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
BP, ConocoPhillips team up on North Slope gas pipeline (Alaska Highway Pipeline)
BP, ConocoPhillips team up on North Slope gas pipeline
Last Updated: Tuesday, April 8, 2008 | 3:56 PM CT
The Canadian Press
Two of the world's largest oil companies announced plans Tuesday to jointly develop a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline to move North Slope natural gas to U.S. markets through Canada.
Britain's BP PLC and ConocoPhillips, based in Houston, said they plan to spend $600 million US in the first phase of the project over the next three years.
MSNBC: Canada is in the middle of a quiet oil boom
Canada is in the middle of a quiet oil boom
Tar sands, long too expensive to process, help make it major U.S. source
By Peter Klein
CNBC
updated 2:29 p.m. MT, Mon., April. 7, 2008
Ft. McMurray, Alberta - With oil prices hovering near a hundred dollars a barrel, there’s a major oil boom underway. It’s not happening in the sweltering heat of Texas or the dry desert of Saudi Arabia, but on the frozen Canadian tundra where oil producers are developing a new source of fossil fuel.
The coming food catastrophe
Georgia Straight April 3, 2008
The coming food catastrophe
By Gwynne Dyer
This is the new face of hunger, said Josette Sheeran, executive
director of the UNs World Food Programme, launching an appeal for an
extra $500 million so it could continue supplying food aid to 73 million
hungry people this year. People are simply being priced out of food
marketsWe have never before had a situation where aggressive rises in
food prices keep pricing our operations out of our reach.
Climate change ‘seriously underestimated’ by UN
Vancouver Sun April 3, 2008
Climate change ‘seriously underestimated’ by UN
Curbing emissions more daunting than panel reported: study
Margaret Munro
The United Nations' celebrated climate change panel has "seriously
underestimated" the challenge of curbing global CO2 emissions, say Canadian
and U.S. researchers.
Radical "decarbonization" of the global energy system is needed to stabilize
emissions -- a task that is much more daunting than the panel has led the
world to believe, the researchers report in journal Nature today.
The Peak Oil Crisis: Load shedding
The Peak Oil Crisis: Load shedding
by Tom Whipple
Fall Church News-Press (March 27 2008)
Largely unnoticed in America are the increasingly frequent electricity
shortages developing around the world.
Many of these are caused by shifting weather patterns that are leaving
hydro-electric dams with insufficient water to produce at full capacity.
While some aspects of global climate change are temporary, many, such as
the melting of glaciers, seem destined to last for decades, or perhaps
centuries, thereby depriving the world of some of the best sources of
Lubicon fight proposed TransCanada pipeline
Lubicon fight proposed TransCanada pipeline
© Indian Country Today April 04, 2008. All Rights Reserved
April 04, 2008
by: Kate Harries
TORONTO - The Lubicon Lake Indian Nation in northern Alberta is
gearing up to fight a proposed jumbo pipeline that would carry natural
gas from the Mackenzie Valley in the west to the oil sands
developments to the east.
The $983 million proposal follows a history of industrial development
across the unceded Lubicon territory that has left the 500-member Cree
nation impoverished, poisoned and disregarded by Canada and Alberta -
Oil peak theorist warns of chaos, war
Oil peak theorist warns of chaos, war
SHAWN McCARTHY
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
WASHINGTON — Matt Simmons sounds the alarm like the Cassandra of the
oil industry, warning that crude production has peaked and that
looming energy shortages could derail global growth and even spark
armed conflict.
As a prominent “peak oil” theorist, the veteran oil industry financier
paints a grim picture of a world facing resource scarcity. Still, it
doesn't take a “peak-ist” to conclude that the global oil producers
Whale risks rise in Robson Bight
Whale risks rise in Robson Bight
Times Colonist
Monday, April 07, 2008
Governments' poor performance in dealing with a truck full of diesel fuel on the bottom of Robson Bight raises concerns about proposals for more tanker traffic and offshore oil and gas development.
The federal and provincial governments have expressed support for both, although the Harper government has not lifted the offshore drilling moratorium in place since the early 1970s. Both governments promise tough environmental controls as part of any change.
Saskatchewan Tar Sands Opponents Emerge
Oilsands opponents emerge
Group seeks exploration permit freeze; Environmental assessment needed during exploration phase, society says
Cassandra Kyle, The StarPhoenix
Published: Wednesday, April 02, 2008
A Saskatchewan environmental group has asked the provincial government to freeze oilsands exploration permits until a regional environmental assessment is completed in northwest Saskatchewan.
Five years of war in Iraq have hit home in Edmonton
Iraq War
Five years of war in Iraq have hit home in Edmonton
DAVID BERRY / david@vueweekly.com
The further we get away from the actual date, the better Canada’s decision to not get involved with the US invasion of Iraq looks. Five years after the US launched its ill-conceived assault on the Middle Eastern nation, there aren’t many—except perhaps those in the highest offices of the American government—who consider the situation anything but a quagmire.
