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 Cancels Tar Sands Upgrader
Shell ditches oilsands project
Energy giant cancels $30B upgrader plan
By Dan Healing, Calgary Herald
October 9, 2010
Shell Canada has withdrawn its regulatory application to build a 400,000-barrel-per-day oilsands upgrader, a four-phase project estimated by analysts to have a price tag of around $30 billion.
Fired Suncor blogger speaking out
Fired Oilsands blogger speaking out
Trish Kozicka, Global News: Sunday, October 10, 2010
Mike Thomas believes he was fired from his job as an apprentice electrician with Aecon Lockerbie & Hole - a company under contract to Suncor - because he blogged about what he describes as inhumane, unhealthy and unsanitary conditions at Suncor's Mackenzie and Voyageur camps on the Firebag 3 project north of Fort McMurray.
Suncor worker says he was fired over blog
Oilsands worker says he was fired over blog
by Conal Pierse, Postmedia News //
Vancouver Sun
October 10, 2010
EDMONTON — As Mike Thomas sat on his front porch last week waiting to go to the airport and fly up to northern Alberta for work, his employer called him and said not to bother. He’d been fired for what he claims was blogging about camp conditions.
The apprentice electrician wrote two blog posts about the Suncor McKenzie and Voyager camps on the Firebag 3 project north of Fort McMurray, Alta., detailing what he said were unsanitary and inhumane conditions.
Fort Mac Wants You to Live There
Alberta's oilsands city wants workers to live in, not just cash in
By: Bob Weber, The Canadian Press
Posted: 11/10/2010
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - Four years ago, Fort McMurray was a byword for boomtown.
Many saw it as a "lawless frontier town overrun by transient workers with too much money and too few community linkages," Mayor Melissa Blake said recently.
Enbridge Investors Pipelines Feed Fossil Fuel Addictions
Enbridge Investors Pipelines Feed Fossil Fuel Addictions
October 5th, 2010
Written by Cameron Fenton and Maryam Adrangi
As Enbridge holds its investors meeting in Toronto’s financial district, Environmental Justice Toronto sent them a message about their dirty investments in fossil fuels. Grassroots organizers sent up a banner attached to helium balloons that read “Enbridge Invests in Oil Addiction.” The banner was visible through the glass front of the building, outside of which activists held up another banner that read “Community Resistance is the Cure.”
Vancouver targeted as Tar Sands shipping port
Vancouver targeted as Tar Sands shipping port
by Rod Marining
Common Ground
October 2010
According to Statistics Canada, in 2007, without any public process, Canada and China began shipping Tar Sands crude oil through Vancouver Harbour. Currently, two oil tankers per week carry up to 700,000 barrels of crude oil through Burrard Inlet and the dangerous Second Narrows, past our beaches and parks and into Georgia Strait. The oil companies have plans to expand this capacity to 10 tankers per week.
It can’t happen here
NASA Scientist Urges Canada Not To Touch Tar Sands
NASA Scientist Urges Canada Not To Touch Oil Sands
October 6, 2010
AHN News Staff
Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada (AHN) - Another nail was driven into Alberta’s oil sands industry on Tuesday after a top NASA scientist advised the province to leave the tar fields alone. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies gave the advice to a panel reviewing the proposed Total E&P $9-billion plan to build the Joslyn North Mine.
Alberta will act if panel finds tar sands monitoring 'unacceptable': Renner
Alberta will act if panel finds oilsands monitoring 'unacceptable': Renner
Province appoints six scientists to independently assess water-monitoring data
By Karen Kleiss, edmontonjournal.com October 8, 2010
EDMONTON — Alberta's environment minister says the province is prepared to act if scientists reviewing monitoring programs find "unacceptable" environmental impacts in the oilsands region.
North America's risky race to exploit bitumen, oil shales
North America's risky race to exploit oil sands and shales
* Keith Schneider for Yale Environment 360
* guardian.co.uk,
1 October 2010
Yale Environment 360: Energy companies are rushing to exploit new sources of oil in Canada and the western US - but government officials don't seem concerned about the environmental consequences
The most direct path to America's newest big oil and gas fields is U.S. Highway 12, two lanes of blacktop that unfold from Grays Harbor in Washington State and head east across the top of the country to Detroit.
Tar Sands Player Suncor In Wind Deal
Tar Sands Player Suncor In Wind Deal
by Pete Danko, October 1st, 2010
Suncor actually made one of its Alberta critics smile. The company, a big player in the province’s controversial tar sands industry, accomplished that feat by announcing a partnership with Teck Resources on an 88-megawatt (MW) wind farm about 80 miles east of Calgary.
