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.
Enbridge ramps up to build
Published July 03 2009
Superior Telegram
Enbridge Energy is gearing up for construction of two pipelines designed to meet North American’s need for a reliable and secure energy supply.
The project includes construction of a 1,000-mile long, 36-inch diameter pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Superior; the line includes 326 miles to be constructed in the U.S., capable of carrying 450,000 barrels per day from the oil sands in Canada to its terminal in Superior.
Looking beyond Yellowknife
Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, July 1, 2009
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Patrick Doyle has been elected president of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce at a gloomy time for the city, and he's casting his net beyond Yellowknife.
Alberta's Conservatives well past their due-date
Published July 2, 2009 by Fast Forward Weekly reader in Letters
After Alberta Finance Minister Iris Evans’s misguided remarks about how mothers should stay home to raise young children (ignoring social and economic reality), it was hard to see how Conservative obliviousness about Albertans’ contemporary values could be made clearer. But Edmonton-Calder’s Conservative MLA Doug Elniski has topped his colleague with his repulsively sexist remarks on the web.
IEA still sees major role for Canadian oil sands
Peter O’Neil, Canwest News Europe Correspondent, Canwest News Service
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Canadian oil sands “appears to be the sector hardest hit by the recession and the sharp fall in oil prices,” the Paris-based agency said in a report assessing the impact of the economic crisis on the world’s oil and gas supplies.
PARIS -- The Canadian oil sands sector is "down but not out" in its role as a major and secure safety net in the global energy market, the International Energy Agency reported Monday.
Proposed law would allow co-operation in energy purchasing
Energy firms would be able to consult each other on project timing, to allow them to balance spending and help prevent cost overruns.
NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE
CALGARY —
Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2009
Globe and Mail.
Canada's energy giants could be allowed to consult each other on new oil sands projects, a key change that would give them greater purchasing power to help prevent cost overruns and speed construction timelines.
Book documents discarding of three decades of oilsands knowledge
By Darcy Henton, Edmonton Journal
June 29, 2009
Some might call it '32 lost years.'
When Edmontonian Larry Pratt wrote his book Tarsands in 1976, he warned Albertans about the environmental, social and economic ramifications of rapid development of the oilsands, north of Fort McMurray. Thirty-two years later, Calgarian Andrew Nikiforuk provides in shocking detail in his book, also called Tarsands, just where that frenzied development has got us.
It raises the question: Where was everybody during those three decades?
Peak Oil And World Food Supplies
By Peter Goodchild
29 June, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Only about 10 percent of the world’s land surface is arable, whereas the other 90 percent is just rock, sand, or swamp, which can never be made to produce crops, whether we use “high” or “low” technology or something in the middle. In an age with diminishing supplies of oil and other fossil fuels, this 10:90 ratio may be creating two gigantic problems that have been largely ignored.
Mackenzie pipeline timing 'uncertain'
Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Published Monday, June 29, 2009
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - When the Mackenzie Gas Project will begin producing natural gas - originally thought to be 2014 - is now "uncertain" due to regulatory delays, said Pius Rolheiser, spokesperson for Imperial Oil, adding that the project timeline will be revisited after the release of the Joint Review Panel's report.
Tribal members fight Enbridge oil pipeline
Some members from Fond du Lac and Leech Lake bands will petition Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to block the Enbridge project.
By: John Myers, Duluth News Tribune
Saying the environmental damage to their native brothers’ land in Canada is too great, tribal dissidents on two Minnesota Indian reservations are battling a major new oil pipeline across northern Minnesota.
UPDATE: Shell To Become Most CO2-Intensive Oil Co -Study
LONDON (Dow Jones)--Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) is on track to become the most carbon intensive international oil company because of its focus on unconventional oil resources like Canadian tar sands, said a study published by a coalition of environmental groups Monday.
"In the age of carbon reduction, Shell is fast heading in the opposite direction, massively increasing the carbon intensity of its production of oil and gas," the report said. "This represents a real risk for Shell, for investors and for the climate."
