Tar Sands 101
The Tar Sands "Gigaproject" is the largest industrial project in human history and likely also the most destructive. The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is slated to become the single largest industrial contributor in North America to Climate Change.
The tar sands are already slated to be the cause of up to the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet behind the Amazon Rainforest Basin. Currently approved projects will see 3 million barrels of tar sands mock crude produced daily by 2018; for each barrel of oil up to as high as five barrels of water are used.
Human health in many communities has seriously taken a turn for the worse with many causes alleged to be from tar sands production. Tar sands production has led to many serious social issues throughout Alberta, from housing crises to the vast expansion of temporary foreign worker programs that racialize and exploit so-called non-citizens. Infrastructure from pipelines to refineries to super tanker oil traffic on the seas crosses the continent in all directions to allthree major oceans and the Gulf of Mexico.
The mock oil produced primarily is consumed in the United States and helps to subsidize continued wars of aggression against other oil producing nations such as Iraq, Venezuela and Iran.
To understand the tar sands in more depth, continue to our Tar Sands 101 reading list
Oil industry studies Harper's surprise bitumen pledge
Oil industry studies Harper's surprise bitumen pledge
Dave Cooper, edmontonjournal.com
Published: Friday, September 26, 2008
EDMONTON - The Alberta government and the oil industry are studying Prime Minister Stephen Harper's surprise election pledge this morning to place restrictions on the export of raw bitumen.
Premier Ed Stelmach is expected to respond this afternoon.
Fowl play
Oilsands: Fowl play
Andrew Nikiforuk
From the September 29, 2008 issue of Canadian Business magazine
On a late July morning, 11 members of Greenpeace did what entrepreneurial activists do best: bold ventures. Armed with bolt cutters, the green crew drove north of Fort McMurray, Alta., severed a chain lock and then broke into Syncrude Canada Ltd.’s Aurora North settling basin, now known to millions around the world as the infamous watery graveyard for 500 migrating ducks. (Locals just call the waste pond “Dead Duck Lake.”)
Resource Council withdraws from lawsuit over the TransCanada Keystone Pipeline.
Resource Council withdraws from lawsuit
Sep 24 2008 // Associated Press
Bismarck, N.D. (AP) The Dickinson-based Dakota Resource Council is withdrawing from a federal lawsuit over the TransCanada Keystone Pipeline.
DRC Board Chairman Roger Brenna says his group will keep its focus local by closely monitoring the pipeline construction.
The Natural Resources Defense Council says it will carry on the case, which challenges the U.S. State Department's environmental review of the pipeline.
Anti-Olympic efforts come to Edmonton
Anti-Olympic efforts come to Edmonton
SCOTT HARRIS / scott@vueweekly.com
September 24, 2008
While it is still 18 months before athletes competing in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games start arriving on Canada’s West Coast, last week’s closing ceremonies to wrap up the Beijing Paralympic Games signalled that the eyes of the Olympic-watching world would now fully shift focus to Canada.
Portrait of a boomtown
Portrait of a boomtown
Oil-sands projects bring big money, big headaches to remote Alberta city
By ED KEMMICK Of The Gazette Staff [Montana]
FORT McMURRAY, Alberta - On the outskirts of this town in northern Alberta, a billboard is plastered with the logos of a dozen or more trade unions. Underneath it reads: "This is what a union town looks like. Welcome to Fort McMurray."
This is also what a boom town looks like: heavy traffic everywhere, buildings going up all over town, help-wanted signs on every other marquee. Some people have taken to calling it Fort McMoney.
Montana businesses will feel economic impact from Alberta tar sands industry
Montana businesses will feel economic impact from Alberta oil-sands industry
By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff
Financial ripples from the multibillion-dollar oil-sands industry in the Canadian province of Alberta are already being felt in Montana, but few businesses will benefit from the development as directly as Berry Y&V Fabricators in Billings.
Industry minister: Canada could build gas pipeline first
Well, this article is wrong three times. A) The MGP would not negate the Alaska Pipeline. B) The MGP would not feed the lower 48 States, but instead feed production of dirty tar sands crude. C) Natural Gas is another fossil fuel and the combination of both climate change and peak oil make it impossible to see natural gas as "...the only option for a long term energy solution."
Other than that, the article is great!
--M
Industry minister: Canada could build gas pipeline first
by Ted Land
Monday, September 22, 2008
EnCana, ConocoPhillips proceed with refinery expansion
EnCana, ConocoPhillips proceed with refinery expansion
The Canadian Press
September 24, 2008 at 7:06 AM EDT
CALGARY — — EnCana Corp. [ECA-T]and partner ConocoPhillips [COP-N] said Wednesday they are starting construction this month on an expansion at the Wood River refinery in Roxana, Ill.
The coker and refinery project is expected to cost $3.6-billion (U.S.) over three years, half from each company, to increase bitumen-based production for the U.S. Midwest market.
Alberta's oil was coveted long before it was extracted
Alberta's oil was coveted long before it was extracted
Tue. September 23, 2008; Posted: 02:43 PM
Sep 21, 2008 (Billings Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- HBC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Sep. 21--Although large-scale exploitation of northern Alberta's oil sands is a relatively recent phenomenon, people have known for nearly 300 years that the region was rich in an unconventional kind of oil.
Now Is the Time to Resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine
Now Is the Time to Resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine
Published on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 by the Huffington Post
by Naomi Klein
I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...).
