Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Energy

Energy and how it is captured and consumed is barely viable in tar sands production. While the amount of oil in places such as the tar sands in Alberta or the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela may have deposits of similar size to the reserves of countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iraq, the return of new energy after expending energy in production is not even close. In Iraq, the process of using one barrel of oil generates 100 new barrels. In the tar sands, estimates of 3 to 1 and even as low as 1.5 to 1 have been made. Offsetting the net energy loss would require minimally 25-30 tar sands facilities for one Saudi plant operating at the same capacity.

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Medicine at the crossroads of energy and climate change

Medicine at the crossroads of energy and climate change
by Dan Bednarz, Ph.D. and Kristin Bradford, M.D., M.P.H.
[all citations listed can be found at the url posted at the end of the article]

"Still no interest in exploring high Arctic": official

Still no interest in exploring high Arctic: official
Last Updated: Friday, January 4, 2008 | 9:36 AM CT
CBC News

Companies have yet to take up the federal government's invitation to explore the high Arctic for oil and gas, even though that invitation has been extended for the sixth year in a row.

Richard Casey, an official with the federal Indian and Northern Affairs Department, told CBC News that there has been no interest from any company to explore for oil and gas around Axel Heiberg Island, located west of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, or in any surrounding areas.

TransCanada wins bid to build natural gas pipeline out of Alaska

January 4, 2008 - 18:57

By: Jeannette Lee, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. (TSX:TRP) has beat out four competitors in a bid to build a natural gas pipeline out of Alaska that would supply energy to millions of consumers throughout North America, state officials announced Friday.

"Hear no peak"-- Letter to the Financial Times

Hear no peak
by David Strahan
Letter to the Financial Times

Sir:

Just as the Financial Times’ news coverage of oil was beginning to improve (“Oil watchdog reworks reserves forecasts”, 27.12.07), Lex goes and spoils it with a truly shoddy analysis: “Peak no evil” (03.01.08) rehearsed all the old myths that have been comprehensively debunked in recent years.

Utah: Tar Sands, Oil Shale best left in the ground

Price too high: Weigh all costs of energy from oil shale, tar sands
Salt Lake Tribune Editorial // 01/01/2008 02:13:04 PM MST

It's obvious the Bush administration wants to go on record with the energy industry as having done everything it could to encourage development of oil deposits in the West, even those embedded in tar sands and shale, no matter the cost to the region's wild lands.

Fuelling Disaster: Beyond Alberta’s Culture of Resource Dependence

by Gordon Laird, Parkland Institute Editorialist Alberta

$100 oil puts a new shine on Alberta

$100 oil puts a new shine on Alberta
Record prices will fuel the world's interest in the oil sands, even as extraction costs soar
DAVID PARKINSON // January 3, 2008

Deepening nervousness over long-term global energy supplies will put Canada's rich oil sands even more in the global energy spotlight, economists said yesterday as crude touched $100 (U.S.) a barrel for the first time.

What's new at the tar sands?

by Dave Cohen

My neighbor has a circular driveway ... he can't get out.
—Steven Wright

Oil Hits $100 a Barrel for the First Time

January 2, 2008
Oil Hits $100 a Barrel for the First Time
By JAD MOUAWAD

Oil prices reached the symbolic level of $100 a barrel for the first
time on Wednesday, a long-awaited milestone in an era of rapidly
escalating energy demand.

Crude oil futures for February delivery hit $100 on the New York
Mercantile Exchange shortly after noon New York time, before falling
back slightly. Oil prices, which had fallen to a low of $50 a barrel
at the beginning of 2007, have quadrupled since 2003.

Futures settled at $99.62, up $3.64 on the day.

Kitimat: Enbridge Revives Gateway, Looking to Super Tanker Tar Sands Bitumen to Asia

Pipeline to B.C. back on track
Asian demand for Alberta crude makes 1,300-km route to B.C. port feasible, Enbridge president says
Gordon Jaremko, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Saturday, December 29 2007

Courses are being charted for supertankers to fetch Alberta oil for Asia from a new British Columbia terminal planned for Kitimat.

Engineers are designing tunnels to put a new pipeline beneath the mountains between Edmonton and the Pacific Ocean without scarring alpine scenery or wildlife habitat.