International Oil & Gas is a category for stories relating to tar sand production or climate change but not in any of the projects already listed geographically. This includes other regions of the planet with horrible environmental and high energy costs that, like the tar sands, are only a "choice" because of high prices and the global depletion of easily recoverable oil reserves. Such issues as the threat of war on Iran, "instability" in Iraq and Venezuela or disasters like Katrina will all drive up oil prices, which in turn doubly encourages tar sand production-- by price demand and energy demand.
Stock markets and global oil interests (including war) would be included here, as would attempts to get oil out of high risk, low return areas from oil shale in Colorado, to natural gas and heavy oil in the high eastern Arctic. The tar sands are part of this trend and should be seen as such. What happens with the tar sands will have a tremendous impact on what kind of choices are made elsewhere, environmentally and socially.
ALBERTA IN TIE-UP WITH OPEC
Province will get voice in energy discussions
Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post
Published: Monday, May 25, 2009
Chris Schwarz, Canwest News Service
For the first time, Alberta and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have established an official relationship. It's a new strategy with big implications, including potential investment by OPEC members in Canada's oil sands.
Should green-minded Norway invest in Canadian oil-sands?
Last week, Greenpeace failed in its bid to force Norway's StatoilHydro to abandon a $2 billion investment in a project that it says produces 10 times the greenhouse gases as North Sea drilling.
By Tom Sullivan | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
from the May 27, 2009
Stockholm, Sweden - It came as little surprise when Norway's partially state-owned oil company, StatoilHydro, rejected a shareholder motion last week to pull out of a $2 billion tar-sands venture in Alberta, Canada.
Cloudy forecast
Harper kicks up trade storm over U.S.'s ambitious low-carbon fuel rules
Alice Klein
Now Toronto May 25, 2009
It’s been a bad political week for the tar sands. Publicly, the Tories are still clinging to the cupid face they pulled on when U.S. President Barack Obama touched down in Ottawa this winter, but they’ve just pulled out the big, fat arrows and are aiming low.
As U.S. climate initiatives rev into real action, it shamefully ain’t our love that we Canucks are sending stateside.
Tar sands' climate threat, security promise both exaggerated -- report
By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD, Greenwire [NYTimes]
Published: May 22, 2009
NEW YORK -- Further development of Alberta's famous oil sands will be neither the climate disaster that activists fear nor the energy security panacea that proponents suggest it is, the Council on Foreign Relations concludes in a new report.
Oil sands crucial to energy mix: Imperial CEO
By Claudia Cattaneo, Financial PostMay 15, 2009
Canwest News Service
CALGARY -- Canada’s oil sands represent such a large part of the remaining world oil resources it’s unrealistic to exclude them from North America’s future energy mix, said the CEO of Imperial Oil Ltd.
Despite a push to stop or contain their development, Bruce March said Alberta’s deposits represent 40% of known oil resources in the world that are not under the control of national oil companies.
Shell committed to tar sands despite $42m losses
Shell vows to press on with projects amid cost cuts and falling profits
* Terry Macalister
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 April 2009
Shell has pledged to continue with its controversial tar sands projects but has been forced to consider far-reaching cost cuts to keep the operations going after they lost $42m (£28m) in the last three months.
As Calif. aims at carbon, Canada sees itself in bull's-eye
By COLIN SULLIVAN AND DEBRA KAHN, Greenwire
New York Times
Published: April 30, 2009
Canadian oil exporters fear that a low-carbon fuel standard adopted by California last week threatens to upset a thriving North American trade in petroleum if the regulation spreads throughout the United States.
Greenpeace Canada heads to Scandinavia to tackle Statoil investments in tar sands
May 12th, 2009
Apparently buying out Petro Can wasn't enough...!
--M
Suncor Posts Second Straight Loss After Oil Plunges
04/ 23/ 2009
By Gene Laverty
April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Suncor Energy Inc., the oil-sands producer that agreed last month to buy Petro-Canada, posted a second straight quarterly loss after the global recession dragged down crude prices.
Big-league players step up for oil sands
U.S. lobbying
By Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post
March 11, 2009
As Alberta's oil sands industry struggles with depressed oil prices and opposition from the environmental movement, a new front is emerging to support it -- in Washington.
