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.
Algonquin leader fined, jailed six months; Second uranium mining protester also fined but released on 'compassionate grounds'
Posted By Sue Yanagisawa Whig-Standard Court Reporter
Feb 16/08
The lawyer for a uranium prospecting company, frustrated by an Algonquin-led protest that disrupted the company's plans for test drilling north of Sharbot Lake last summer, said it gave him "no pleasure to ask for incarceration."
Mankind can't afford more oil drilling-ex-BP exec
By Gerard Wynn
LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Known oil, gas and coal reserves may already contain a quarter more carbon than mankind can emit and still avoid dangerous climate change, putting the value of new oil exploration in doubt, said a former oil major executive.
The oil industry may be wasting $50 billion annually searching for new fields, said Jan-Peter Onstwedder, formerly BP's most senior risk manager. He left BP in December.
Oilsands future looks rosy
Production from unconventional source expected to gain supremacy
John Morrissy, Canwest News Service
Published: 1:31 am
OTTAWA - Canada's oilsands are taking over where conventional oil production left off, with profits in the oil-extraction industry rising 18 per cent to a record $23 billion in 2008 on rapidly rising output from the huge oil reserves, according to the Conference Board of Canada.
Environmentalists' report to call for Ottawa to act on tar sands
BILL CURRY
From Friday's Globe and Mail
February 15, 2008
OTTAWA - Alberta's oil sands are the most destructive project on Earth,
causing environmental damage well beyond provincial borders, a new report
says.
>From acid rain falling in Saskatchewan to toxic pollution spewing from
Ontario oil refineries, a report to be released this morning by
Toronto-based Environmental Defence calls on Ottawa to act where Alberta
will not.
The environmentalists will be joined by two Alberta native leaders, who will
ConocoPhillips seeks oil sands cost-cutting
By Bloomberg AP and Staff Reports
2/15/2008
A ConocoPhillips executive says the company would be a "fast follower" if other producers were to successfully use nuclear energy to power Canadian oil-sands operations.
"If they should be successful, we would be fast on their heels," Kevin Meyers, president of the Canadian unit of ConocoPhillips, said this week during an energy conference in Houston hosted by Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
Don't fight the Environmental movement-- Buy your own.
How Crude
Midwest refineries source more crude from tar sands; emissions will rise
Posted at 12:39 PM on 12 Feb 2008
Conoco content with current oil sands position
Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:54am EST
HOUSTON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The head of ConocoPhillips (COP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in Canada said on Wednesday the company is content with its oil sands position and has no current plans for expansion.
"We have a substantial resource position, and at this time, we're focused on developing that resource position," Kevin Meyers, president of ConocoPhillips Canada, told reporters after a CERA conference breakfast meeting.
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, the company that is already using Temporary Foreign Worker labour from behind fences to construct their massive "Horizon" project, is one of the biggest anti-union, pro mining, and generally reactionary, "cost-cutting" corporations already deep at work in the tar pits. These projections are released in order to soften up an audience to their desire to ramp up TFW's, for one-- also this is a set up for further de-regulation and more.
Dirty oil tricks
Peter Foster, Financial Post Published: Saturday, February 09, 2008
So much for any suggestion that press baron Rupert Murdoch is a right-wing dinosaur, or that his media empire is out of step with the eco-zeitgeist. First he announces that News Corp. will become "carbon neutral" by 2010. Now his flagship British organ, The Times of London, has started crusading against Alberta 's oilsands.
