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.
Nuclear plant plan draws fire
Environmentalists question impact on area land and water; company touts 'clean, safe, reliable' power
Jamie Hall, The Edmonton Journal; With files from the Calgary Herald
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=107a03c7-...
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
EDMONTON - Energy Alberta Corporation has chosen Peace River as the site of a proposed nuclear power plant.
Methane dispute reignites in B.C.
WENDY STUECK
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070822.RSHELL22/TPSto...
August 22, 2007
VANCOUVER -- A group of protesters, including members of the Tahltan and Iskut Indian bands, blocked a road in northwestern British Columbia yesterday, preventing Royal Dutch Shell PLC crews from heading into a contested region to do road repair work and reigniting a debate over coal bed methane exploration in the area.
When citizens are most vulnerable
http://srj.ca/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=74&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdet...
Fort Chip Doctor Still Under Scrutiny
http://srj.ca/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=74&twindow=Default&mad=No&sdet...
SRJ Staff 24.AUG.07
Pollution roadblock may derail BP refinery of oilsands crude
Oil giant unable to strip out enough ammonia from wastewater
Joe Carroll, Bloomberg News //Thursday, August 23
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/business/story.html?id=23b91b...
BP Plc hasn't found a way to reduce water pollution that threatens to scuttle a $3.8 billion Indiana refinery expansion, the second-costliest project of its kind in the U.S.
As labour shortages are going to take a short while to be dealt with through the importation of "guest workers" on top of already getting Newfoundlanders to fly in weekly while energy throughout the province is already stretched to beyond capacity, the pipeline problem is the third de facto part of an existing physics-based moratorium. With all of these shortages and the US Dep't of Energy screaming for quadrupling tar sands bitumen production, our strategy to block new pipeline construction at the least slows down the entire project.
--M
Oilsands face pipeline space shortage
Oilsands workers rally in Fort McMurray
Protesting ongoing labour dispute
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Alberta/2007/08/23/4441128.html
By CP
FORT MCMURRAY — Hundreds of workers fed up with an ongoing labour dispute in the oilsands rallied in Fort McMurray on Wednesday night.
The workers, many of them from the pipefitters and electrical workers unions, are not happy with a four-year contract offer, and say they’re disappointed in how their union leaders have negotiated.
Cocaine easier to buy than pizza
Drugs, alcohol plague transient workers living on fringes of oilpatch boom towns
Amanda Ferguson, The Edmonton Journal
Published: 2:05 am
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=cd92c68f-21d9-4...
Even when living in the remote work camps of northern Alberta, Ken was never far from his next fix.
If cocaine wasn't being used inside his camp of 3,000 oil workers in the outskirts of Fort McMurray, it lingered just outside in the pockets of the drug dealers who prowled outside the gates like predators.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20297414/
Alaska offshore drilling delayed further
Shell blocked from area off Prudhoe Bay due to lawsuit by natives,
activists
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:59 a.m. HT Aug 16, 2007
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that
Royal Dutch Shell PLC must further postpone plans for exploratory oil
drilling off the northern coast of Alaska.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also indicated that
environmental and Alaska Native groups have a good chance of
prevailing in their effort to keep the energy giant out of the
The new dirty energy
It's big, it's growing -- and it's bad for the environment. Inside the other alternative-energy movement.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/19/the_new_dirty...
By Drake Bennett | August 19, 2007
FOR THOSE WHO dream that high oil prices will help drive America toward a brave new world of clean energy, the MacKay River project in Alberta, Canada, offers a glimpse of the future.
