Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Social Impacts

Social Impacts. Overnight injections of migrant workers will not build healthy communities and can have severely adverse impacts on existing communities, especially those of indigenous nations on their traditional lands. Such development brings vices and long term displacement too often. Drugs, alcohol and associated violence spreads. Hunting becomes difficult when the land is threatened, leading to a further loss of culture and tradition. In towns like Fort McMurray there is no planning for the future, but merely consumption in the present. However transient the individuals may be, the populations will not leave, as “development” takes on a logic all its own. All levels of run away development are subordinate to that development, not social need.

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Exxon's Legal Guardians

Souter's Shameful Decision
Exxon's Legal Guardians
By SHARON SMITH

Big Oil poised to make triumphant return to Iraq

"Anyone who thinks the invasion of Iraq accomplished nothing probably isn't sitting inside the boardrooms of some of the most powerful companies on Earth."

Toronto Star July 5, 2008 // Linda McQuaig
Big Oil poised to make triumphant return to Iraq
Small service contracts announced last week are a step toward major development deals

Lake Athabasca north shore busy with mining

Lake Athabasca north shore busy with mining
By Don Jaque 25.JUN.08
Slave River Journal

Red Rock Energy is one of at least seven exploration companies actively drilling for uranium on the north shore of Lake Athabasca in the Uranium City vicinity.

Fort St. John "won't be another Ft McMurray"

Fri, July 4, 2008
Fort St. John ready to handle oil and gas boom
By LAUREN KRUGEL, THE CANADIAN PRESS

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C., -- Whose motto is "The Energetic City" -- will be able to avoid many of challenges that have become synonymous with the oilsands boomtown of Fort McMurray, Alta., said the city's mayor.

Two enormous natural gas finds in northeastern B.C. -- the Montney Trend and the Horn River Basin -- have piqued the interest of a number of big U.S. and Canadian oil and gas names and sent a massive amount of investment pouring into the region.

Peak Oil: IEA Inches Toward the Pessimists’ Camp

July 1, 2008, 2:56 pm
Peak Oil: IEA Inches Toward the Pessimists’ Camp
Posted by Keith Johnson

What’s up with oil prices? Well, it’s not speculators, and there’s no relief in sight, meaning at least five more years of high prices with no easy fixes. The ugly truth? Peak oil isn’t fringe anymore—it’s going mainstream.

That’s the reading from the latest oil market report from the International Energy Agency, the rich-country energy watchdog. The IEA’s latest x-ray of the oil market includes plenty of disturbing nuggets.

Indigenous people ask G8 for climate talk inclusion

Indigenous people ask G8 for climate talk inclusion
Fri Jul 4, 2008 10:53am EDT
By Yoko Kubota

SAPPORO, Japan (Reuters) - Indigenous communities from around the world urged G8 rich nations on Friday to help them participate in global climate change talks, saying they contributed least to but are most affected by global warming.

Clad in colorful traditional robes, 26 representatives from countries including the United States, Canada, and Japan, along with some 400 students, activists, and academics, met on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido.

Compensation for Ge Genbao & Lui Hongliang, TFW's killed at CNRL Last Year

Despite what they write below, CLAC is not a "union", but an anti-union bosses association of workers. Nonetheless, this article is the first time that the two killed Temporary foreign workers names have been released to my knowledge. Their widows had recently made it known that only 12 percent of their husbands wages have ever reached them, long after their deaths at the hands of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd's speed ups in construction. Take the following "labour" press release with a major grain of salt.

--M

Widow of worker killed in Alberta finally gets compensation

Mackenzie Pipeline or Pipe Dream?

This seems to be good news, but the underlying keys here are: Rising costs, costs due to the rising price of crude; these rises are directly linked to the *drive* to construct the pipelines that are ultimately needed for the continued growth of the Athabasca Tar Sands region. Two, as indicated, part of the reasoning against the MGP is the region of BC's Northeast corner perhaps containing vast reserves previously unknown.

Workers are suddenly leaving Alberta, heading to Atlantic Canada, but will it last?

Workers are suddenly leaving Alberta, heading to Atlantic Canada, but will it last?
By James Foster
Times & Transcript Staff // Saturday July 5th, 2008

A new report shows an exodus of people from Alberta and an influx into Atlantic Canada, the reverse of a long-standing trend that has troubled New Brunswick for a decade.

Many Maritimers are heading home from Alberta as they find that the quality of life in the Atlantic region and Metro Moncton is top notch. Here some Metro Moncton residents enjoy the water feature in front of Moncton City Hall.

Issues - New ERCB directive on toxic tailings is a huge step in the wrong direction

RICARDO ACUÑA / ualberta.ca/parkland

The Alberta Government, along with their friends in the oil industry, have recently embarked on a major campaign to educate Canadians and Americans about the fact that extraction of oil from Northern Alberta’s bituminous sands is actually an environmentally friendly and ecologically sound process.