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This was Section 526, a single paragraph in an 822-page bill: “No federal agency shall enter into a contract for procurement of an alternative or synthetic fuel, including a fuel produced from nonconventional petroleum sources, for any mobility-related use, other than for research or testing, unless the contract specifies that the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and combustion of the fuel supplied under the contract must, on an ongoing basis, be less than or equal to such emissions from the equivalent conventional fuel produced from conventional petroleum sources.”
Conventional petroleum sources = Saudia Arabia, Iran, Venezuela.
Half the oil coming into Chicago originates in those oil sands. That’s expected to rise to somewhere between 70 and 80 percent in the next few years. The British Petroleum refinery in Whiting refines 435,000 barrels of oil a day, of which 30 percent is from the oil sands. BP is spending between $3 and $5 billion to upgrade the refinery so that in time 90 percent of the oil refined there can be from Alberta. (Here’s a link to an earlier story of mine that mentions this project, with the numbers that were being used then.)
