You may think black gold is just gold bars painted black, but in society today there is something that is just as valuable or maybe even more so than gold — oil. According to the International Energy Agency, crude oil was the number one energy source used by countries worldwide in 1973. Oil alone made up 48.7% of worldwide energy consumption with the runner-up being coal at 13.7%. As of 2012, oil is still the primary energy type that is consumed worldwide but it has dropped to about 40.7% of worldwide energy consumption, with the runner-up being natural gas at 15.7%. It may look like total oil consumption has dropped, but in reality it hasn’t. If one looks at the amount of oil consumed between 1980 and 2013, the world has gone from using 59,929 thousand barrels a day to 90,354 barrels a day which definitely isn’t a reduction at all. Therefore oil is truly important for society, and we are running out.
Do you know why gas prices in Canada are so high? It’s because of the lack of oil we have coming in from Alberta, forcing us to import it from other countries. Because of that, and due to the law of supply and demand, we have ended up spending an atrocious amount of money on the oil we require for our cars. With the installation of a new pipeline, oil will hopefully become more inexpensive, with the possibility of the price going down to less than 100 cents a litre.
There are some pressing concerns though with the new pipeline being installed. Because the oil is located in a place where there is mostly water, if a spill were to happen it would cause massive commotion and danger to all of the surrounding environment. Picture the oil spill accident at the Gulf of Mexico. If this drilling is mishandled then there will be so much at risk. On another note, due to the extremely cold subarctic conditions up in the great white north, the chances for equipment failure are high since cold and machinery never go well together. We must hope against hope that Shell does not pull a BP and cause a similarly huge oil spill catastrophe. Billions of dollars will have be put into responding to such an incident and it will take years, even decades before the arctic ecosystem could go back to what it once was.
This is truly is a dilemma. On the one hand, oil is something that the world really needs but on the other it has the capability of causing irreparable harm to Mother Nature. It begs the question to each and every individual, is it worth it?
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