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
Alberta Federation of Labour: "...tell the oil companies: Enough is enough"
Money for Fort McMurray welcome, but pace of oil sands development is still the "elephant in the room"
Stelmach needs to find courage to tell oil companies: enough is enough
EDMONTON, Feb. 26/2007
CNW/ - New funding announced today to address growth pressures in Fort McMurray is welcome but is yet another example of the Alberta government treating the symptoms and ignoring the root causes of the disease, says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.
Fort Chip Nations Quit Government "Oilsands Watchdog Group"
First Nation pulls out of oilsands watchdog group
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 6, 2007 | 10:46 AM MT
CBC News
The largest First Nations community in the Fort McMurray area has walked away from an organization set up to protect the environment from too much oilsands development.
Government and industry are not taking protection of the environment seriously, said Sherwin Sheh, who speaks for the Mikisew Cree of Fort Chipewyan.
The First Nation is following the lead of the Athabasca Chipewyan and pulling out of the Cumulative Environmental Management Association.
Ted Stevens Trying to Streamline Alaska Highway Pipeline
This pipeline will also, along with the Mackenzie Gas Project, be used at least in large part to feed the energy needs of the tarsands in Alberta. To state that since the energy would be consumed in the US means it really isn't shipping out American gas to non-American sources would be a direct admission of the irrational yet oil-dependant need to go after the tarsands, would it not?
That could go bad in a lot of ways. Let's just talk about something else, like sending the gas to the lower 48. We could believe them.
But that ignores the bidders public, "investor read here" plans:
Will an American Surge Win the War for Oil?
Will an American Surge Win the War for Oil?
by Macdonald Stainsby
March 25, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=102&ItemID=12415
Coping with social breakdown in Fort McMurray
The social impacts of massive, out of control development in Fort McMurray is costing dearly on the issues of health, particularly for new parents and children, with both inadequate housing and a society with few community driven aspects but a severe amount of alcohol and drug abuse, combined with attendant violence. Even the desperate tone of the situation described in this glossy government pamphlet from Food for Two shows the dire situation for services and basic life conditions. It is set to escalate in a manner absolutely out of control, literally.
from
Deh Cho wary of tar sands, demand action
N.W.T. fears toll from oilsands development
http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/Local%20News/295973.html
By RENATO GANDIA
staff// Fort McMurray Today
Friday March 23, 2007
Destruction of the Mackenzie River watershed, hundreds of dead adults and sick babies in the Deh Cho First Nation. That’s the scenario a Northwest Territories chief is predicting if oilsands development is not slowed.
Grand Chief Herb Norwegian wants immediate action from the Alberta and N.W.T. governments to protect the quality and quantity of water that flows downstream from the oilsands.
Wanna do coke while working for big oil? Buy fake pee...
FAKE PEE BIG ITEM IN OILSANDS CAMPS
For the first few weeks, the products only dribbled out the door. But as word filtered through town and out to the work camps, success of the phony pee business suddenly became surreal. From a land where the rush is on for synthetic oil comes a push for a processed product of a different kind: synthetic urine. Just three months after selling his first bag of fake pee from Herbal Essentials, store owner Kelly Hermansen is moving between 35 and 50 units a week, along with other drugmasking products.
CEP asks Court to overturn Keystone Pipeline Decision
The only thing that is not understood for public consumption is that Enbridge and Trans Canada are not really in competition. These pipe plans, when taken into account along side the recent US nudge to the Federal Government of Canada to heighten production by five times, are not competing but rather complementary with the other pipelines being proposed to move heavy bitumen. This is an indicator of the sheer size of these plans, the scope of the tarsands and what we must do to really effect stopping them.
Sex, Drugs and Alcohol Stalk the Streets of Fort McMurray
Sex, Drugs and Alcohol Stalk the Streets of Fort McMurray
Calgary Herald October 22, 2005
Deborah Tetley; With files by Paul Haavardsrud
It's just after 7 p.m. on payday Thursday and downtown Fort McMurray is a gong show.
Inside the storied Diggers bar, dozens of oilsands workers are poised like bingo dobbers over beers, waiting for their name to be bellowed over the PA system so they can cash their paycheques.
At a going rate of $2 on every hundred, it's the best deal in town, outside of $3.50 highballs.
The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil: Crude Alliance
March 9 / 11, 2007
The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil
Crude Alliance
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Counterpunch
Soon after John Kerry had sewed up the delegates needed to seize the Democratic nomination for president in the spring of 2004, he huddled for two hours with James Hoffa, Jr., the noxious boss of the Teamsters union. The topic was oil. The Teamsters wanted more of it at cheaper prices. They had suspicions about Kerry. After all, the senator had already won the backing of the Sierra Club, who touted him as the most environmentally enlightened member of the US senate.
