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.
What do you know about the largest industrial project in human history?
EDUCATIONAL ON THE TAR SANDS
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18TH
6:30 PM ROOM 2270
SFU HARBOUR CENTRE
515 WEST HASTINGS
Come learn about the Alberta Tar Sands and its impact on indigenous rights, the environment, labour rights including migrant workers, as well as its global consequences in an era of oil-dependency, the War on Terror, and an expanding corporate regime through the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement.
by Bill Totten (December 11 2007)
In an article I posted here on December 9th entitled "What Will We Eat
as the Oil Runs Out?" Richard Heinberg refers to the peaking of another
valuable, but finite, resource:
"Phosphorus is set to become much more scarce and expensive, according to
a study by Patrick Dery, a Canadian agriculture and environment analyst
and consultant. Using data from the US Geological Survey, Dery performed
a peaking analysis on phosphate rock, similar to the techniques used by
petroleum geologists to forecast declines in production from oilfields.
Canada's oil sands are fueling U.S. cars - but at what cost?
McClatchy Newspapers
Published Sunday, December 16, 2007
FORT CHIPEWYAN, Alberta — Like a great silver snake, the Athabasca
River glides though a spongy-wet wilderness of spindly forests, lakes
and marshes 650 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border.
Breathe deeply, though, and you catch a whiff of fresh, hot tar. In
the river, fish are speckled with shiny, wart-like blisters. And in
the tiny Indian village of Fort Chipewyan, people are coming down
with leukemia, bile duct cancer and other diseases.
The Pew has apparently launched an all-out international media blitz about the tar sands, yet their actual position on the tar sands becomes murkier day by day. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the Pew family built the first tar sands project in 1967 and that the Pew family continues to refine large amounts of mock oil through its company Sunoco. And that Suncor is also a partner in the Canadian Boreal Initiative.
- Tarpit Pete
Green leaves, black gold
By Sheila McNulty
Financial Times London
"At a City briefing by an international bank last week, a senior
executive said: 'Today everyone is talking about global warming, but my
prediction is that in two years water will move to the top of the
geopolitical agenda.'"
Water becomes the new oil as world runs dry
Western companies have the know-how - and the financial incentive -
to supply water to poor nations. But, as Richard Wachman reports,
their involvement is already provoking unrest
* Richard Wachman
* The Observer,
* Sunday December 9 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/09/water.climatechange
Crude awakening
Why are environmentalists asleep at the tar sands wheel?
BY Dru Oja Jay
Alberta’s tar sands are on pace to become the largest industrial project in human history. The development will arguably become the single most environmentally destructive undertaking in Canadian history. The response from environmental groups and progressives has been meek.
Stéphane Dion told The New York Times in 2005 that, “There is no environmental minister on Earth who can stop the oil from coming out of the sand, because the money is too big.”
Bruce Power looks at Alberta facility
By The Canadian Press
Published: 12/14/2007 - Vol. 3, No. 25
An Ontario-based company that operates Canada's first private nuclear electricity generating plant wants to build a similar facility in Alberta.
Bruce Power has announced plans to buy Energy Alberta Corp., which has already begun preliminary work on a proposal to build a nuclear plant in the Peace River area about 350 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
The company says any decisions it makes will rely heavily on having a willing community.
It's war on city crime dens
Houses of drugs and prostitution to be targeted in new enforcement program
By FRANK LANDRY, CITY HALL BUREAU
Thu, December 6, 2007
Edmonton's top drug-house-busting cop welcomes the province's plan to crack down on crime dens.
Sgt. Maurice Brodeur sees the initiative working hand in hand with the program he runs, the Edmonton Police Service's Report A Drug House program.
"Too long, these little disorder houses ... have caused a lot of grief in neighbourhoods," Brodeur told Sun Media.
The Biggest Global Warming Crime in History
By Cahal Milmo, Independent UK. Posted December 13, 2007.
The Canadian wilderness is set to be invaded by BP in an oil
exploration project dubbed 'the biggest global warming crime' in
history.
BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move "Beyond Petroleum" by
finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of
abandoning its "green sheen" by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract
oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which
environmentalists say are part of the "biggest global warming crime"
B.C. shale gas set to be next generation's oil sands
PATRICK BRETHOUR
December 14, 2007
VANCOUVER -- In the remote north of the province, there is a vast warehouse of hydrocarbons lurking in difficult geology, waiting for the right combination of technology, economics and entrepreneurial guts to free them.
A generation ago, that description applied to Alberta and its oil sands. Today, that scenario is playing out in British Columbia and its shale gas fields where trillions - yes, that is a T - of cubic feet of natural gas could be on their way to market.
