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In six months time, Detroit, Michigan has gained an ugly, dirty black mountain that is a city block long and three stories high — much to the city’s surprise. Windsor, Ontario is none too happy about it, either, since the mess lines the riverbank and mars the view from their side of the river. The mountain is made up of petcoke, described by researcher Lorne Stockman as “the dirtiest residue from the dirtiest oil on earth.”

Where did the residue come from? That would be Canadian tar sands. Last November, a riverside refinery owned by Marathon Petroleum began refining the oil from Canadian imports of tar sands bitumen. The initial step in the refinery process extracts the oil but leaves behind the waste byproduct known as petroleum coke, or petcoke. Petcoke is like coal, but even dirtier than the low-grade stuff. When burned, it’s too high in carbon emissions to be used in the U.S., so the byproduct is sold and distributed as fuel to other countries that aren’t so particular about air quality, like China and Mexico.

Who buys and distributes it? That would be the notorious Charles and David Koch and their company, Koch Carbon. Dirty energy is a family affair. A third brother, William, is the CEO of the Oxbow Corporation, a company which describes itself as “the largest distributor of petroleum coke in the world.”

No one knows just how big an environmental problem the presence of piled-up petcoke poses. It certainly hasn’t been counted as part of the impact of tar sands because it’s a byproduct of oil production, rather than the end product.

However, he states that, as a fuel, petcoke releases an average of 53.6 percent more carbon dioxide than coal. Fifteen to 30 percent of tar sands bitumen ends up as petcoke. Because it is priced much lower than coal, other countries are eager to buy it. U.S. refineries will be eager to produce it, and U.S. communities will become the storehouse.

Canada already has its own stockpile of 79.8 million tons of the stuff. According to the New York Times story:

“Some is dumped in open-pit oil sands mines and tailing ponds in Alberta. Much is just piled up there.”

That’s the new American landscape we can look forward to unless the communities at risk wake up to the dangers. Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario are searching for solutions to the phenomenon together.

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