Explain Why Oil Exploration in the Areas Shown Could Lead to High Economic and Environmental Costs

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Explain why oil exploration in the areas shown could lead to high economic and environmental costs (10) Oil exploration is the extraction of petroleum from reservoirs underground and using the substance to benefit people. For example using it for transport and industry. However continuous exploitation can lead to costs, which can be both economic and environmental. Figure 1 shows that Canada is a location that is currently exploiting oil, 170 billion barrels per year. With Canada being second to Saudi Arabia to have the largest stores of oil in the country, it can provide large amounts of oil without the need to dig large mines to get to it. The oil is on the surface mixed in with the soil, this means the oil is easy to access. This mixture is called oil sands, which contains sand, water and clay. Mixture is a very viscous form of oil called bitumen. Although this discovery provides many jobs for the locals and even for migrants and also the oil sells for a lot of money, with the company Fort Mckay, earning $500 million a year. The project does come with a few costs and disadvantages. A major cost for the environment is the polluting of Lake Athabasca. With the fish being poisoned and appearing with strange marks and swells on them making them uneatable. However researchers are not completely sure what is polluting the lake but they say they need find out soon so the fish can be saved and the lake can be salvaged. Vast amounts of wilderness has been ripped up from the soil to make room for this large project to take place, this has affected the once natural Greenfield site and disrupted the biodiversity of the land. People living in the area say that is looks like ‘mother nature has been raped’. An economic effect includes the amount of money that has to be spent on infrastructure of the project and also the clean up process after the job has been done.

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