Economics

North America's risky race to exploit oil sands and shales
* Keith Schneider for Yale Environment 360
* guardian.co.uk,
1 October 2010

Yale Environment 360: Energy companies are rushing to exploit new sources of oil in Canada and the western US - but government officials don't seem concerned about the environmental consequences

The most direct path to America's newest big oil and gas fields is U.S. Highway 12, two lanes of blacktop that unfold from Grays Harbor in Washington State and head east across the top of the country to Detroit.

Tar Sands Player Suncor In Wind Deal

by Pete Danko, October 1st, 2010

Suncor actually made one of its Alberta critics smile. The company, a big player in the province’s controversial tar sands industry, accomplished that feat by announcing a partnership with Teck Resources on an 88-megawatt (MW) wind farm about 80 miles east of Calgary.

Utahns tar the tar sands
Denver Nicks | Oct 01, 2010 03:45 PM
High Country News

Mining of tar sands in Alberta Canada has left a landscape of razed boreal forest dotted with pools of toxic wastewater. It also produced 1.49 million barrels of crude oil last year – every day. Now, the first-ever commercial tar sands mine proposed in the United States is facing its second legal challenge from Western environmentalists.

Tribal Councils in U.S. and Canada Uniting Against Oil Sands Pipeline
By Elizabeth McGowan at SolveClimate

Thu Oct 7, 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 fifth in a series. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 here.

Canada announces oil sands water review panel members
By Stephanie Dearing.
+
Canada's Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, unveiled his picks for the six person review panel he had announced he would set up. The panel is to review all the Alberta oil sands water monitoring information.

Prentice's follow-through on his announcement to form the panel in September caught Alberta off balance, said The Tyee's Andrew Nikiforuk. The federal government of Canada has had a 'hands-off' approach when it comes to the oil sands developments.

Port will be key link in controversial Canadian oil project

By Aaron Corvin
Columbian Staff writer
October 1, 2010

Monday, the Port of Vancouver will display its ability to handle huge, odd-looking international cargo, generating revenue and fulfilling long-term economic-development objectives along the way.

Refinery emissions could pollute our water
Published On Sun Sep 12 2010

David Israelson Special to the Star

As Canadians look with dismay at the aftermath of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it turns out that’s not the only place we need to worry about leaking oil.

What happened in the Gulf has implications for what happens to water in Canada, right here on the Great Lakes. There’s ever-increasing pressure to supply the oil-thirsty U.S. with more product from Alberta’s tar sands.

Syncrude chairman in Vancouver defends tarsands

Chairman says carbon emissions have been reduced

By Damian Inwood,
The Province
September 10, 2010

Syncrude Canada chairman Marcel Coutu stood before a business-friendly Vancouver lunch crowd and fired a salvo in defence of the Alberta tarsands giant's environmental record.

NASA scientist to testify at Total oilsands hearing

The Canadian Press

Date: Sunday Sep. 19, 2010 10:15 AM ET

One of NASA's top scientists will appear at hearings into a proposed oilsands project to warn about the climate change consequences of approving Total E&P Canada's $2-billion plan to build the Joslyn North mine.

James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is slated to testify at public hearings into the proposal, which begin Tuesday in Fort McMurray, Alta.

Foundations and the Environmental Movement

September 13, 2010
An Interview With Daniel Faber

By MICHAEL BARKER