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.
Petro-Canada increases investment in oil sands
But company plans to lower its financial outlay for natural gas production in Western Canada
NORVAL SCOTT
December 14, 2007
CALGARY -- Petro-Canada has joined the parade of Canadian companies that are raising their total spending next year, but also cutting exploration in Alberta's conventional oil and gas sector.
When $1.3-billion isn't that much
Dave Ebner, Globe and Mail
December 12, 2007 at 6:39 PM EST
The last sale of new oil and natural gas exploration rights in Alberta for the year was announced late Wednesday, with $68-million coming into the provincial treasury, boosting the total for the year to $1.29-billion.
That’s the third-highest annual haul in the province’s history — but it’s down more than 60 per cent from the record of $3.43-billion hit last year, and also lower than the $2.26-billion in 2005.
Notes for the presidential candidates
by Dave Cohen
The next president of the United States will have to confront the urgent problems attending rapid oil depletion in the OECD countries.
The world's liquid fuels supply can no longer meet demand and global exports levels are set to decline. Oil prices are high, volatile and rising each year, which is likely a permanent condition in the markets while demand remains strong.
The climate talks are a stitch-up, as no one is talking about supply.
by George Monbiot
Published in the Guardian (December 11 2007)
Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I
have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from
runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart I offer it to you
for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this
technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing
a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be
Tar Sands vs. Clean Water: Eating the Earth for Cars
by Mark Robinowitz
Global Research, December 11, 2007
oilempire.us
The tar sands production center in northern Alberta in Canada is one of the clearest signs that the easy-to-get oil is on the wane. Tar sands are a low grade hydrocarbon deposit that requires enormous energy input to process and convert it into something resembling petroleum.
from George Poitras
WELL. Below is a link of a documentary that was aired on this past Sunday's
CBC News Sunday. I think its an excellent documentary for a number of
reasons. The Fort Chipewyan residents including former Chief Archie Waquan,
Donna Cyprien (Director of Nunee Health Authority), Georg Macdonald (Head of
Nursing Station), Julie Mercredi (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Member)
and Pat Marcel (Elder, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation) did an awesome job
of portraying the reality of our current situation. Thanks also to Dr. John
The pipeline dream lurking in Canada's wild
By Steve Kallick | December 10, 2007
ONE OF many ways to combat global warming is to replace our dirtiest, carbon-polluting fuels, especially coal and oil, with cleaner fuels like natural gas. So proponents of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, an 800-mile megaproject to tap into Canada's natural gas reserves, now say that's their plan. They want us to believe, somehow, that building this massive project through Canada's Boreal Forest wilderness will be good for the environment. Not surprisingly, a closer look at the facts suggests otherwise.
Tuesday December 11, 2007
The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk
The real answer to climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground
All the talk in Bali about cutting carbon means nothing while ever more oil
and coal is being extracted and burned
By
George Monbiot
Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have
stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway
climate change! From the goodness of my heart, I offer it to you for free.
No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this technology, a
The Pew front groups and Gang Green are in Bali this week to lobby for boreal forest carbon credits. Faced with the unpleasant reality that the boreal forest is now likely a net carbon producer due to forest fires and insect outbreaks, all caused by global warming, the Pew are now lobbying to get the carbon stored in peatlands over thousands of years counted as carbon credits in the post-2012 Kyoto Treaty. If successful, this would set the Kyoto carbon emissions baseline back from 1990 to the time of the ice age!
Please Join Us for a Forest Day Side-Event
The NRDC, another heavily Pew-funded member of Gang Green, makes these radical demands about the tar sands, in their fact sheet posted on the web-site of the Pew front-group, the International Boreal Conservation Campaign:
"To immediately stem the development under way of tar sands projects in Canada’s Boreal forest, we should support conservation and environmentally sustainable development in the area, including:
- Interconnected network of protected areas and corridors to maintain the ecological integrity of
the Boreal forest and wildlife habitat.
