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
Keystone Pipeline II?
West River Oil Pipeline Plans
In a few weeks, TransCanada will begin construction on its Keystone pipeline in eastern South Dakota.
But Monday the Candadian company was busy talking with South Dakotans on the western side of the state about a second proposed crude oil pipeline called the Keystone XL. TransCanada says the second line is in response to the high demand for oil in the United States.
"Will Canada last?"
Will Canada last?
by Murray Dobbin
June 30, 2008
What will it take persuade Canadians that if they do not act soon to reverse the course of their nation, there will be nothing left to save? I am talking, of course, about so-called "deep integration" and its official expression, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).
Greenpeace takes poke at Alberta tar sands
Greenpeace takes poke at Alberta oil sands
The Canadian Press
June 27, 2008
CALGARY -- Greenpeace is stepping up pressure on the environmental record of Alberta's oil sands with a tongue-in-cheek website that offers mock tours of the province's industrial northeast.
The site, with an address similar to the province's official tourism website, tempts travellers with black sand beaches, toxic lakes and clearcut forests.
It recommends starting the day with a "propane cannon wake-up call" and suggests a little open-pit paragliding over the vast oil sands mines.
Truth and consequences in the last days of cheap oil
By Michael Klare
Truth and consequences in the last days of cheap oil
At the hastily convened global oil summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on June 28, top officials of producing and consuming nations from around the world attempted to find a combination of solutions that would somehow extricate us from the current crisis over sky-high energy prices. These proposals ranged from increased output by major producers like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to restrictions on the activities of international oil speculators.
Tar-sands stocks will sink if oil price slides
Tar-sands stocks will sink if oil price slides
Jun 27, 2008 04:30 AM
Bill Carrigan
Proponents prefer the cleaner "oil-sands" tag and opponents prefer the dirtier "tar-sands" tag. Of course, investors older than 50 tend to use the original term, tar sands.
Lately it's difficult not to notice the growing controversy over the runaway development of Canada's tar sands and its contribution to global warming. Migratory bird deaths at a Syncrude tailings pond in April delivered another public-relations blow to tar-sands companies.
Tar Sands overview: production history, environmental destruction and human rights violations (Part I)
Macdonald Stainsby gives http://h2opodcast.com/ an overview of the tar sands, their history in development, why now, the connection to the war on terror & Iraq, trade deals, expansion of the temporary foreign worker programs in such development, violation of indigenous nations' self-determination and environmental destruction unparalleled in the world. (Part I of II)
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Tar Sands overview: production history, environmental destruction and human rights violations (Part II)
Part II of II:
Macdonald Stainsby gives http://h2opodcast.com/ an overview of the tar sands, their history in development, why now, the connection to the war on terror & Iraq, trade deals, expansion of the temporary foreign worker programs in such development, violation of indigenous nations' self-determination and environmental destruction unparalleled in the world. Part II of II.
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Pew Charitable Trusts front group advocates "responsible" development of tar sands to ensure energy security
The International Boreal Conservation Campaign is yet another front group of the Pew Charitable Trusts/Sunoco, the very same folks who brought you the original "Great Canadian Oil Sands Project" in 1967 (now Suncor). The focus in their "messaging" about ensuring energy security, perhaps for their Sunoco refineries now being converted to process dirty oil in Ohio and eventually Philadelphia, is telling indeed.
- Tarpit Pete
Talk is cheap, skeptics say of oil sands message
Tue Jun 24, 2008 7:37pm EDT
By Jeffrey Jones - Analysis
"Abuse of foreign workers unavoidable"
Abuse of foreign workers unavoidable, Alta. Tories suggest
Elise Stolte , Canwest News Service
Published: Wednesday, June 18, 2008
EDMONTON - Some abuse of foreigners working temporarily in Alberta is unavoidable because of conditions in their home countries, Alberta's minister of Employment and Immigration suggested Wednesday.
Hector Goudreau was reacting to news that as many as 120 Chinese workers were paid a fraction of what they were owed for work building tanks at a northern Alberta oilsands site.
New warning from US climate change prophet
New warning from US climate change prophet
* Andrew Revkin, Washington
June 24, 2008
TWENTY years ago yesterday, James Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, told the world that he was "99%" certain that humans were already warming the climate.
"The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now," Dr Hansen said then, referring to a string of warm years and the accumulating blanket of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other gases emitted mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests.
