Add Petcoke to Your Vocabulary
B. McPherson We can keep on truckin until the whole world falls apart. Another dirty little secret about the Alberta Tar Sands is the production of Petcoke or Petroleum Coke as a waste product of refining the bitumen. It is estimated that emissions from the use of the Tar Sands will be about 23% greater than from refining and using conventional oil. Not so fast the organization called Oil Change International says. In their report Petroleum Coke: the Coal Hiding in the TarSands they claim that this waste product which is as much as a third of a barrel for every barrel of bitumen is sold and burned, adding to the carbon dioxide burden of the atmosphere. The refineries dealing with the bitumen sell the petcoke at a discount to coal because it is a waste product and it needs to move out. Oil Change International maintains that burning petcoke is dirtier than burning coal by about 53.6% ton for ton. “ From January 2011 to September 2012, the United States exported over 8...