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
"Still no interest in exploring high Arctic": official
Still no interest in exploring high Arctic: official
Last Updated: Friday, January 4, 2008 | 9:36 AM CT
CBC News
Companies have yet to take up the federal government's invitation to explore the high Arctic for oil and gas, even though that invitation has been extended for the sixth year in a row.
Richard Casey, an official with the federal Indian and Northern Affairs Department, told CBC News that there has been no interest from any company to explore for oil and gas around Axel Heiberg Island, located west of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, or in any surrounding areas.
TransCanada wins bid to build natural gas pipeline out of Alaska
TransCanada wins bid to build natural gas pipeline out of Alaska
January 4, 2008 - 18:57
By: Jeannette Lee, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. (TSX:TRP) has beat out four competitors in a bid to build a natural gas pipeline out of Alaska that would supply energy to millions of consumers throughout North America, state officials announced Friday.
Liberal Opposition Criticize Alberta Inaction on Fort Chip Health
Liberal Opposition Criticize Alberta Inaction on Fort Chip Health
By LEA STORRY, SRJ Editor 17.DEC.07
Alberta Health and Wellness is not saying anything new in terms of a controversial report to come out of Fort Chipewyan. But the Alberta Liberal caucus thinks the Conservatives need to take a look at what they’re doing to the province.
“The government is not doing due diligence in Fort Chipewyan,” stated Laurie Blakeman, MLA Edmonton-Centre and Liberal shadow minister for health and wellness. “The government tests the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong people.”
"Hear no peak"-- Letter to the Financial Times
Hear no peak
by David Strahan
Letter to the Financial Times
Sir:
Just as the Financial Times’ news coverage of oil was beginning to improve (“Oil watchdog reworks reserves forecasts”, 27.12.07), Lex goes and spoils it with a truly shoddy analysis: “Peak no evil” (03.01.08) rehearsed all the old myths that have been comprehensively debunked in recent years.
Utah: Tar Sands, Oil Shale best left in the ground
Price too high: Weigh all costs of energy from oil shale, tar sands
Salt Lake Tribune Editorial // 01/01/2008 02:13:04 PM MST
It's obvious the Bush administration wants to go on record with the energy industry as having done everything it could to encourage development of oil deposits in the West, even those embedded in tar sands and shale, no matter the cost to the region's wild lands.
Fuelling Disaster: Beyond Alberta’s Culture of Resource Dependence
Fuelling Disaster: Beyond Alberta’s Culture of Resource Dependence
by Gordon Laird, Parkland Institute Editorialist Alberta
Court ruling means Alberta's recreational drug users risk their jobs
Sobering thoughts
Court ruling means Alberta's recreational drug users risk their jobs
By MINDY JACOBS // Fri, January 4, 2008
Casual pot smokers in Alberta who want to work in safety-sensitive positions had better pack up and move to Ontario. They're no longer welcome in the oilpatch.
A ruling by the Alberta Court of Appeal gives the green light to companies to fire -- or refuse to hire -- recreational pot users if they pose a potential safety risk.
AFL: Government foreign worker office long overdue - but still misses the point
Government foreign worker office long overdue - but still misses the point
Labour cautiously optimistic over government's foreign worker advocates
EDMONTON, Dec. 10 /CNW/ - The Alberta Federation of Labour reacted with
guarded optimism to the Government's new measures announced today to protect
temporary foreign workers.
The two special advisory offices for temporary foreign workers are a
welcome - if long overdue - measure," says AFL President Gil McGowan. "The AFL
had set up its own temporary foreign workers' advocate office last spring as a
Sex workers cashing in on Alberta's oil boom
Sex workers cashing in on Alberta's oil boom
Last Updated: Monday, April 16, 2007 | 3:30 AM MT
CBC News
Alberta's red-hot economy appears to be fuelling a flourishing sex trade as prostitutes follow men to the oil and gas fields.
And they're making big money when they get there, the sex-trade workers say.
"Truckers are big business and they're on the road for long stretches of time and they want to have adult entertainment," says Chastity, one of the strippers frequently seen working the bars in small boomtowns such as High Level, Alta.
$100 oil puts a new shine on Alberta
$100 oil puts a new shine on Alberta
Record prices will fuel the world's interest in the oil sands, even as extraction costs soar
DAVID PARKINSON // January 3, 2008
Deepening nervousness over long-term global energy supplies will put Canada's rich oil sands even more in the global energy spotlight, economists said yesterday as crude touched $100 (U.S.) a barrel for the first time.
