| inbluevt | Date: Sunday, 2013/05/19, 4:00 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
|
|
Private
Group: Blocked
Messages: 1024
|
Be sure to scroll down to the pictures at the end of the article.
Canada's oil sand mines will eventually produce up to 2 trillion barrels of oil and what that could mean for the environment has been debated for years. What's often overlooked though is a coke byproduct that results from refining the tar-like bitumen of the oil sands into oil.Coke is a low-quality type of coal and the Marathon Petroleum plant in Detroit has made overlooking its role in the oil sands debate impossible to ignore.
The refinery was built on the Detroit River more than 70 years ago but began refining Canadian oil sand deliveries just last November.The coke waste started accumulating then. The New York Times writes that now the mound of coke towers three stories above the street, covers an entire city block, and is owned by Koch Carbon controlled by David and Charles Koch.
Petroleum coke generates up to 10% more CO2 than coal, and new permits allowing its use are no longer issued in the U.S.
Faced with hauling the stuff away and selling at a loss, Canadian mining companies have been piling it into massive man-made mountains of their own. The immense mound of coke in the pictures below were
photographed during our trip to the oil sands last year.
While coke is used widely in countries like China and Mexico where emissions are less regulated than in the U.S., it sells for 25% less than coal. That means shipping the coke from Canada only makes sense if it's pumped out in the tar-like bitumen and refined closer to where it's
eventually sold.
It makes sense then that one of the largest petroleum coke dealers in the world, delivering more than 11 million tons of fuel-grade coke every year, is Oxbow Carbon owned by David and Charles' brother,
William Koch.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/koch-br....m4fPSQB
Message edited by inbluevt - Sunday, 2013/05/19, 4:02 PM |
|
|
| |
Main 
