Environmental Concerns
As with all forms of mining, there are large amounts of hazardous tailings and waste generated from the varied processes of oil extraction and production.
Environmental concerns with heavy oils are similar to those with lighter oils. However, they provide additional concerns, such as the need to heat heavy oils to pump them out of the ground. Extraction also requires large volumes of water.
The environmental impacts of oil shale differ depending on the type of extraction; however, there are some common trends. The mining process releases carbon dioxide, in addition to other oxides and pollutants, as the shale is heated. Furthermore, there is some concern about some of the chemicals mixing with ground water (either as runoff or through seeping). There are processes either in use or under development to help mitigate some of these environmental concerns.
The conversion of coal or natural gas into oil generates large amounts of carbon dioxide in addition to all the impacts of gaining these resources to begin with. However, placing plants in key areas can reduce the effective emissions due to pumping the carbon dioxide into oil beds or coal beds to enhance the recovery of oil and methane.
Read more about this topic: Unconventional Oil
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“New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)