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
Peak Oil And Dunbar's Number
Peak Oil And Dunbar's Number
By Peter Goodchild
29 December, 2007 // Countercurrents.org
Alta. road dubbed Death Highway
Alta. road dubbed Death Highway
Jim Farrell, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, December 28, 2007
EDMONTON -- Lucille Cloutier says her brother would still be alive if the road to Fort McMurray, Alta. had been twinned in the past year.
"Last year they only put one construction crew on to work on 240 kilometres of road," said Cloutier, whose 41-year-old brother Guy was killed Nov. 8 while trying to avoid an out-of-control vehicle. "If they had put 10 road crews on the job, it would be twinned by now and my brother would still be alive."
Canadian National acquires tar sands rail line
Canadian National acquires oil sands rail line
Canadian National Railway (CN) has acquired the Athabasca Northern Railway in Alberta for $25.3 million and plans to invest as much as $136 million to upgrade the rail link to the oil sands region of Northern Alberta. Athabasca Northern, which runs from Boyle, Alberta, to near Fort McMurray, Alberta, had been owned by Cando Contracting, but Reuters reports it was threatened with abandonment because of deteriorating tracks.
What the Tar Sands Need
What the Tar Sands Need
Processing requires massive inputs of water, energy, land, labour
December 31, 2007
by Dru Oja Jay
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Water
For each barrel of oil produced from the tar sands, between two and 4.5 barrels of water is needed. The water is used in the process of extracting bitumen from the naturally occurring the tar sand. The bitumen is later "upgraded" into synthetic crude oil.
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
December 28, 2007
Greenwashing Energy Crops
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
By JIM GOODMAN
After The Techno-Fix
After The Techno-Fix
by Peter Goodchild
Countercurrents.org (December 22 2007)
"Even when grappling with the idea of economic disintegration, Americans
attempt to cast it in terms of technological or economic progress:
eco-villages, sustainable development, energy efficiency and so on.
Under the circumstances, such compulsive techno-optimism seems
maladaptive." -- Dmitry Orlov, "Our Village"
The path beyond petroleum begins by considering five principles: that
alternative sources of energy are insufficient; that hydrocarbons,
Alberta's Averted Energy Tradesworker General Strike and the Fall Wildcat Walk-Outs
November 22, 2007
Letting the Wildcat Out of the Bag
Alberta's Averted Energy Tradesworker General Strike and the Fall Wildcat Walk-Outs
by Stuart Neatby
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Temporary Labour or Disposable Workers?
Temporary Labour or Disposable Workers?
Foreign labourers are brought to the tar sands, but are easily sent home
by Tim Murphy
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
"So you believe in the free market?"
"Well, it's not so much that I believe in the free market, it's that I demand logical consistency out of those who demand the free market," answers Jason Foster, director of Policy Analysis for the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL).
Aboriginal title at risk in British Columbia
Aboriginal title at risk in British Columbia
Ann Rogers
Freedom Socialist Newspaper, Vol. 28, No. 6 December 2007 — January, 2008
Almost all of British Columbia in Canada is unceded indigenous territory. Its land and resources have not been given up by treaty, but occupied and stolen. In recent decades, a growing sovereignty movement, especially among young people, has offered fierce resistance to the continued theft and corporate development that threatens Native peoples’ means of survival and existence as nations.
Albian to try and push production to physics limitations
Translation, in short: Royal Dutch Shell (Albian Sands) plans to expand as much as the physics allows and beyond that which (current) labour markets have room for. This all well-timed to move along lock step with the expansion of Temporary Foreign Worker programs, and in tandem with the reduction in labour and environmental standards being "phased in" under the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement" [Tilma]. These plans are to create new vast mines, expand the upgraders, blow the Muskeg River Mine into the stratosphere and much, much more.
