Economics

Save Our Soil (SOS) is a group of North Dakota people who are resisting the
Keystone pipeline by means of a ballot initiative that would let the voters
decide. More information: www.saveoursoil.net or www.saveoursoil.info.

Exxon oil production struggles for growth
By Sheila McNulty in Houston and Carola Hoyos in London

Published: May 1 2008 14:55 | Last updated: May 1 2008 23:09

ExxonMobil, long regarded by its peers and investors as the most
successful interational oil company, is beginning to show signs of
weakness, revealing on Thursday that it is struggling to increase oil
production and to squeeze profit out of its refining business.

The world's biggest energy group announced a first-quarter record
profit of $10.9bn but its oil production fell almost 10 per cent in

Uncomfortable truths about global oil depletion
By David Strahan
Telegraph UK

Polishing the portholes on the Titanic hardly does it justice. This week saw ministers giving an uncanny impersonation of Corporal Jones urging calm over the Grangemouth refinery strike; lorry drivers protesting in Park Lane over a two pence rise in fuel duty; and much righteous indignation over the level of profits reported by Shell and BP. All of which entirely misses the point.

Oilsands suck dollars from cleaner oil and gas
Dave Yager, For The Calgary Herald
Published: Sunday, May 04, 2008

There's a giant sucking noise emanating from northeast Alberta that gets louder as oil prices rise.

Called the Athabasca Tar Sands, its rapid development is draining imagination from the Stelmach government, flexibility from labour markets and diversification from Alberta's economy. It has also sucked Edmonton into a hopeless global environmental confrontation.

From The Times
April 18, 2008
Fund managers attack BP over tar sands plan
Robin Pagnamenta

A group of American and British shareholders in BP joined forces yesterday to protest over the oil company's decision to start extracting oil from Canadian tar sands.

Eleven fund managers, which together manage total assets worth more than $10 billion (£5 billion), said that BP's move into tar sands last year was “deeply disappointing” and represented a “disturbing step backwards” for the company.

May 1st, 2008
Canada caught on its own tar baby. Tar sand investments now a dead duck?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 3:41 am

As one Canadian newspaper put it. Ducks in Alberta died a crude death. One of the species of ducks that died on a pond filled with crude oil polluted water: Bufflehead.

Bolivian president proposes radical measures to save planet
Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The hottest housing market in North America, driven by oil
By Marshall Loeb, MarketWatch
Last update: 7:38 p.m. EDT April 21, 2008

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- A boom of unprecedented dimensions is sweeping Canada's spectacularly scenic western province of Alberta, the Texas-sized territory with a population of 3 million that is home to a pair of world-class cities -- Calgary (population 1.2 million) and Edmonton (population 1.1 million).

April 22, 2008
The Political Economics of Greenwashing
Green as a Blackjack Table
By STAN COX

Hard times are looming. And in their desperation to keep the American economy afloat, government and business will be tossing overboard any proposals for real environmental protection. No time for such romantic foolishness when there are investments to be protected. Get those tax refunds back into retailers' registers, quick!

Signed, sealed, delivered
Posted: April 21, 2008 // Indian Country Today
by: Stephanie Woodard
Environmental concerns plague fast-tracked oil pipeline

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - In March 2008, the U.S. Department of State issued a federal permit for the 2,000-mile TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, which would carry heavy crude oil from the oil sands of northern Alberta across seven U.S. states to Oklahoma. The document was signed, even though mandated government-to-government consultations with concerned Native nations were described as ''ongoing'' by the State Department.