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.

Albertan NDP loves the tar sands

Oilsands closure not an option for NDP

By FRANK LANDRY, Legislature Bureau

Last Updated: October 5, 2010
Alberta’s NDP does not want to shut down the oilsands, says Leader Brian Mason.

It’s a point Mason said he wants to drive home as he tours the province, talking up the party’s policies.

“It’s part of correcting this perception that (Premier) Ed Stelmach and the Conservative government have been trying to spread about where we stand,” said Mason, in Fort McMurray on Tuesday, outlining his party’s stance on jobs and the oilsands.

It goes against our nature; but the left has to start asserting its own values

The progressive attempt to appeal to self-interest has been a catastrophe. Empathy, not expediency, must drive our campaigns

o George Monbiot
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 October 2010

So here we are, forming an orderly queue at the slaughterhouse gate. The punishment of the poor for the errors of the rich, the abandonment of universalism, the dismantling of the shelter the state provides: apart from a few small protests, none of this has yet brought us out fighting.

Shell Cancels Tar Sands Upgrader

Shell ditches oilsands project
Energy giant cancels $30B upgrader plan

By Dan Healing, Calgary Herald
October 9, 2010

Shell Canada has withdrawn its regulatory application to build a 400,000-barrel-per-day oilsands upgrader, a four-phase project estimated by analysts to have a price tag of around $30 billion.

Fired Suncor blogger speaking out

Fired Oilsands blogger speaking out
Trish Kozicka, Global News: Sunday, October 10, 2010

Mike Thomas believes he was fired from his job as an apprentice electrician with Aecon Lockerbie & Hole - a company under contract to Suncor - because he blogged about what he describes as inhumane, unhealthy and unsanitary conditions at Suncor's Mackenzie and Voyageur camps on the Firebag 3 project north of Fort McMurray.

Suncor worker says he was fired over blog

Oilsands worker says he was fired over blog
by Conal Pierse, Postmedia News //
Vancouver Sun
October 10, 2010

EDMONTON — As Mike Thomas sat on his front porch last week waiting to go to the airport and fly up to northern Alberta for work, his employer called him and said not to bother. He’d been fired for what he claims was blogging about camp conditions.

The apprentice electrician wrote two blog posts about the Suncor McKenzie and Voyager camps on the Firebag 3 project north of Fort McMurray, Alta., detailing what he said were unsanitary and inhumane conditions.

Fort Mac Wants You to Live There

Alberta's oilsands city wants workers to live in, not just cash in

By: Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Posted: 11/10/2010
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - Four years ago, Fort McMurray was a byword for boomtown.

Many saw it as a "lawless frontier town overrun by transient workers with too much money and too few community linkages," Mayor Melissa Blake said recently.

Vancouver targeted as Tar Sands shipping port

Vancouver targeted as Tar Sands shipping port
by Rod Marining
Common Ground
October 2010

According to Statistics Canada, in 2007, without any public process, Canada and China began shipping Tar Sands crude oil through Vancouver Harbour. Currently, two oil tankers per week carry up to 700,000 barrels of crude oil through Burrard Inlet and the dangerous Second Narrows, past our beaches and parks and into Georgia Strait. The oil companies have plans to expand this capacity to 10 tankers per week.

It can’t happen here

NASA Scientist Urges Canada Not To Touch Tar Sands

NASA Scientist Urges Canada Not To Touch Oil Sands
October 6, 2010

AHN News Staff

Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada (AHN) - Another nail was driven into Alberta’s oil sands industry on Tuesday after a top NASA scientist advised the province to leave the tar fields alone. James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies gave the advice to a panel reviewing the proposed Total E&P $9-billion plan to build the Joslyn North Mine.

Alberta will act if panel finds tar sands monitoring 'unacceptable': Renner

Alberta will act if panel finds oilsands monitoring 'unacceptable': Renner

Province appoints six scientists to independently assess water-monitoring data

By Karen Kleiss, edmontonjournal.com October 8, 2010

EDMONTON — Alberta's environment minister says the province is prepared to act if scientists reviewing monitoring programs find "unacceptable" environmental impacts in the oilsands region.

North America's risky race to exploit bitumen, oil shales

North America's risky race to exploit oil sands and shales
* Keith Schneider for Yale Environment 360
* guardian.co.uk,
1 October 2010

Yale Environment 360: Energy companies are rushing to exploit new sources of oil in Canada and the western US - but government officials don't seem concerned about the environmental consequences

The most direct path to America's newest big oil and gas fields is U.S. Highway 12, two lanes of blacktop that unfold from Grays Harbor in Washington State and head east across the top of the country to Detroit.