Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Alberta (& Saskatchewan) Tar Sands

The process of removing the tar from the sand involves incredible amounts of energy from clean-burning natural gas (with nuclear proposed along side), tremendous capital costs during build up, incredibly high petroleum prices to protect investments, and the largest single industrial contribution to climate change in North America. Production also involves the waste of fresh water from nearby lakes, rivers and aquifers that have already created toxic tailing ponds visible from outer space. None of the land strip mined has yet to be certified as reclaimed. It takes 4 tonnes of soil to produce one barrel of oil. The tar sands are producing over 1.2 million barrels of oil a day on average. The oil companies, Canada and the United States governments are proposing to escalate production to 5 million barrels, almost all destined for American markets-- and lower environmental standards while doing so. They also would need to violate the national and human rights of many indigenous nations who are rightly concerned about many dire social, environmental and economic repercussions on their communities.

To get the needed energy supplies, diluent for the bitumen and diverted freshwater to produce and then to transport the flowing heavy bitumen for refining would require massive new infrastructure and pipeline building from three different time zones in the Arctic, across British Columbia and through Alberta in a criss-cross pattern, into pipelines to such destinations as California, China, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ontario, Illinois, Wisconsin and Texas. This entire project is now estimated at over $170 billion dollars. And after the whole process described so far, only then will all this dirty petroleum get burned and expel greenhouse gasses into the air causing further climate change.

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Alberta Tar Sands is a category limited to the location and production of tar sand bitumen, an area the size of the state of Florida in northern Alberta province. The giant processing plants near Fort McMurray where the land itself is strip mined as well as the primarily "in situ" in-ground steam separation/production and extraction plants in the Peace and Cold Lake Regions, all in Alberta, are the "Ground Zero" of the single largest industrial gigaproject ever proposed in human history. The process of removing the tar from the sand involves incredible amounts of energy from clean-burning natural gas (with nuclear proposed along side), tremendous capital costs during build up, incredibly high petroleum prices to protect investments, and the largest single industrial contribution to climate change in North America. Production also involves the waste of fresh water from nearby lakes, rivers and aquifers that have already created toxic tailing ponds visible from outer space. None of the land strip mined has yet to be certified as reclaimed. It takes 4 tonnes of soil to produce one barrel of oil. The tar sands are producing over 1.2 million barrels of oil a day on average. The oil companies, Canada and the United States governments are proposing to escalate production to 5 million barrels, almost all destined for American markets-- and lower environmental standards while doing so. They also would need to violate the national and human rights of many indigenous nations who are rightly concerned about many dire social, environmental and economic repercussions on their communities. To get the needed energy supplies, diluent for the bitumen and diverted freshwater to produce and then to transport the flowing heavy bitumen for refining would require massive new infrastructure and pipeline building from three different time zones in the Arctic, across British Columbia and through Alberta in a criss-cross pattern, into pipelines to such destinations as California, China, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ontario, Illinois, Wisconsin and Texas. This entire project is now estimated at over $170 billion dollars. And after the whole process described so far, only then will all this dirty petroleum get burned and expel greenhouse gasses into the air causing further climate change.

Another sex trade murder in Edmonton

The housing crisis in Alberta, as it gets more and more desperate has as it's corollary more people-- in particular young, often racialized women-- working in the survival sex trade. This, like almost everything else in Alberta, comes from the extremity of the tar sands boom with no attention paid to human or environmental cost. The woman below is likely another victim of the tar sands.

--M

Sex trade slay
Fri, February 22, 2008
RCMP need the publics help with the latest homicide
By KEVIN CRUSH, SUN MEDIA

Grande Prairie suffering effects of uncontrolled growth

Grande Prairie suffering effects of uncontrolled growth
City's national ranking fell from fourth to 99th in one year
Dan Barnes, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Tuesday, February 19, 2008

GRANDE PRAIRIE - On a brilliant, blue sunglasses-mandatory Monday, the good folks of Grande Prairie were enjoying the outdoor pleasures of a city that just two short years ago was ranked the fourth best place to live in the country.

Ahead of Calgary. And Vancouver. And yes, even Edmonton.

Ottawa Citizen Op Ed on Tar Sands

Matt Price and Allan Adam

Citizen Special

Thursday, February 21, 2008
Todd Korol, Reuters

Canadians are becoming familiar with the scale of destruction in the
tarsands, something that First Nations of the region have known for some
time now.

And people around the world are learning why our country has taken such an
obstructionist role on global warming. Canada and the Bush administration
stand alone against the rest of the world because with the tarsands we are
housing the single most destructive project anywhere on Earth, and the
Americans are getting the oil.

Prestigious Scientific Journal "Nature" Slams Conservative Anti-Science Politics on Climate Change and the Tarpits

Nature

Nature 451, 866 (21 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/451866a; Published online 20 February 2008

Science in retreat
Canada has been scientifically healthy.
Not so its government.
Comparisons of nations’ scientific outputs over the years have
shown that Canada’s researchers have plenty to be proud of,
consistently maintaining their country’s position among the
world’s top ten (see, for example, Nature 430, 311–316; 2004). Alas,
their government’s track record is dismal by comparison.
When the Canadian government announced earlier this year that it

Feds Expand TFW Programs

Ottawa expands work program
2 new offices to help ease labour needs
Feb 12, 2008 04:30 AM
Nicholas Keung
IMMIGRATION/DIVERSITY REPORTER

Ottawa is expanding the temporary foreign worker program into Ontario to help fill the province's labour needs, a move some fear could further hurt already underutilized and underpaid skilled immigrants.

Immigration Minister Diane Finley announced yesterday the opening of the program's two new offices in Toronto and Moncton, N.B., in addition to the three already established in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.

Excerpt from Alberta Liberals / Kevin Taft on "Labour Shortages"

Utah: Meetings set in 3 cities on oil shale, tar sands

Meetings set in 3 cities on oil shale, tar sands
Feb. 16, 2008 12:09 a.m. MST

Public meetings have been scheduled in three Utah cities to discuss development of the state's oil shale and tar sands resources. The shale and sands resources fall within the jurisdictions of the Moab, Monticello, Price, Richfield and Vernal BLM field offices.

The Bureau of Land Management has set up the following informal meetings:

Big oil's enemy within

Big oil's enemy within
The ultimate threat to big oil comes not from green campaigners - but its own shareholders
February 20, 2008 12:15 AM

Tony Hayward
New BP boss Tony Hayward has overseen a reversal of policy towards tar sands.

Business leaders are now pleading with governments for regulation. When did that last happen? Executives usually hate anything that interferes with their freedom of movement. But climate change appears to have changed all that.

Fort Chip Residents Confront Stelmach on Tar Sands Poisoning of their People

Stelmach denies governments ignoring oilsands health woes
PC leader listens to concerns from native spokesman
Darcy Henton, with files from Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service, Edmonton Journal
Published: Saturday, February 16, 2008

Just after Tory Leader Ed Stelmach derided a new report that calls Alberta's oilsands "the most destructive development on earth," he was confronted by a Mikisew Cree who's worried the megaprojects are poisoning his people.

Alberta Tar Sands Cause Acid Rain

Alta. oilsands cause acid rain
Report issued by environmental group warns of 'most destructive project on Earth'
Matthew Kruchak and James Wood, The StarPhoenix
Published: Saturday, February 16, 2008

Acid rain caused by Alberta oilsands production is pouring down on Saskatchewan and if governments don't take note, any oilsands development in this province will contribute to the "most destructive project on Earth," the Environmental Defence organization warns.