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.

Tar Sands Output Cuts Unlikely Despite Sliding Crude Price

Oil Sands Output Cuts Unlikely Despite Sliding Crude Price

OTTAWA (Dow Jones)--The plunge in oil prices has forced the first output cut in Canada, but shutdowns across the country's abundant oil sands are a distant prospect.

Earlier this week, Connacher Oil and Gas Ltd (CLL.T) said it will nearly halve output from its Great Divide oil sands project to 5,000 barrels a day indefinitely. The development in northern Alberta had been producing around 9,000 barrels a day of the sludgy bitumen, which sells for less than benchmark light, sweet crude due to its poor quality.

The unjustifiable destruction of the environment (Fidel on the tar sands)

Reflections of Fidel
The unjustifiable destruction of the environment

CAN capitalist society avoid it? News about the issue is not encouraging. In Poznan, they are discussing the project to be presented in December of next year in Copenhagen, where the agreement that will replace the Kyoto Protocol will be discussed and voted on.

Council of Canadians blasts Alta. gov’t (over possible censorship of film productions)

Council of Canadians blasts Alta. gov’t (over possible censorship of film productions)
By CAROL CHRISTIAN
Fort McMurray Today staff

The Council of Canadians is asking Albertans to say no to censorship after the province recently suggested rethinking the funding of productions critical of the oilsands.

Who's dishing real tar sands propaganda?

Who's dishing real oilsands propaganda?
Gov't decries environmentalist agenda, but refuses to subject data to non-partisan scientific scrutiny

By David Schindler December 15, 2008

This week, Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner is in Poland, expected to defend the oilsands from being considered as a source of "dirty oil." I don't envy him. In the past, international criticism has been largely based on the high emissions of greenhouse gases from mining the oilsands. This is changing rapidly in recent weeks.

NAFTA likely safe from oil-focused Obama administration: experts

The Canadian Press
November 5, 2008

OTTAWA — U.S. President Barack Obama may turn out to be far better for Canadian free trade and economic interests than candidate Barack Obama ever pretended to be, experts on both sides of the border agree.

Obama - triumphant Tuesday in his bid to become America's first-ever black president-elect - was far from neighbourly in his pronouncements impacting Canada during the campaign.

Sunoco (founder of Pew Charitable Trusts-- financier of the CBI) Coming back into Tar Sands

Sunoco set up the original endowment for the Pew Foundation, now called the Pew Charitable Trusts. They also began the corporation now known as Suncor.

Sunoco currently refines bitumen in Ohio and are planning to do so soon in their home turf of Philadelphia.

Sunoco has, through either Pew family members (J Howard Pew's heirs, J Howard started Sun Oil/Sunoco) or current board members and CEO's of Sunoco, a majority of the board of trustees of the Pew Charitable Trusts to this very day.

California Tar Sands In-Situ Development to Start

Tri-Valley Drilling Ahead on 8th Horizontal California Vaca Tar Sands Well
Posted 12 December 2008

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation takes province to court over tar sands leasing

First Nation takes province to court over oilsands leasing
Thursday, December 11, 2008
CBC News

Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation speaks to reporters in Edmonton on Thursday.Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation speaks to reporters in Edmonton on Thursday. (CBC)

The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in northern Alberta announced Thursday it has filed a request asking a court to review how Alberta grants leases for oilsands developments.

The notice was filed Wednesday in Edmonton's Court of Queen's Bench.

Canada: Oil and Immigration

Canada: Oil and Immigration
13/11/2008 by Gareth McConnell

It’s worth $1.5 trillion, is the largest in North America and for Canada and the world a potential source of petroleum energy and work in Canada for the next one hundred years.

Canada’s oil sands, situated in north-eastern Alberta in an area larger than the state of Florida and is about to become a major avenue to explore for migrants workers wishing to move to Canada.

Minnesota: Midwest oil mining a crude idea to many

Midwest oil mining a crude idea to many
Minneapolis City Pages
December 3, 2008 // By Beth Walton

Some 1,500 miles northwest of Minneapolis, the luscious green boreal forests that once lined the banks of the Athabasca River have been flattened. All that's left is an empty, lonely, gray moonscape. That, and the drills.