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 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

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

[–] GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 points 17 hours ago

Re: ceramic - that makes sense.