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.
WoodMac: US refiners, pipelines invest in Canadian tar sands
By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, May 30 -- The projected growth of Alberta oil sands production, which has in place some 1.75 trillion bbl of resources, is triggering a wave of investments, said Wood Mackenzie Ltd., Edinburgh.
Alaska governor recommends TransCanada's pipeline bid
ANNE SUTTON
The Associated Press
May 22, 2008 at 6:39 PM EDT
JUNEAU, Alaska — — Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on Thursday recommended that state lawmakers approve a proposal from TransCanada Corp. [TRP-T] to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope to a hub in Alberta.
Total postpones oil sands project by a year or more
Shaun Polczer, Calgary Herald
Published: Wednesday, May 28, 2008
CALGARY - Total is pushing the start-up date for its Joslyn integrated oilsands mine back at least a year.
Istead of coming onstream in 2012, the project will now start producing "before 2015" Total Canada president Mike Borrell said today.
Total is seeking to be Canada's next integrated oilsands producer with an open pit mine and upgrading complex near Fort McMurray.
In addition, it owns half of the Surmont thermal project in partnership with ConocoPhillips.
Fort McMurray feels duck glare 'unfair'
Carrie Tait, Financial Post // Saturday, May 17, 2008
CALGARY - Christopher Allen Van Moorsel was crushed by a giant dump truck at an oilsands operation April 26, an accident that received a smattering of attention in Alberta. The national press ignored it.
Three days later, roughly 500 ducks died when they landed on a toxic tailings pond at another oilsands operations. International media from as far away as Turkey covered the story --for days.
Construction Nears For Keystone Pipeline
The start of construction is getting closer for an oil pipeline that could be built just 50 miles from the Hyperion project.
Officials with the Keystone crude oil pipeline say landowners with easements will be told when construction will get underway.
Sarah Metcalf of Aberdeen says land agents will make sure everyone is on the same page before they break ground and will even escort folks if they want to view the construction.
The tentative start date for the more than $5 billion project is later this summer.
Life, Liberty, Water
by Maude Barlow
As climate change and worldwide shortages loom, will people fight over water or join together to protect it? A global water justice movement is demanding a change in international law to settle once and for all the question of who controls water.
The Tar Sands, Downstream
Cancer, and the BC connection.
By Blair Redlin and Caelie Frampton
Published: May 20, 2008
When 500 ducks died earlier this month after landing on a tar sands tailings pond, Canadians got a glimpse into how unfettered tar sands development is taking its toll.
Members of the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations living downstream from the massive industrial projects have been feeling the effects for a lot longer.
Shell 'selling suicide' by preferring tar sands to wind
Terry Macalister // The Guardian // Wednesday May 21 2008
Shell was accused yesterday of "selling suicide on the forecourt" by pressing ahead with tar sands operations in Canada and continuing to flare off excess gas in Nigeria while pulling out of renewable schemes such as the London Array - the world's largest offshore wind scheme.
Time to draw a line in the oil sands
May 01, 2008 04:30 AM
Gillian McEachern
Matt Price
Ontario is on the cusp of helping oil-sands emissions explode. Shell Canada wants permits to be granted by the end of this year for a new refinery in Sarnia to process oil from its oil-sands mines in Alberta for use in gas tanks across the GTA.
The company will be submitting its environmental assessment in June, but the governments of Canada and Ontario are already being pressed to make crucial decisions about the refinery.
Alberta oil sands affecting drug habits in Newfoundland
BY PAUL HERRIDGE
The Southern Gazette (Nfld)
Sergeant Wayne Edgecombe, of the Burin Peninsula District RCMP Detachment, acknowledged cocaine use in rural Newfoundland was a rarity two decades ago.
Not anymore.
Since the oil boom in Alberta exploded a couple of years ago, and people from this province began regularly travelling back and forth on shift rotations, the situation has changed dramatically.
Cocaine has joined marijuana as the drug of choice in Newfoundland and Labrador, some might say even overtaken.
