Scraping the Bottom of the Oil Barrel a Significant New Climate Risk

World Wildlife Fund
29 Jul 2008
Exploitation of North America’s shale and tar-sand oil reserves could increase atmospheric CO2 levels by up to 15%, a new report from WWF-UK and the major UK financial group Co-Operative Financial Services (CFS) has warned.
Extraction of the projected 1,115 billion barrels of recoverable oil from unconventional fuel sources such as Alberta’s oil sands and Colorado’s oil shale, which involve much more energy intensive procedures for extraction than traditional oil reserves, would significantly increase global risks of dangerous climate change, the report said.
Unconventional Oil: Scraping the bottom of the barrel reported that companies including Shell, ExxonMobil and BP have announced over $CAN 125 billion worth of development in Canada’s oil sands by 2015. Increasing oil prices are also increasing interest in unconventional oil sources has been given added impetus by rising oil prices…….
Read the rest of WWF’s feature article at: http://www.panda.org/news_facts/index.cfm?uNewsID=142181.
See WWF’s photos of oil sands at: http://www.wwf.org.uk/news/oilsandspics.asp.
Watch a video by Independent Television News “Oil Sands in Canada” by Lawrence McGinty, ITN’s award-winning Science Editor, at: http://www.wwf.org.uk/core/ge_0000004661.asp.
Read WWF-UK’s report, ‘Unconventional Oil: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel‘ at:
http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/scraping_barrell.pdf.