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.
Understanding Energy Return On Energy Investment (EROEI)
POSTED July 15, 3:47 PM
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Energy Return On Energy Investment (EROEI) is an important concept to understand and a concept that is severely lacking in our current political debate on new energy sources.
EROEI is simply defined as:
EROEI = Energy Produced / Energy Used
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy
July, 01 2008 By Jeffrey St.Clair and Joshua Frank
2010 Organizing and the Tar Sands: Inspiring the SPP and Helping the Olympics
By Macdonald Stainsby; July 14, 2008 - Znet
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18182
For much of the last year, many of the anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian forces across Canada have started to work towards converging many of the bigger issues to take place in 2010 into a larger whole.
Africa Faces Another Rising Expense: Fuel
By LYDIA POLGREEN
July 12, 2008
DAKAR, Senegal — In the United States, where the median household
income is about $48,000, $4-a-gallon gas is painful.
In Nigeria, most of whose 140 million citizens live on less than $2 a
day despite their country's status as the world's eighth largest oil
exporter, $5.50-a-gallon diesel is excruciating.
Daniel Idoko runs a small business center in Abuja, Nigeria's capital,
and because the country's electricity supply is so balky, he relies on
Forging a Politics Worthy of the Landscape
The Origins of the Western Greens
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
July 12 / 13, 2008
This essay is excerpted from Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance From the Heartland edited by Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair (AK Press, 2008).
For thirty-five years the Democratic Party has enjoyed a nearly unquestioned hegemony over environmental politics, even though the greatest gains for the Earth were made during the Nixon administration.
Bush lifts presidential ban on offshore drilling
By Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:57 PM PDT, July 14, 2008
WASHINGTON -- President Bush today lifted a long-standing presidential
ban on new oil and gas drilling off the nation's coastlines and urged
Congress to remove its own restrictions on offshore energy
exploration, stoking the battle over how Washington should respond to
high gasoline prices.
But the wall of opposition on Capitol Hill to relaxing the drilling
ban, though softening, appeared to be holding. A congressional
Oilpatch stares at boots amid record prices
Deborah Yedlin, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, July 12, 2008
With oil and natural gas trading at more than double where they were during Stampede Week last year, you'd think there would be a feeling of ebullience around town for this year's festivities.
Wrong.
For some reason, there's an unmistakably muted feeling. Sure, there are always the Stampede curmudgeons who opt to leave town or refuse to don their jeans and cowboy boots, but this year it's different.
CLIMATE CHANGE WILL HAVE MAJOR IMPACT ON FISHING INDUSTRY, SAYS UN AGENCY
New York, Jul 10 2008 11:00AM
Climate change is already impacting the world's oceans and will have serious consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on fishing for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Oil sands: Canada's dirty secret
As oil prices continue to reach record highs, the search for new sources of energy has led the world to Alberta, Canada, and its vast oil sands. Now, John Vidal finds, the country famed for its wilderness and clean living finds itself caught between fuelling the world's oil-hungry economy and the ecological devastation and soaring greenhouse gas emissions that exploiting the tar sands produces
* John Vidal, environment editor, in Fort McMurray
* guardian.co.uk,
* Friday July 11, 2008
Oil hits record near $147 as supply fears intensify
Santosh Menon, Reuters
Published: Friday, July 11, 2008
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil leapt $5 to a new record high near $147 a barrel on Friday, spurred by growing worries of threats to supplies from Iran and Nigeria and the possibility of a strike by Brazilian oil workers next week.
U.S. crude was $4.85 at $146.50 a barrel by 9:15 a.m. EDT, off highs of $146.90, taking gains in just two sessions to over $10. It rose $5.60 or 4 percent a barrel on Thursday in a late burst of buying activity.
