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.

Author Andrew Nikiforuk fears tar sands undermine democracy

Georgia Straight October 23, 2008

Author Andrew Nikiforuk fears tar sands undermine democracy

By Charlie Smith

A Calgary author and journalist says most Canadians don’t understand that
we’re living in a “petrostate” that could undermine our democracy. Andrew
Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
(Greystone Books, $20), told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview that
Canada needs a national debate on the topic. “I think the tar sands has
created a political emergency for the country,” he said.

Somebody local with a grudge targeting oilpatch?

Somebody local with a grudge targeting oilpatch?
Stephen Hume
Vancouver Sun
Monday, October 20, 2008

News of a second pipeline bombing in British Columbia's Peace River district splashed across headlines from New York to New Zealand.

Almost as quickly, anxious residents of Tomslake, about 700 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, speculated about al-Qaida, first nations militants and eco-extremists.

Hunker down, happy hour is over

Hunker down, happy hour is over
October 16, 2008

Back in the summer, Randy Eresman, the meticulous engineer who runs the country's largest energy company, sat down in a brown leather chair and talked about how Breaking Up is Hard to Do. EnCana Corp.'s executive group was drawing two lists - who would stay, and who would go to the new oil spinoff. And it was tough.

"It's going to be a sad day when we actually end up splitting and moving people apart that have worked together for a very long period of time," he said.

Trillions of dollars' worth of oil

Trillions of dollars' worth of oil
High Stakes in Canada’s Vast Oil-Sands Fields
George Tombs, The Christian Science Monitor

The relentless search for oil has led explorers to the boreal forest of northeastern Alberta, among the jack pines and black spruce trees an hour's drive from the boom town of Fort McMurray. Kelly Hansen, operations manager at ConocoPhillips's $1 billion Surmont oil-sands plant, holds up the prize: a beaker of sticky black “synbit,” a 50-50 blend of bitumen (a viscous, tarlike petroleum) and synthetic oil.

TAR SANDS-PART 3: Biggest Customer Has Second Thoughts

OIL SANDS-PART 3: Biggest Customer Has Second Thoughts
By Chris Arsenault*

FT. MCMURRAY, Oct 20 (IPS) - As Canada's tar sands extraction expands full steam ahead, a perfect storm of internal and external opposition could derail some of the voracious growth at the world's largest energy project.

Together, skyrocketing construction costs, falling crude prices, increasingly vocal opposition from some native groups, and a little known section of the 2007 U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act all threaten growth projections in northern Alberta.

Opti-Nexen Rethinking Long Lake Expansion

Nexen, Opti delay decision on next oil sands phase
Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:22pm EDT

CALGARY, Alberta, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Nexen Inc and Opti Canada Inc have postponed a decision to expand their new Long Lake, Alberta, oil sands project, citing the financial market crisis and uncertainty over costs to curb carbon emissions, a Nexen official said on Monday.

The partners in the C$6.1 billion ($5.1 billion) development, which is now in start-up mode, had expected to decide by the end of this year whether to begin work on twinning the project.

"Terrorists target U.S.A. via Alberta"

Hopefully this can begin a discussion about what activists resisting the largest project in human history and the second largest oil deposit on the planet will do when the state sees us as dangerously effective.

Shysters enslave foreign workers

Shysters enslave foreign workers
By TOM GODFREY, SUN MEDIA
19th October 2008

Immigration officials are targeting a network of shady recruiters who are charging foreign construction workers huge fees for jobs that are available free in Canada.

The shysters are forcing workers to turn over their earnings and live like slaves after they arrive here.

Crude Profits

Crude Profits
Saturday October 18, 2008
by Joshua Neuhouser

"Where I Come From Is Ground Zero"

OIL SANDS-PART 2: "Where I Come From Is Ground Zero"
By Chris Arsenault*

Michael Mercredi, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan/Dene First Nation, says people in his small community are experiencing rare cancers because of the tar sands.

Credit:Chris Arsenault/IPS

FT. MCMURRAY, Oct 17 (IPS) - The wheels of the Caterpillar 797B, the world's largest truck, are always going round and round at Shell Canada's Albian Sands mine.