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.
Some Nebraska Landowners Won't Make Way for Keystone XL Pipeline
By Elizabeth McGowan at SolveClimate
Tue Oct 12, 2010
Editor's Note: In late September, SolveClimate News reporter Elizabeth McGowan traveled to Nebraska to find out more about the Keystone XL pipeline that TransCanada plans to build to carry crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries in Texas. This is the sixth in a series. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 here.
It goes against our nature; but the left has to start asserting its own values
The progressive attempt to appeal to self-interest has been a catastrophe. Empathy, not expediency, must drive our campaigns
o George Monbiot
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 October 2010
So here we are, forming an orderly queue at the slaughterhouse gate. The punishment of the poor for the errors of the rich, the abandonment of universalism, the dismantling of the shelter the state provides: apart from a few small protests, none of this has yet brought us out fighting.
Shell ditches oilsands project
Energy giant cancels $30B upgrader plan
By Dan Healing, Calgary Herald
October 9, 2010
Shell Canada has withdrawn its regulatory application to build a 400,000-barrel-per-day oilsands upgrader, a four-phase project estimated by analysts to have a price tag of around $30 billion.
Fired Oilsands blogger speaking out
Trish Kozicka, Global News: Sunday, October 10, 2010
Mike Thomas believes he was fired from his job as an apprentice electrician with Aecon Lockerbie & Hole - a company under contract to Suncor - because he blogged about what he describes as inhumane, unhealthy and unsanitary conditions at Suncor's Mackenzie and Voyageur camps on the Firebag 3 project north of Fort McMurray.
Oilsands worker says he was fired over blog
by Conal Pierse, Postmedia News //
Vancouver Sun
October 10, 2010
EDMONTON — As Mike Thomas sat on his front porch last week waiting to go to the airport and fly up to northern Alberta for work, his employer called him and said not to bother. He’d been fired for what he claims was blogging about camp conditions.
The apprentice electrician wrote two blog posts about the Suncor McKenzie and Voyager camps on the Firebag 3 project north of Fort McMurray, Alta., detailing what he said were unsanitary and inhumane conditions.
Alberta's oilsands city wants workers to live in, not just cash in
By: Bob Weber, The Canadian Press
Posted: 11/10/2010
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - Four years ago, Fort McMurray was a byword for boomtown.
Many saw it as a "lawless frontier town overrun by transient workers with too much money and too few community linkages," Mayor Melissa Blake said recently.
Enbridge Investors Pipelines Feed Fossil Fuel Addictions
October 5th, 2010
Written by Cameron Fenton and Maryam Adrangi
As Enbridge holds its investors meeting in Toronto’s financial district, Environmental Justice Toronto sent them a message about their dirty investments in fossil fuels. Grassroots organizers sent up a banner attached to helium balloons that read “Enbridge Invests in Oil Addiction.” The banner was visible through the glass front of the building, outside of which activists held up another banner that read “Community Resistance is the Cure.”
Vancouver targeted as Tar Sands shipping port
by Rod Marining
Common Ground
October 2010
According to Statistics Canada, in 2007, without any public process, Canada and China began shipping Tar Sands crude oil through Vancouver Harbour. Currently, two oil tankers per week carry up to 700,000 barrels of crude oil through Burrard Inlet and the dangerous Second Narrows, past our beaches and parks and into Georgia Strait. The oil companies have plans to expand this capacity to 10 tankers per week.
It can’t happen here
NASA Scientist Urges Canada Not To Touch Oil Sands
October 6, 2010
AHN News Staff
Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada (AHN) - Another nail was driven into Alberta’s oil sands industry on Tuesday after a top NASA scientist advised the province to leave the tar fields alone. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies gave the advice to a panel reviewing the proposed Total E&P $9-billion plan to build the Joslyn North Mine.
Alberta will act if panel finds oilsands monitoring 'unacceptable': Renner
Province appoints six scientists to independently assess water-monitoring data
By Karen Kleiss, edmontonjournal.com October 8, 2010
EDMONTON — Alberta's environment minister says the province is prepared to act if scientists reviewing monitoring programs find "unacceptable" environmental impacts in the oilsands region.
