Economics drive tar sands operations. Record highs in oil prices, though still fluctuating, will make tar sand oil ‘economical’ (read: profitable) well into the future. Government subsidies to this environmentally disastrous process remain in place from a time when the federal government was sponsoring research into the possibility of recovering this oil. Stock prices of tar sands developers grow the more conventional oil is scarce.
Suncor gets go ahead to ramp up Firebag In-Situ plant production
CALGARY, Jul 23, 2008 (Canada NewsWire via COMTEX) ----Suncor Energy Inc. reports that, effective July 22, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) has removed production constraints imposed on Suncor's Firebag in-situ oil sands operations.
Alaska House OKs gas pipeline license for TransCanada Corp.
11 hours ago
JUNEAU, Alaska — The Alaska State House of Representatives has approved a state license for a Canadian company to pursue a natural gas pipeline project that could unlock 130 million cubic metres of North Slope gas reserves daily.
The House backed the plan on a 24-16 vote Tuesday. A reconsideration vote is planned Wednesday, but that's usually a formality. If approved then, the bill will go to the state Senate, which must approve or reject it before Aug. 2.
Issues - 2 + 2 = 5
Why Alberta’s $4 billion greenwash doesn’t add up to much of anything
RICARDO ACUÑA / ualberta.ca/parkland
It seems lately that the role of government in Alberta has become more and more about image and spin than about actually doing anything concrete and positive in the public interest. The attitude seems to be that it doesn’t really matter if you are actually doing anything positive, as long as you can convince people that you are.
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
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.
Enbridge delays Gulf Coast pipeline
Company blames lagging output in oil sands as it pushes back project to 2014
NORVAL SCOTT AND SHAWN MCCARTHY
July 10, 2008
CALGARY, OTTAWA -- Enbridge Inc. is pushing back plans to build a $2.6-billion pipeline that would connect the oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, blaming the delay on the slow pace of development in Alberta.
Stupid oilsands schemes
Oilpatch welfare smacks of Don Getty years
By NEIL WAUGH, EDMONTON SUN
Tue, July 15, 2008
Premier Ed Stelmach was spreading the good news last week in hopes of deflecting any bad news he might get later this week when he meets his provincial counterparts in Quebec City.
"We need to spread the word," the premier told oil industry execs a day after unleashing $2 billion in oilpatch welfare, which had haunting echoes of the pump-priming Don Getty years.
"Our province is a reliable supplier of abundant energy produced in a responsible manner."
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
