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
Shell Oil and the Institutions Greenwashing them feel the ‘Heat’
[from: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/388120.html]
It hasn’t been an easy week for the organisers of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award and the Bristol Museum, or their sponsor and proud wildlife destroyer— sugardaddy Shell Oil Company. All week, concerned individuals from around Bristol have been exposing the truth about Shell and the public institutions who are helping to greenwash them. $%@* SHELL!
Tories, Liberals hack each other, sell carbon credits and sacrifice planet
Ottawa too partisan on emissions
Dec 17, 2007 04:30 AM
Ian Urquhart
Under the proposed federal emissions trading program, tar sands developers will be eligible for up to $700 million in "carbon credits" – even as they increase their greenhouse gas emissions.
Meanwhile, Ontario will get nothing for closing its coal-fired plants, thereby eliminating about half of the province's greenhouse gas emissions.
Utah: BLM identifies oil shale-rich areas it would consider leasing
Land has energy promise
BLM identifies oil shale-rich areas it would consider leasing
By Steven Oberbeck
The Salt Lake Tribune
12/22/2007 02:42:48 AM MST
Entrepreneurs who dream of reaping huge profits from Utah's extensive oil shale and tar sands deposits now have reason to hope that the opportunity to commercially develop those resources is a bit closer.
WHAT?? "'Over the top' pipeline could work for Alaska and Canada"
This idea (and I use that term loosely) has been pushed for a long time, and is a disaster on so many levels. This was explicitly spelled out by Tom Berger himself 'back in the day' as a truly horrible idea. It is also illegal in Alaskan state law. The idea has not improved with age.
--M
'Over the top' pipeline could work for Alaska and Canada
COMPASS: Points of view from the community
By MICHAEL KENNY
Published: December 20th, 2007 06:44 AM
RAMPANT DEVELOPMENT RAISES RESIDENTS' CONCERN ABOUT THE FUTURE IN THE HEARTLAND
Samantha Power / samantha@vueweekly.com
http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=7708
Calculating the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air is not something
many Edmontonians think to do. But Maureen and Dennis Chichak make
sure they check it at their home on a daily basis.
The Chichak home is located just outside of Fort Saskatchewan, in the
330 square kilometres known as the Industrial Heartland, and with
their neighbours having grown over three decades to include Shell,
Agrium and Dow, they’re regularly exposed to sulfur dioxide, benzene
[Yukon] Peel Plateau to be sacrficed for Mackenzie Gas Project?
This region is one of the most spectacular, beautiful and nearly pristine regions I have ever seen in my life. Near the one gas pump and lodge on the 10 hour drive of the Dempster Highway called Eagle Plains, this place is one where the planet itself made me feel so tiny and insignificant, like an insect, a surreal experience that I have no parallel for. Now they want to plunder it for gas, gas they want to put into the Mackenzie Gas Project and send to Fort McMurray to make mock oil from tar and the devastation of more land than can be comprehended.
Shall we let them?
--M
Fargo, North Dakota Approves Keystone Pipeline
Fargo mayor says he had hoped for pipeline support from other cities
Andrea Domaskin, The Forum
Published Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Mayor Dennis Walaker says Fargo didn’t get much help from other cities when it protested an oil pipeline that would run near Lake Ashtabula and the Sheyenne River.
“I don’t want this thing to blow out of proportion by any stretch of the imagination,” Walaker said today. “I was hoping we would get more support, but we didn’t.”
Fargo city commissioners approved a settlement Monday with TransCanada Keystone Pipeline.
Mackenzie partners see Ottawa aid
Mackenzie partners see Ottawa aid
But No Financial Pledge
Jon Harding, Financial Post Published: Wednesday, December 19, 2007
CALGARY - Partners in the Mackenzie Gas Project have asked Ottawa to treat their stalled megaproject like Newfoundland's Hibernia project or the Syncrude Canada Ltd. oilsands mine in Alberta, both of which got federal support.
Fidel Castro Responds to the Bali Talks
Fidel’s message to the Roundtable
Havana, December 17, 2007
Dear Randy:
I listened to the entire “Roundtable” program on Thursday the 13th without missing a single second of it. The news about the Bali Conference highlighted by Rogelio Polanco, editor-in-chief of Juventud Rebelde, confirms the importance of the international agreements and why they must be taken very seriously.
Feds to streamline entirely new Mackenzie Gas Project
Prentice pledges speedy review of new gas project plan
Last Updated: Monday, December 17, 2007 | 2:18 PM CT
CBC News
Federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice has promised proponents of the beleaguered Mackenzie gas project he will review their latest financial plan as quickly as possible.
Prentice met with representatives of Imperial Oil, its parent ExxonMobil, Shell Canada, ConocoPhillips and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, composed of the Inuvialuit, the Gwich'in and the Sahtu First Nations in Calgary on Friday.
