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
Layton targets tar sands
Layton targets tar sands
GLORIA GALLOWAY
Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press
September 8, 2008
FORT SMITH, NWT — The plane carrying New Democrat Leader Jack Layton and his NDP entourage swooped over the Alberta tar sands Monday to show vast expanses of northern wilderness despoiled by development.
Ponds filled with tar and the chemicals that remain from oil extraction, forest that have criss-crossed with strips that have been cleared of trees, mines that rise out of nowhere.
An urban legend to comfort America: crash programs will solve Peak Oil
An urban legend to comfort America: crash programs will solve Peak Oil
Fabius Maximus
This is the second post in a series examining “urban legends” about energy that comfort Americans. Here we discuss the first of four comforting myths about unconventional and alternative energy sources. These are excuses for not doing the hard work of gathering information, analysis, planning, and executing programs necessary to prepare for the multi-decade transition through peak oil to the next era (whatever that will be). These four myths are:
Shell puts cork in methane-drilling plans - for now
Shell puts cork in methane-drilling plans - for now
Company agrees to speak with Tahltan about natives' concerns about impact of project on northwestern B.C.
WENDY STUECK
September 6, 2008
VANCOUVER -- Shell Canada Ltd. has temporarily shelved its plans to drill for coal-bed methane in northwestern British Columbia, delaying work for at least one more season and highlighting concerns over the potential impact of the projects in the remote wilderness area.
Will "Oil Sands" Tar Olympic Games?
Will oilsands tar Winter Games?
The Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, August 19
Canadian officials surveying the Beijing Olympics must be paying special attention to the myriad protests and criticisms -- some overdrawn and overwrought -- that have dogged China before and during the Games. If they are wise, our observers should fight the temptation to feel smugly superior.
Suncor, Encana, CNRL, Imperial, Goldcorp, Potash-- All Take Serious Market Tumbles
Canada Stocks Slump Most Since January on Oil; Suncor Drops
By John Kipphoff
Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian stocks tumbled the most in seven months, as the biggest commodity sell-off since March dragged down oil and metal producers in the Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index by almost 6 percent.
Suncor Energy Inc. dropped the most in at least 15 years, leading the biggest one-day decline in energy shares since November 2001. Goldcorp Inc. slipped to a four-week low, sending raw-materials shares to the index's steepest retreat.
The New Song of David
THE NEW SONG OF DAVID
The supreme prophet of Canada's environmental movement seems to be lowering his sights with a self-help book on how to reduce, reuse and recycle - even though 'I know we're heading straight over the cliff.' John Allemang asks David Suzuki what he's thinking.
JOHN ALLEMANG // September 6, 2008
High Costs in Tar Sands Slightly Slowing Production Advances
High costs squeeze oil sands
Break-even price jumps 31%
Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post // September 05, 2008
CALGARY -- As oil backpedalled again yesterday to a five-month low, oil sands projects are getting increasingly squeezed as soaring costs boost the break-even price.
A new report found the break-even oil price required by new mining projects in the oil sands has jumped to $85 a barrel, an increase of $20 or 31% in barely more than a year.
Using the Tar Sands to Help Georgia undermine Russia?
Warning: The author of this article is a well-known climate change denier, and advocate of wars of aggression around the planet. Nonetheless, it is interesting to read pro-war arguments for the West to use the tar sands as a weapon in their escalation of a new Cold War against Russia, which they actually claim is about "territorial integrity" and "Russian aggression". To hear advocates of the Empire (who just destroyed the "territorial integrity" of Yugoslavia and then Serbia itself? Who continues to wage war on the people of Iraq without provocation?
Utah: BLM sets environmental rules for tar sands & shale energy
BLM sets environmental rules for shale energy
Utah Republicans praise the action, but actual development of the lands likely far in the future
By Christopher Smart
The Salt Lake Tribune 09/06/2008
Utah's Uinta Basin holds a lot of oil shale and some tar sands, but what it will take to turn that potential into petroleum remains a question with no easy answers or time frame.
