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.

NASA's Hansen concerned about Canada's tar sands

INTERVIEW-
NASA's Hansen concerned about Canada's oil sands
Wed Feb 18, 2009 5:41pm GMT

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Canada's oil sands are an environmental "wild card," NASA's James Hansen said in an interview before President Barack Obama's trip to Ottawa, where energy and climate change will be on the agenda.

As director of the U.S. space agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, with a focus on climate change, Hansen has long opposed the burning of oil, gas and coal for their contribution to global warming.

Canada’s Tar-Sands Oil Can Be ‘Clean,’ Obama Says

Canada’s Tar-Sands Oil Can Be ‘Clean,’ Obama Says
By Jim Efstathiou Jr.

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Oil extracted from tar sands in Canada can be made a clean energy source, and the U.S. will work with its northern neighbor to develop the technology, President Barack Obama said.

Tar sands producers gird for Obama’s Canada visit

Oilsands producers gird for Obama’s Canada visit
By Ayesha Rascoe, Reuters
February 17, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Canada’s oilsands industry, battered by collapsing oil prices, also faces the prospect of ballooning costs as the United States and Canada prepare to discuss energy security and efforts to fight global warming.

When U.S. President Barack Obama visits Ottawa Thursday, energy will be a key topic in his talks with Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who often touts Canada as an emerging energy superpower due to its massive oilsands resources.

Dirtier tar sands Coming

Dirtier oil sands Coming

By SHAWN BELL, SRJ Reporter 17.FEB.09

The Alberta government has tried sneaking through a policy allowing the oilsands to get even dirtier, according to the Pembina Institute, an Alberta environmental think-tank.
The new policy allows in-situ oilsands operations to burn bitumen, petroleum coke or asphaltenes instead of natural gas to produce steam, processes that increase air emissions by 40 to 66 per cent. The policy was posted to the Alberta Environment website on Dec. 23, 2008, with a deadline for public feedback set for Feb. 13, 2009.

Dirty Tar Sands in Canada to Test Obama Green Goals

Dirty Tar Sands in Canada to Test Obama Green Goals
By Jim Efstathiou Jr.

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Petroleum extracted from tar sands in Canada may provide the first foreign-policy test for President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda.

U.S. and Canadian conservationists have called on Obama to reject any bid to exempt the oil from proposed climate-protection rules when he visits Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper this week in Ottawa, his first meeting with a head of government.

Prentice 'optimistic' Mackenzie gas project will begin soon

Prentice 'optimistic' gas project will begin soon

Updated Sun. Feb. 15 2009 1:11 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Environment Minister Jim Prentice says he is "optimistic" that work on the controversial Mackenzie Gas Project, which proposes building a pipeline to deliver northern natural gas to Canadian and U.S. markets, will begin soon after numerous delays for environmental and community assessments.

The project was first proposed in 2001 by a consortium of oil producers that includes Imperial Oil, ExxonMobil Corp., Shell Canada and ConocoPhillips.

Global warming 'underestimated'

Global warming 'underestimated'
Sunday, 15 February 2009
BBC News
Prof Field said the IPCC was running behind forecasts

The severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse
than previously believed, a leading climate scientist has warned.

Professor Chris Field, an author of a 2007 landmark report on climate
change, said future temperatures "will be beyond anything" predicted.

Prof Field said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
report had underestimated the rate of change.

The Role of the Environmentalist: A Bias for Life

The Role of the Environmentalist
A Bias for Life
Weekend Edition
August 30 / 31, 2008
By JOSH SCHLOSSBERG

After decades of speaking on Nature's behalf, the environmental movement continues to gain power and influence in the U.S. With media, government and even big business preaching the green gospel all of a sudden, modern day enviros might finally have an opportunity to start reversing the course of Earth-death, rather than just "slowing down the rate at which things have been getting worse."

Temporary foreign workers first to suffer layoffs

Updated Sun. Feb. 8 2009 11:02 AM ET
The Canadian Press
CTV.ca

CALGARY -- Since the economy began unravelling last fall, Thomas has
been getting fewer shifts at the manufacturing company where he works.

The plant was shut down all of last week, and now Thomas and some of his
co-workers are worried they may soon have no job at all.

"We used to send money back home to our families and now we don't even
have money to support ourselves here," he said in Spanish through a
translator.

Q&A: Energy Independence, Obama and Canada’s Tar Sands

February 9, 2009
Q&A: Energy Independence, Obama and Canada’s Oil Sands
By John Lorinc

“There are two perspectives on the oil sands,” the author Andrew
Nikiforuk says. “You have companies that want to make it the next
Saudi Arabia. The other is that it’s a transitional resource to a low-
carbon economy.”

Andrew Nikiforuk, a journalist based in Calgary, has closely followed
the development of northern Alberta’s massive deposits of bitumen — a
heavy black oil impregnating the sand and soil over hundreds of square
miles northeast of Edmonton.