Tar Sands 101
The Tar Sands "Gigaproject" is the largest industrial project in human history and likely also the most destructive. The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is slated to become the single largest industrial contributor in North America to Climate Change.
The tar sands are already slated to be the cause of up to the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet behind the Amazon Rainforest Basin. Currently approved projects will see 3 million barrels of tar sands mock crude produced daily by 2018; for each barrel of oil up to as high as five barrels of water are used.
Human health in many communities has seriously taken a turn for the worse with many causes alleged to be from tar sands production. Tar sands production has led to many serious social issues throughout Alberta, from housing crises to the vast expansion of temporary foreign worker programs that racialize and exploit so-called non-citizens. Infrastructure from pipelines to refineries to super tanker oil traffic on the seas crosses the continent in all directions to allthree major oceans and the Gulf of Mexico.
The mock oil produced primarily is consumed in the United States and helps to subsidize continued wars of aggression against other oil producing nations such as Iraq, Venezuela and Iran.
To understand the tar sands in more depth, continue to our Tar Sands 101 reading list
Norway Buys Into Tar Sands
It is going to be incredibly illustrative how Canadian elites treat this-- if it gets a mention in more than stating-the-facts ways such as this announcement below. Silence would be every bit as loud. A major, non-private oil corporation for a 'foreign' country (that is, not the United States or Canada) has purchased Calgary based North American Oil Sands. Will the same level of fear mongering that accompanied Chinese investments be unleashed, along with a 'white peril' thinly veiled reference to base reactions towards Norway?
I seriously doubt it.
--M
Ali Samsam Bakhtiari and Peak Oil
Published on 24 Apr 2007 by Energy Bulletin / Whiskey & Gunpowder. Archived on 25 Apr 2007.
Ali Samsam Bakhtiari and Peak Oil
http://www.energybulletin.net/29162.html
by Byron King
I HAVE RECEIVED more correspondence from Ali Samsam Bakhtiari of Tehran, Iran. I want to bring Dr. Bakhtiari's important work to the attention of the readers of Whiskey & Gunpowder.
Tar Sands Completely Untouched by "Green Plan"
When we are able to chart where the tar sands are going, and by adding up the component plans that are already announced we can, the sheer size and scope makes ignoring them or allowing -- as the article says-- for "business as usual" a complete, total surrender to being decimated by climate change. Mr Harper has already had private meetings with the US Dep't of Energy and Natural Resources Canada, along with the oil executives.
Sunoco Gives More to Democrats now than Republicans
The tactic being assumed by all the major players in the tarsands as of late is to pretend to love the earth too, but just that they have a different idea of what it will take to save the atmosphere and, well, life. This is right up the alley of the Democratic Party, who have a long history of pretending to care about green causes while assassinating all legislative and participatory attempts to make them back it up.
Nor is it at all surprising that Sunoco would be involved today. The story of Sunoco in tarsands?
Husky CEO Promises to Pass on 'Greening Costs' of Tar Sands to Customers
Public to pay for green policy: Lau
Husky CEO blunt about passing on government-mandated higher costs
Jon Harding, Financial Post
April 20, 2007
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3ba6045c-...
CALGARY - John Lau, president and chief executive of Husky Energy Inc., fired off a warning yesterday to Alberta and Canadian legislators circling the oilsands: Consumers, not oil companies, will bear the brunt of government policies that add costs to the massive energy developments.
Stelmach wants Audience with Gore, Big Oil-- not "Consultations".
Alberta premier to 'drop by and listen' to Al Gore
April 23, 2007 | 5:01 PM MT
CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/04/23/oil-speech.html
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach hopes to speak with climate change activist Al Gore at a sold-out lecture in Calgary Monday night.
Gore, the former U.S. vice-president who won an Academy Award for his climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, has openly criticized the oil patch and the world's reliance on non-renewable, carbon-based fuels.
Two "Temporary Foreign Workers" Dead, Four Injured in Tar Sands Accident
Two dead, four injured in roof collapse at job site north of Fort McMurray
http://www.oilweek.com/news.asp?ID=8643
FORT MCKAY, Alta. (CP) _ Two workers were killed and four others injured Tuesday when a roof collapsed at a Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. job site north of Fort McMurray.
The company said in a news release that the 2:30 p.m. accident involved a roof support structure at the tank erection site of the Horizon Oil Sands Project.
“All authorities have been notified of this incident,‘‘ the company said in a news release.
BLM Now Subservient to Energy: Former BLM official
Ex-official slams BLM's energy plans
By BOBBY MAGILL The Daily Sentinel
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/04/23/4_23_1a_B...
Monday, April 23, 2007
DENVER — When Ann Morgan was serving as Colorado state director of the Bureau of Land Management between 1997 and 2002, she saw firsthand, she said, how President George W. Bush’s administration immediately ordered the agency to make energy development top priority on public land when Bush took office in 2001.
" Earth to Harper: Get your Head Out of the Tar Sands"
Earth Day rallies target politicians
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/206092
Apr 23, 2007 04:30 AM
Earth Day celebrations across the country yesterday turned the heat on politicians as environmentalists await the launch of a made-in-Canada global warming plan.
In Toronto, hundreds of people, carrying signs with slogans like "Earth to Harper – get your head out of the tar sands," paraded in the streets.
Consume Like There’s No Tomorrow
Consume Like There’s No Tomorrow
by Don Fitzh
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=56&ItemID=12636
April 22, 2007
Would someone please tell the Sierra Club Exec Board that the idea of an “environmentally friendly car” makes as much sense as a “non-violent death penalty?” While the vast majority of those concerned with global warming consider reduction of unneeded production to be at the core of a sane policy, the Sierra Club has endorsed a plan that includes virtually no role for conservation.
