY chance of stopping this, we need to stop using oil now.

But we're still going full steam ahead with oil extraction, building pipelines, building ICE vehicles, etc.

It's completely bonkers.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 hours ago

I mean, I'm not gonna argue against that. That's obvious to most here. But it's also obvious we aren't stopping oil. I'm helping the NDP as much as I can. At the same time Ford finished retooling the Oakville plant to make all-you-can-guzzle F-250 Super Duty. And the last time I checked the most sold vehicle in Canada was Ford F-150. I ride a bike and use transit. But we're not stopping using oil today. We currently have no mechanism to stop it. The capital system won't allow it. Taking political power could allow us to change direction, not stop. And that's not on the horizon for at least a couple of years if not 4-6. People aren't in enough of a crisis to demand change. The Iran war opened an opportunity but that didn't come to a head. At this point I'm pretty sure we're entering firmly into a damage control phase with AMOC disruption and all that. This is not an argument, just feels.

[-] ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 3 points 4 hours ago

You're right. 😥

We're on the same page, comrade.

I do my best, I ride my bike as well and take all kinds of actions, but it's going to take more than that.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

You realize the entire supply chain for Canadian oil is 98-100% American owned, right? There's nothing that will get more money in the hands of Canadians or protect us from American influence in this. We'll be lucky if the province can get enough money to clean up the toxic sites left behind when the companies abandon their pumps in the night.

[-] Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 hours ago

That sounds off a bit. Pembina, Enbridge, TC Energy, Interpipeline and Trans Mountain are not US owned.

[-] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 7 points 13 hours ago

We need to build actual Canadian refineries.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 13 hours ago

I thought we have some in SW Ontario and Quebec. Or do you mean they're not Canadian-owned?

[-] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 7 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Eastern Canada refineries process light sweet crude, which is largely imported. Some Alberta refineries can process heavy sour crude, which is the majority of what Alberta produces. That crude can’t be processed in Eastern Canada. So there is no point shipping that oil across the country. Heavy sour gets processed in Alberta (only making diesel and road asphalt bitumen) Texas and Oklahoma.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 hours ago

I see. So what's the use case for this pipeline other than political capital?

[-] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 hours ago

Just conservatives jerking each other off.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 hours ago

Yep, nothing.

They can process their own stuff.

[-] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 5 points 12 hours ago

As others have pointed out, we don't have heavy crude refining in most of Canada. The vast majority of Western Canadian crude isn't "Oil" in the common vernacular of the term, what we push through the pipes is diluted bitumen or "DilBit." DilBit is effectively raw bitumen sand that's been dissolved in some of the most caustic chemicals man has ever devised. It's effectively a liquid sandpaper that is highly volitile (tends to explode from time to time), abrasive (tends to scratch and wear down pipes and pumps), corosive (it's literally melting rock), and full of toxic impurities some of which are even mildly radioactive. Unlike the oil that comes from conventional wells, DilBit requires additional processing most Ontario refineries aren't really equipped to handle, and produces some waste material called petrochemical coke, or pet-coke that requires disposal after the fact. Intermediate upgraders that can convert DilBit into synthetic crude or SynCrude exist, but there are relatively few of those in Canada. It's more cost efficient to do the upgrading at the same refinery that's going to be processing it into finished product.

Most "Heavy Sour" (oil with a lot of impurities, some of which are toxic) refineries in the world are in the US, used for processing shale oil, Alberta oil and once upon a time and likely again in the future, Venezuelan oil. China and India also have a few Sour-Heavy refineries, but much smaller scale than the US.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

The picture of sand dragging at the insides of a metal pipe buried in the ground make me a bit uneasy.

[-] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago

DilBit pipelines are a bit more complicated than simple water or sewer lines that you may be picturing. They have a lot of safety features and coatings (often nano-ceramic) that make them a lot more durable, maintenance cycles that prevent breaches, and in the worst case scenario features like active shut-off systems and fail-safe "second pipe" shells and catch-basins that limit the chance of a breach entering the local environment, but that said, when they do rupture in a way that causes local contamination, it's not pretty.

That said, it's actually probably safer to build pipes to Ontario and say, Churchill Manitoba than to BC. It may be a longer distance, but at least the shield is tectonically stable. If we maintain the pipes well, the chances of it destroying a watershed or anything like that are minimal.

There are of course, other options. Bututainers are a Calgary based company that use specialized systems to move-semi-solid bitumen in Sea Cans to refining locations, making it much safer to move by rail and cargo ship than current methods. It's more expensive to move by rail than by pipeline, but the advantage of rail lines is you can use them for things other than Oil. Quebec, from what I understand, is a little bit more hesitant about moving large containers of flammable substances by rail in recent years though... that'd potentially be a problem.