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
International Energy Agency admits to 12.5 million barrel per day oil supply shortage
Update: IEA Warning 12.5 MBD Supply Shortage
News Type: Event — Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:47 AM EDT
world-news, energy, peak-oil, iea, ele, energy-scarcity
Gumwars
I have retrieved the entire document translated to english by Cappella, a member of the Life After the Oil Crash blog forum. Please read it carefully as it portends significant difficulties for all of us.
"The Sirens Shrill"
The International Energy Agency (IEA) gives alarm: The world could run out of oil faster than expected - the danger of a supply shortage is rising
The Nature Conservancy: Shelling Out
As the unsavory connections between multi-national resource extraction companies and fake environmentalists become more and more obvious, individual donors will also discover the non-democratic nature of most environmental organizations and will have no other option than to vote with their pocketbooks: "As a donor there are few opportunities to direct the agency's decisions, he said.
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Save Our Soil (SOS) is a group of North Dakota people who are resisting the
Keystone pipeline by means of a ballot initiative that would let the voters
decide. More information: www.saveoursoil.net or www.saveoursoil.info.
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Change in activists' tactics poses serious threat to 2010 Games: analyst
Change in activists' tactics poses serious threat to 2010 Games: analyst
By Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - Changing tactics by Canadian activists pose a serious threat to security
at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, security analysts say.
The usually fragmented, single-issue groups are converging and organizing in ways
never seen before in Canada, said Tom Quiggan, a former security consultant with the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Where there's usually a lull in protest activity in the years leading up to
Exxon oil production struggles for growth
Exxon oil production struggles for growth
By Sheila McNulty in Houston and Carola Hoyos in London
Published: May 1 2008 14:55 | Last updated: May 1 2008 23:09
ExxonMobil, long regarded by its peers and investors as the most
successful interational oil company, is beginning to show signs of
weakness, revealing on Thursday that it is struggling to increase oil
production and to squeeze profit out of its refining business.
The world's biggest energy group announced a first-quarter record
profit of $10.9bn but its oil production fell almost 10 per cent in
Uncomfortable truths about global oil depletion
Uncomfortable truths about global oil depletion
By David Strahan
Telegraph UK
Polishing the portholes on the Titanic hardly does it justice. This week saw ministers giving an uncanny impersonation of Corporal Jones urging calm over the Grangemouth refinery strike; lorry drivers protesting in Park Lane over a two pence rise in fuel duty; and much righteous indignation over the level of profits reported by Shell and BP. All of which entirely misses the point.
Tar sands suck dollars from cleaner oil and gas
Oilsands suck dollars from cleaner oil and gas
Dave Yager, For The Calgary Herald
Published: Sunday, May 04, 2008
There's a giant sucking noise emanating from northeast Alberta that gets louder as oil prices rise.
Called the Athabasca Tar Sands, its rapid development is draining imagination from the Stelmach government, flexibility from labour markets and diversification from Alberta's economy. It has also sucked Edmonton into a hopeless global environmental confrontation.
Fund managers attack BP over tar sands plan
From The Times
April 18, 2008
Fund managers attack BP over tar sands plan
Robin Pagnamenta
A group of American and British shareholders in BP joined forces yesterday to protest over the oil company's decision to start extracting oil from Canadian tar sands.
Eleven fund managers, which together manage total assets worth more than $10 billion (£5 billion), said that BP's move into tar sands last year was “deeply disappointing” and represented a “disturbing step backwards” for the company.
Canada caught on its own tar baby. Tar sand investments now a dead duck?
May 1st, 2008
Canada caught on its own tar baby. Tar sand investments now a dead duck?
Posted by Harry Fuller @ 3:41 am
As one Canadian newspaper put it. Ducks in Alberta died a crude death. One of the species of ducks that died on a pond filled with crude oil polluted water: Bufflehead.
Duck Deaths Confirm First Nations' Fears
Duck Deaths Confirm First Nations' Fears
Fort Chipewyan, May 2, 2008 -- Only one day after the 500 ducks were found dead in the tailings pond at Syncrude Canada in the Alberta tar sands, a local Mikisew Cree hunter killed a duck that was totally covered in oil. Community leaders have no doubt that the duck was a victim of the toxic tailings ponds near Fort McMurray, 300 kilometres south of Fort Chipewyan. The oil-drenched duck will be released to the Canadian Wildlife Service for further investigation.
