Increased sulphur dioxide (SO2) pollution from the expanded Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA) aluminum smelter in Kitimat, B.C. will result in increased health costs for local households, an expert witness told an Environmental Appeals Board panel in Victoria, Monday.

Dr. Brian Scarfe, an economist and cost-benefit analyst from the University of Victoria, testified before the tribunal that the externalized health costs placed on residents living near the Kitimat smelter will outstrip the cost of introducing scrubbers — which remove SO2 pollution from effluent — to the RTA plant.

In 2013 the B.C. government approved RTA’s permit to increase production of the smelter. The ‘modernization’ project will limit the release of other aluminum-associated emissions including greenhouse gases, but will result in a 56 per cent increase of sulphur dioxide being pumped into the airshed.

B.C. ruled RTA was not required to install scrubbers to prevent the SO2 increase from 27 to 42 tonnes per day.

Two Kitimat elementary teachers, Emily Toews and Lis Stannus are appealing the $3.3 billion project upgrade, saying it poses an unnecessary threat to human and environmental health. Appellant Emily Toews suffers from asthma, which heightens her sensitivity to even low SO2 levels. Children and the elderly are both at higher risk to SO2 exposure.

Before the appeal panel Scarfe argued the issue comes down cost distribution.

“I don’t like to think of this as a zero sum game, but that is what we have: costs are going to fall one way or another, benefits are going to fall one way or another,” he said.

"If you have a process that is generating some form of pollution you need to consider that an impact on the environment and perhaps on human life — that’s an externality."

“We can think about households on one side and RTA on the other: clearly if nothing is done to limit SO2 there will be costs to the environment and costs to households in the area and that’s one kind of distribution," he said.

"The costs fall on one side while the other avoids costs.”

High Sulphur Content of North American Petroleum Coke a Factor

According to Scarfe, the petroleum coke or petcoke, a byproduct of refined hydrocarbons, being used in RTA’s smelting operations is very high in sulphur content.

He said the higher the sulphur content of the petcoke, “the larger the SO2 emissions will be in relation to the production capacity of the plant.”

Scarfe added the low-sulphur petcoke market has dried up in recent years and that the higher levels of sulphur present in petcoke feeds may be the outcome of increased unconventional hydrocarbon production like fracking. Petcoke is also a waste product of bitumen upgrading in the Alberta oilsands, where the sulphur content is extremely high.

“The sulphur content of petroleum being extracted in North America has gone up in number over time,” Scarfe said. The weighted average sulphur content in U.S. refineries has risen from 0.9 per cent in 1985 to 1.4 per cent in 2014.

RTA’s modernization proposal says the smelter expects to use petcoke with an average of 2.9 per cent sulphur but could be as high as 3.8 per cent.

These levels of sulphur would exceed the acceptable limits for smelters without scrubbers in foreign countries such as Iceland, Scarfe said.

“If you were looking for solutions for large amounts of sulphur dioxide one of the options would be to buy petcoke, even if more expensive, with lower sulphur content.”

He added that given a consistent supply of low-sulphur petcoke can’t be guaranteed, a safer long term solution for the Kitimat airshed would be for RTA to install scrubbers.

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After using Detroit as a toxic waste dumping ground, the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers are now piling their petroleum coke from tar sands oil refineries in Chicago.

Kiley Kroh of ThinkProgress writes that petroleum coke, or petcoke, "is building up along Chicago's Calumet River and alarming residents." The Chicago petcoke piles are owned by KCBX, an affiliate of Koch Carbon, which is a subsidiary of Koch Industries.

Petcoke is a high-carbon, high-sulfur byproduct of coking, a refining process that extracts oil from tar sands bitumen crude. The petcoke owned by Charles and David Koch is a byproduct of bitumen crude shipped to US refineries from the Alberta tar sands.

Midwest Energy News reports that "a mile and a half of the Calumet River shoreline holds big black piles," some of which rise "about five stories high." Locals say that the piles have grown recently, even as the BP Whiting refinery across the border in Indiana nears completion of a $3.8 billion upgrade to process more tar sands crude.

Detroit Mayor David Bing ordered the removal of the petcoke piles from his city in August, after protests by residents and local politicians concerned about the health and environmental impacts. Residents complained of "respiratory problems as the thick, black dust was blowing off the piles and into their apartments," reports ThinkProgress. The Detroit petcoke is being moved to Ohio.

A January 2013 report by Lorne Stockman of Oil Change International estimates that taking petcoke into consideration would raise annual Keystone XL GHG emissions "13% above the State Department's calculations" for the pipeline.

While petcoke can't be used as fuel in Canada and the US because of its high GHG emissions, the waste can be sold as a cheaper, more polluting alternative to low-grade coal in countries with looser environmental and health regulations. There is high demand for petcoke in countries like Mexico, China and India, where its emissions further exacerbate the effects of tar sands production on climate change.

The waste piles accumulating in the U.S. Midwest are only the beginning, should Keystone XL be approved. As this infographic from Oil Change International shows, if the pipeline is built, "the tar sands oil flowing through it would result in massive amounts of this dirty byproduct."

Credit: Oilchange International

Stockman's report calculates that diluted bitumen delivered to the US via Keystone XL would produce about 15,000 tons of petcoke a day, all waiting to be exported as dirty fuel in piles like the ones plaguing Detroit and Chicago.

Petcoke produces 10 to 15 per cent more CO2 than coal, bringing its additional emissions to "50,000 tons of CO2 every day or over 18.3 million tons (16.6 million metric tons) of CO2 a year."

"The Petcoke piles in Chicago are another symptom of Obama's flawed "All of the Above" energy strategy. It's time we actually made choices about the kind of energy we want rather than taking anything we can get," Stockman told DeSmog Canada.

Chicago can choose to follow Detroit's lead, fighting back against the Koch brothers' dumping of petcoke. But the fact remains that petcoke is a growing environmental threat directly related to tar sands production and expansion, and remains a dangerously overlooked threat when considering the full consequences of the Keystone XL pipeline.

President Obama would be wise to sit up and take notice of the petcoke piles already threatening health in US cities when weighing whether to approve the pipeline. 

Image Credit: Josh Mogerman / Flickr

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The misconception with 'west-to-east' pipeline proposals like Enbridge’s Line 9 or TransCanada’s Energy East is shipping western Canadian oil to eastern Canada means ‘Canadian oil for Canadian refineries.’ This assumption overlooks the fact eastern Canadian refineries cannot refine a certain type of Canadian oil – tar sands bitumen.

Bitumen is the heavy unconventional oil found in the Alberta tar sands (also called oil sands). Only a specialized refinery can process bitumen and turn it into refined products such as fuels. Few refineries in Canada can do it. None of the refineries in eastern Canada can refine large quantities of bitumen.

TransCanada and Enbridge claim their west-to-east pipelines will transport mainly conventional oil and only small amounts of bitumen. This is unlikely to be true in the long term as conventional sources of oil dry up in Canada and bitumen production continues to increase.

If no eastern Canadian refinery makes the massive investment to outfit their operation to refine bitumen, Line 9 and Energy East are destined to ensure more bitumen will flow to markets overseas, not Canadian refineries.

“Building more tar sands pipelines will lock Canada into a highly polluting carbon-based economy for decades,” says Adam Scott, a climate and energy program coordinator for Environmental Defence Canada based in Toronto.

“We cannot support any pipeline that furthers the ongoing reckless and unchecked expansion of the tar sands,” Scott told DeSmog Canada.

TransCanada's proposed Energy East pipeline route

Refineries Require an Expensive Coker Unit to Refine Bitumen

Bitumen is not the black liquid that many people think of when they think of oil. It is low-grade oil with the consistency of peanut butter and riddled with impurities.

Bitumen is high in carbon and low in hydrogen. High quality oils such as light sweet conventional crude oil are just the opposite. Much of the carbon in bitumen needs to be stripped in order to convert bitumen into refined products that can be sold.

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Refineries usually require a coker unit to remove the carbon from bitumen. To remove the carbon, bitumen is heated in large steel coke drums at higher temperatures (480 degree Celsius) and for longer periods of time than typical conventional oil refinery is capable of. Hydrogen is added afterwards to make bitumen more like a liquid-fuel.

Suncor’s Montreal Refinery May Refine Bitumen if Line 9 is Approved

A few refineries in Alberta and one in Ontario have coker units. A massive investment $2 billion is required to install a coker. None of the three eastern Canadian refineries – Suncor, Valero, and Irving – have publicly announced their intentions to make this investment.

“Suncor is the most likely to install a coker because the company has tar sands projects in Alberta. Irving and Valero do not,” says Lorne Stockman, research director at Oil Change International (OCI) in the US.

“There is plenty of lighter, easier to refine oil coming out of new sources such as Bakken oil shale in the US. Irving and Valero will probably to stick to processing lighter oils for the time being,” Stockman told DeSmog Canada.

Neither Valero nor Irving appears interested in buying a coker at the moment. Irving, which has equipment to process small amounts bitumen, is investing in a $300 million marine terminal in Saint John, New Brunswick to export oil from the proposed Energy East pipeline. Valero announced earlier this year oil from Texas will be sent to its Quebec City refinery.

“Suncor may make more of a profit supplying its Montreal refinery with bitumen than by selling bitumen to its competitors,” says Stockman. 

There is speculation Suncor will announce its plans to construct a coker unit at its Montreal refinery after the National Energy Board (NEB) – Canada’s independent energy regulator – makes its decision on Line 9. The NEB decision on Line 9 could come as early as January 2014.

The US Has the Most Capacity to Refine Bitumen in the World

The probable destination of Energy East's or Line 9's bitumen is a refinery somewhere in the US, although some bitumen refining capacity does exist in Europe as well as China.

In the US, 59 of the 134 refineries are equipped with coker units. Approximately 30% of the US's bitumen refining capacity is in the nine Gulf of Mexico refineries TransCanada seeks to supply through its controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Sea-faring oil tankers traveling from Saint John, Quebec City or Montreal could also access these refineries.

Pet coke: the Coal Hidden in the Tar Sands

A major problem with refining bitumen is it has a rather nasty byproduct called petroleum coke or ‘pet coke’. Pet coke contains most of the heavy metals, sulphur and other impurities removed from bitumen during the coking process. Approximately 15% of a barrel of bitumen will become pet coke.

The research and clean energy advocacy group Oil Change International describes pet coke as “the coal hiding in the tar sands” because it has emerged as an inexpensive alternative to coal since the bitumen boom in Alberta began ten years ago.

“Pet coke is providing coal-fired power plants with a cheaper and dirtier source of fuel. It is breathing new life into the industry, which is cause for concern as the world desperately tries to reduce its carbon emissions output,” says Stockman of OCI.

The majority of pet coke produced in North America is sold to Asia and Latin America where regulations on sulphur releases from coal-fire power plants are lax. Pet coke produces 5-10% more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than coal per unit of energy.

In Canada, pet coke is largely being stockpiled in Alberta. There are some exports of Canadian pet coke to Asia via ports near Prince Rupert, British Columbia.

Last August, the mayor of Detroit ordered the removal of pet coke piles sitting uncovered along the Detroit River. The piles were three-storeys tall. Dust particles containing the toxic heavy metals in pet coke were blowing off the piles and into the air and river.

The pet coke piles were from Marathon's refinery in Detroit. The refinery began refining bitumen in November 2012.

Oxbow Corporation is one of the largest sellers of pet coke in the world. The company is owned by William Koch, brother of the infamous pro-fossil fuels billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Image Credit: Northern Rockies Rising Tide, TransCanada, Enbridge, Oil Change International.

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It seems Koch Carbon, who own the mound of petroleum coke waste piling up on the side of the Detroit River, need to look no further than Canada to sell their high-polluting industrial waste as fuel. Of course, the irony here is that the petcoke is itself a byproduct of imported Canadian tar sands crude being refined in a Marathon Petroleum plant down the river.

Ian Austen writes in the New York Times, that a "Canadian electrical power plant, owned by Nova Scotia Power…is burning the high-carbon, high-sulfur waste product because it is cheaper than natural gas."  

Residents have reported "regular visits to the coke pile by two self-unloading, oceangoing bulk carriers owned by Canada Steamship Lines of Montreal." Canada Steamship Lines (CSL) is owned by former Prime Minister Paul Martin's sons, Paul Jr., David and James.

Tracking websites confirmed that one of the CSL ships, Atlantic Huron, "made several trips this year from Detroit to a coal terminal in Sydney, Nova Scotia" which services two petcoke-burning Nova Scotia Power plants.

Austen quotes Neeta Ritcey, spokeswoman for Nova Scotia Power, as confirming that the company bought fuel from the Detroit stockpile for "competitive reasons."

North American petcoke is often sold to countries like China, India and Mexico, where emissions regulations are relatively lax. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not allow the burning of petcoke in the US.

While Nova Scotia Power does burn cleaner fuel like natural gas from offshore fields, Austen notes that "the company produced 59 percent of its power from coal and petroleum coke [in 2012], an increase of two percentage points from 2011."

In a blog post, Wayne O'Connor, Nova Scotia Power's executive vice president for operations said that because of rising natural gas prices, "the switch to coal help save our customers money over continuing to use gas, while still allowing us to meet emissions requirements." His phrasing lumps petcoke in with coal, and fails to mention that the former is even more polluting.

A report by Lorne Stockman for environmental group Oil Change International found that a "ton of petcoke yields on average 53.6 percent more CO2 than a ton of coal." Stockman also notes that petcoke emissions are "not included in most assessments of the climate impact of tar sands or conventional oil production and consumption."

This means that petcoke isn't taken into account when assessing the impact of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Should the Obama administration approve Keystone XL, the increased imports of tar sands bitumen crude into US refineries will only replicate the Detroit stockpile in various locations around the country. And with fresh petcoke waste waiting to be sold and shipped by industrialists like the Koch brothers and the Martin family, this carbon-rich, dirty fuel could end up right back in coal-fired power plants all over Canada.

In the meanwhile, even without Keystone XL boosting petcoke production, the Detroit pile shows no signs of disappearing. As Austen observes, despite the petcoke being shipped away regularly, "the oil sands bitumen refinery there is producing the material at a rate which means the waterfront pile continues to grow."

Image Credit: Suncor Energy / Flickr

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A black mound of solid waste is piling up in Detroit, making visualizing the environmental impact of the Canadian tar sands boom a little easier for everyone.

The waste, which is carbon-rich petroleum coke, is a direct result of the Albertan tar sands. Ian Austen writes in the New York Times, that the "three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block on the…side of the Detroit River" is the "long overlooked byproduct of Canada's oil sands boom."

The coke is waste from a refinery down the river, owned by Marathon Petroleum, which started processing exported Canadian oil from the tar sands as recently as November. The plant refines 28,000 barrels of bitumen crude a day from the tar sands. Already, the results are showing. But even this mountain of what is essentially sulphur and carbon-infused industrial refuse is less a concern than another way to make money for some. The petroleum coke is bought and owned by Koch Carbon.

Koch Carbon is run by brothers Charles and David Koch, industrialists who back "activist groups that challenge the science behind climate change." Their company sells the coke as cheap fuel, usually overseas, where it releases more pollution into the atmosphere.

Petroleum coke, or petcoke, is a byproduct of coking, a refining process that releases oil from thick bitumen crude from the tar sands. Canada reportedly has 78.9 million tons stockpiled, some "dumped in open-pit oil sands mines and tailing ponds in Alberta." As the Detroit stockpile demonstrates, the petcoke travels further afield as well.

Austen observes that "Detroit's pile will not be the only one," since the Harper government is putting all its support behind expanding the tar sands oil industry via exports to the US. Part of this push is its championing of the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline.

If Keystone XL is approved by the Obama administration, even more petcoke will be produced by refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, which will receive diluted bitumen straight from the tar sands via the pipeline. These refineries will probably ship it to Mexico and China as fuel. There is also a high demand for petcoke in India, where it's used as fuel for cement-making kilns. Petcoke is used as an alternative to low-grade coal.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not allow the burning of petcoke in the US.

Austen quotes Tony McCallum, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), as insisting that most Canadian oil exports to the US Gulf Coast will "replace declining heavy oil imports from Mexico and Venezuela that produces the same amount of petcoke, so it doesn't create a new issue."

A study on petcoke by Lorne Stockman for environmental group Oil Change International reports that "a ton of petcoke yields on average 53.6 percent more CO2 than a ton of coal."

Stockman also mentions that the "proven tar sands reserves of Canada will yield roughly 5 billion tons of petcoke — enough to fully fuel 111 U.S. coal plants to 2050." This will boost the coal-fired power industry while also making it cheaper and more polluting. Emissions from petcoke byproducts have been excluded from the US State Department's emissions estimates for Keystone XL. Taking petcoke into account, Stockman notes, would raise annual Keystone XL emissions "13% above the State Department's calculations."

Because petcoke is in high demand in other countries as well, this excess waste will also help raise CO2 emissions globally. The Detroit stockpile is one more reminder that Canada's plans for the tar sands are looking more short-sighted by the day.

Image Credit: Oil Change International report Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands

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Thanks to Alberta's tar sands, coal-powered energy production just got cheaper, and dirtier.

That is largely due to an often overlooked byproduct of bitumen upgrading: petroleum coke. The byproduct, commonly referred to as petcoke, is derived from the excess heavy hydrocarbons necessarily processed out of bitumen in the production of lighter liquid fuels like gasoline and diesel. The leftover condensed byproduct, petcoke, bears a striking resemblance to coal, and is being integrated into coal power plants across the US and internationally, contributing a tremendous amount of carbon emissions to the tar sands price tag that has been previously unaccounted for.

That is, until the research group Oil Change International released a research report that calculates the use of petcoke in American energy generation increases the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline's emissions by a staggering 13 percent. 

The report, Petroleum Coke: The Coal Hiding in the Tar Sands, suggests that while groups like the European Commission use specific inputs to determine a 'well-to-wheels' analysis of tar sands emissions – which figures the unconventional fuel emits emissions 23 percent greater than conventional crude – such calculations do not account for petcoke and so only tell a portion of the story.

"Petcoke," states the Oil Change website, "has even higher carbon emissions than already carbon-intensive coal, emitting between 5 to 10 percent more CO2 than coal per unit of energy produced. A ton of petcoke yields on average 53.6 percent more CO2 than a ton of coal."

What is worse, as a byproduct petcoke is sold at a "to move" price, pushing the dirty fuel source into the market at a 25 percent discount to coal. Because petcoke undercuts the price of coal so significantly, the coal industry has begun to incorporate petcoke into its power generation.

"At the end of 2011 nearly 80 million tons (72.3 million metric tons of petcoke was stockpiled in Alberta. The stockpile is growing at the rate of about 4 million tons (4.4 million metric tons) a year." Image located on page 20 of the report.

"Indeed industry analysts have shown that a typical 1 gigawatt coal plant can save around $120 million per year in fuel costs by blending petcoke with coal in their boilers. That sounds to us like a boon for coal-fired generators and a bad deal for cleaner fuels competing with coal in a tight market."

The Petcoke Craze

The report's introductory blog post by Lorne Stockman highlights some significant statistics on the relationship between tar sands production and petcoke. 

• There is 24 percent more CO2 embedded in a barrel of tar sands bitumen than in a barrel of light oil.

• 15 to 30 percent of a barrel of tar sands bitumen can end up as petcoke depending on the upgrading and refining process used.

• Of 134 operating U.S. refineries in 2012, 59 are equipped to produce petcoke.

• U.S. refineries produced over 61.5 million tons of petcoke in 2011 – enough to fuel 50 average U.S. coal plants each year.

• In 2011, over 60 percent of U.S petcoke production was exported.

"Petcoke in the tar sands is turning American refineries into coal factories."

"Keystone XL refineries are among the biggest petcoke factories in the world," is the caption to this image, figure 3, found on page 17 of the report.

The Keystone XL refineries have a petcoke production capacity of 50,375 tons per day. 

Because of this, the "Keystone XL will fuel five coal plants and thus emit 13 percent more CO2 that the U.S. State Departmet has previously considered." The five coal plants would produce "16.6 million metric tons of CO2 each year."

 The "PetKoch" Connection

Oxbow Corporation, owned by lesser-known Koch brother William Koch (sibling of oil and gas magnates Charles and David Koch), is the largest petcoke trader in the world. The corporation is one of the largest donors to Republican Super PACs, with political contributions tallying at $4.25 million. 

The company also spent $1.3 million on lobbyists in 2012 alone.

Oxbow ships "11 million tons of petcoke annually around the world primarily from the Gulf Coast to Asian, Latin American and European markets."

The report states that "Oxbow's biggest facility and primary laboratory and testing facility are located in Port Arthur, Texas, where the Keystone XL pipeline would terminate and where some of the biggest petcoke producing refineries in the world are located."

Industry's Downplay

Last week, TransCanada, the company currently building the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, announced the pipeline's construction was proceeding smoothly and without delay. This despite a prominent and ongoing protest along the route, with future sit-ins scheduled for Washington DC. 

"We factor things like that into our planning," Shawn Howard, a spokesman for the company told Reuters. "We've got a pipeline route that's hundreds of miles long so if there are activities that take place on one property, our crews still have plenty of work to do."

According to The Washington Post, the oil industry was quick to dismiss the findings of Oil Change International's report. 

TransCanada said the report contained "nothing new" and was merely "the latest attempt by professional activists who opposed Keystone XL to change the discussion." 

A statement issued by the company read, “Let’s be frank: this is not about the Keystone XL Pipeline, diluted bitumen, emissions or a substance that is in a particular blend of oil. It’s about a group that wants to end the use of fossil fuels entirely.”

Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, one of the most power oil and gas lobby groups in the U.S., had this to say: “It once again boils down to a political decision by the White House: will they follow what’s in the best interest of the country, or will they follow other political pressures?”

“It clearly is in the national interest, and that’s the only decision the president needs to make,” Gerard told The Washington Post, adding he saw carbon emissions as one of the “tangential issues to the conversation.”

The Keystone Conundrum

The Keystone XL pipeline will introduce a consistent stream of tar sands bitumen into the United States. The bitumen boom is creating a petcoke boom that is "an insidious aspect of tar sands production that is, until now, undocumented."

The report adds, "to date, petcoke has been hidden in most discussions about the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) intensity of the tar sands." That, crucially, includes discussions surrounding the Keystone XL.

If the pipeline is approved, "around 15,000 tons of petcoke per day will be produced from the bitumen in the dilbit it will deliver…That is over 50,000 tons of CO2 every day or over 18.3 million tons (16.6 metric tons) of CO2 a year."

The reality of the rise of petcoke means that the tar sands are significantly worse for the environment than previously thought. And the growing dependence on petcoke-generated energy will only increase that carbon-burden for the forseeable future.

At the very least, these are not numbers we can afford to ignore any longer.

"With more than 300 billion barrels of recoverable tar sands bitumen still in the ground in Alberta and hundreds of billions of barrels of extra-heavy and heavy oils in reserves around the world, it is time we understood the full impact of exploiting these low quality, high impact hydrocarbons."

The report traces the rise of petcoke energy and emissions through investments that have "transformed North America into the petcoke production center of the world." Pg 18.

The Consumption Quandary

Petcoke use, in comparison to coal-generated energy production, is small at this stage, although the overall effect of discounted petcoke in the energy market is unknown at this point. 

A number of negative consequences of increased petcoke consumption are likely, however, such as the lengthened life-span of coal-fired power power plants enabled by a steady stream of cheap petcoke. This in turn will assist in the continued suppression of large-scale investments in cleaner sources of energy in the U.S. and internationally. 

While an in-depth consequential life-cycle analysis of tar sands production may enable us to make more precise estimations of the greenhouse gas impact of opening up this vast resource, it seems clear the impact is subject to the basic laws of economics. More supply lowers prices, increases demand and competes with cleaner alternatives that are fighting to achieve the economics of scale. 

 

in addition, we must not forget that even if petcoke did replace coal consumption one-to-one and did not represent an increase in coal demand, which seems unlikely, its emissions are five to ten percent higher on a unit of energy basis. Petcoke is making coal-fired power generation more carbon intensive and cheaper at exactly the time that we urgently need low carbon solutions to energy production. 

The report concludes:

considering tar sands emissions in their entirety must surely lead to the conclusion that we cannot possibly exploit all the recoverable tar sands bitumen. this in turn should highlight the urgent need for society to grapple with one of the most crucial and challenging questions of our time: Which fossil fuels should we leave in the ground and how do we manage the process? 

Be sure to take a look through the entire report, which is thorough, informative and full of interesting visuals, graphs and images that bring this formerly obscure subject to light.

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