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
Tar Sands Expansion to reduce American dependence on OPEC oil from Venezuela and the Middle East
Chavez threatens $200 oil
U.S. attack on Iran would double prices, OPEC summit told
Shaun Polczer
CanWest News Service
Sunday, November 18, 2007
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Oil prices could more than double to $200 US a barrel if the United States attacks Iran, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez told OPEC leaders in Saudi Arabia Saturday, urging the cartel to take a more active "revolutionary" role in world affairs.
Group opposed to [Keystone] pipeline runs out of money
Group opposed to pipeline runs out of money
The Associated Press - Saturday, November 17, 2007
BISMARCK, N.D.
A group that opposes a proposed eastern North Dakota oil pipeline has run out of money for legal fees and their attorneys have abandoned the case.
Some residents along the TransCanada Keystone Pipeline and the Dakota Resource Council, a Dickinson-based environmental and landowner group, had been are preparing for hearings Nov. 27-28 at the Public Service Commission.
TransCanada's lawyers opposed letting the Dakota Resource Council lawyers withdraw.
Suncor and Syncrude and Alberta’s royalty hike
Suncor and Syncrude and Alberta’s royalty hike
SRJ Staff 07.NOV.07
Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada Ltd will be affected by Alberta’s new royalty hike, but not immediately.
“Those companies are under separate crown agreements,” said Bob McManus, assistant director, communications Alberta energy. “Suncor was negotiated in 1963 and Syncrude in 1975.”
Premier Ed Stelmach announced a new royalty regime for oil and gas on Thursday, Oct. 25. Royalties would increase by $1.4 billion in 2010, a 20-per-cent increase over currently projected revenues for that year.
Feds target medical whistleblower, Dr. O'Connor claims
Feds target medical whistleblower: doctor claims
Mike De Souza , CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, November 12, 2007
Dr. John O'Connor first suspected something was wrong a few years ago after discovering a rare form of cancer in a small northern Alberta community of 1,200 people.
He recognized the illness since it was the same one that had claimed the life of his father in Ireland more than 15 years earlier. He had never expected to see it again and was alarmed to find it in at least five different patients.
Ringing alarm of peak oil: 'Fault line of world economic history,' report warns
Fri, November 16, 2007
Ringing alarm of peak oil
'Fault line of world economic history,' report warns
By VIVIAN SONG, SUN MEDIA
World oil production may have reached its peak and will affect everything from cheap airfares, grocery lists and the auto industry, according to a new report released yesterday.
Momentum in global oil production is slowing with aging oil fields and fewer discoveries, since the world has been "seismically searched and picked over," the report from the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental think tank, claims.
"Colorado soaks up Alberta's tar sands expertise"
Colorado soaks up Alberta's oil sands expertise
NORVAL SCOTT
November 16, 2007
CALGARY -- The U.S. is looking to companies now operating in Alberta for help in unlocking its own version of the oil sands, the massive oil shale deposits that lie underground in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
The hope is that the U.S. can "learn lessons" from Alberta's oil sands experience that will stand it in good stead when it comes to developing its own complex, unconventional crude resource, said Bill Ritter, the Governor of Colorado.
Tar Sands production increases slowing down?
High costs trim forecast for oil sands production
NORVAL SCOTT
November 16, 2007
CALGARY -- Output from Alberta's oil sands will grow more slowly than was predicted last year as spiralling costs deter investment in the vast but difficult resource, Canada's national energy regulator says.
The National Energy Board forecast in a report released yesterday that by 2015 Canada's total oil output will be 4.05 million barrels of crude a day, 61 per cent greater than it was in 2005.
Challenge Corporate Power, Embrace True Democracy
Challenge Corporate Power, Embrace True Democracy
by Vandana Shiva
AlterNet (October 01 2007)
Editor's note: the following remarks were made this September at a
conference on "Confronting the Global Triple Crisis - Climate Change,
Peak Oil, Global Resource Depletion & Extinction", in Washington DC. For
more information, visit the International Forum on Globalization's website.
Before I came here I was very fortunate to join the group of scientists
and religious leaders who made a trip to the Arctic to witness the
Canadian Crude: Owning Land On A Pipeline
Canadian Crude: Owning Land On A Pipeline
TransCanada has been in business for more than 50 years, and has thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines. In 1996, the Calgary based company helped build a crude oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Wyoming.
On a picture perfect autumn day in central Montana, Gary Brewington is getting some work done around his ranch.
Montana Landowner Gary Brewington says, "We always kinda wondered about it, I guess, when they first came in here."
For Many Women, Alberta's Boom a Bust
For Many Women, Alberta's Boom a Bust
Rising housing costs, lack of alternatives lead to precarious situations
by Maya Rolbin-Ghanie
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Driven by the tar sands, Alberta's white-hot economy continues to make headlines. But the gendered repercussions of the province's boom are often neglected, understated, or altogether denied.
