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.

warning: Creating default object from empty value in /var/www/drupal-6.28/modules/taxonomy/taxonomy.pages.inc on line 33.

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.

Alta. road dubbed Death Highway

Alta. road dubbed Death Highway
Jim Farrell, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, December 28, 2007

EDMONTON -- Lucille Cloutier says her brother would still be alive if the road to Fort McMurray, Alta. had been twinned in the past year.

"Last year they only put one construction crew on to work on 240 kilometres of road," said Cloutier, whose 41-year-old brother Guy was killed Nov. 8 while trying to avoid an out-of-control vehicle. "If they had put 10 road crews on the job, it would be twinned by now and my brother would still be alive."

Canadian National acquires tar sands rail line

Canadian National acquires oil sands rail line

Canadian National Railway (CN) has acquired the Athabasca Northern Railway in Alberta for $25.3 million and plans to invest as much as $136 million to upgrade the rail link to the oil sands region of Northern Alberta. Athabasca Northern, which runs from Boyle, Alberta, to near Fort McMurray, Alberta, had been owned by Cando Contracting, but Reuters reports it was threatened with abandonment because of deteriorating tracks.

What the Tar Sands Need

What the Tar Sands Need
Processing requires massive inputs of water, energy, land, labour
December 31, 2007
by Dru Oja Jay

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Water

For each barrel of oil produced from the tar sands, between two and 4.5 barrels of water is needed. The water is used in the process of extracting bitumen from the naturally occurring the tar sand. The bitumen is later "upgraded" into synthetic crude oil.

Alberta's Averted Energy Tradesworker General Strike and the Fall Wildcat Walk-Outs

November 22, 2007
Letting the Wildcat Out of the Bag
Alberta's Averted Energy Tradesworker General Strike and the Fall Wildcat Walk-Outs

by Stuart Neatby

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Temporary Labour or Disposable Workers?

Temporary Labour or Disposable Workers?
Foreign labourers are brought to the tar sands, but are easily sent home

by Tim Murphy

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

"So you believe in the free market?"

"Well, it's not so much that I believe in the free market, it's that I demand logical consistency out of those who demand the free market," answers Jason Foster, director of Policy Analysis for the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL).

Albian to try and push production to physics limitations

Translation, in short: Royal Dutch Shell (Albian Sands) plans to expand as much as the physics allows and beyond that which (current) labour markets have room for. This all well-timed to move along lock step with the expansion of Temporary Foreign Worker programs, and in tandem with the reduction in labour and environmental standards being "phased in" under the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement" [Tilma]. These plans are to create new vast mines, expand the upgraders, blow the Muskeg River Mine into the stratosphere and much, much more.

Tories, Liberals hack each other, sell carbon credits and sacrifice planet

Ottawa too partisan on emissions
Dec 17, 2007 04:30 AM
Ian Urquhart

Under the proposed federal emissions trading program, tar sands developers will be eligible for up to $700 million in "carbon credits" – even as they increase their greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, Ontario will get nothing for closing its coal-fired plants, thereby eliminating about half of the province's greenhouse gas emissions.

RAMPANT DEVELOPMENT RAISES RESIDENTS' CONCERN ABOUT THE FUTURE IN THE HEARTLAND

Samantha Power / samantha@vueweekly.com

http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=7708

Calculating the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air is not something
many Edmontonians think to do. But Maureen and Dennis Chichak make
sure they check it at their home on a daily basis.

The Chichak home is located just outside of Fort Saskatchewan, in the
330 square kilometres known as the Industrial Heartland, and with
their neighbours having grown over three decades to include Shell,
Agrium and Dow, they’re regularly exposed to sulfur dioxide, benzene

Walruses Die; Global Warming Blamed

By DAN JOLING Associated Press Writer

Dec 14th, 2007 | ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- In what some scientists see as another
alarming consequence of global warming, thousands of Pacific walruses above
the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes earlier this year after the
disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in
extraordinary numbers.

The deaths took place during the late summer and fall on the Russian side of
the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska from Russia. "It was a pretty

Comments of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (Submission on the Alberta Clipper)

December 7, 2007 BY ELECTRONIC AND U.S. MAIL
Ms. Elizabeth Orlando
OES/ENV Room 2657
U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
Re: Enbridge Pipeline Projects; Alberta Clipper
Comments of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy

Dear Ms. Orlando:

These comments are submitted on behalf of the Minnesota Center for
Environmental Advocacy (“MCEA”). MCEA is a Minnesota-based non-profit
environmental organization whose mission is to use law, science, and research to
preserve and protect Minnesota’s natural resources, wildlife, and the health of its