The message emerges in more sober form out of final calculations that close the parallel mathematical narrative demanded by industrial and environmental professionals alike. Thermal oil sands production can be drastically changed to vent significantly less carbon dioxide-equivalent exhaust than tapping conventional liquid reserves.

As a starting point, McColl’s team accepts that extracting black gold from northern Alberta’s gritty oil sands ore currently emits about 80 kilograms of greenhouse gas per barrel. That is about double the emissions of traditional drilling and wells.

In the green bitumen scenario devised by McColl’s team, emissions gradually fall by 69 per cent to 24.5 kilograms per barrel. This is a “reference case” projection, thought to be realistic, of potential achievements. Due allowance is made for economic limitations and the time horizon is limited to about 20 years.

The CERI researchers can also conceive of Alberta doing even better if they stretch the forecast half a century into the future and are freer with economic assumptions. Eventually, Alberta could end up “creating the cleanest sources of produced crude oil on the planet,” Green Bitumen predicts.

The largest cleanup contribution is expected to come from the carbon capture and storage, or CCS program, scheduled to start this year with $2 billion in seed money from the provincial government. The scheme must include a start on building a carbon dioxide pipeline network to make an environmental difference to the oil sands, McColl says. Unlike the refineries and coal-fired power stations clustered around Edmonton, the bitumen belt is about 400 kilometers away from naturally porous geological formations needed for deep and secure greenhouse gas disposal.

Nothing will happen any time soon without the government subsidy, McColl suggests, echoing a widespread oil industry consensus. The current Canadian penalty for greenhouse gas emissions, also known as the carbon price, is rated as far too low to change business behavior. “Right now at $15 per tonne, there is no incentive,” he says. It is cheaper to pay the penalty than to install cleanup improvements.

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