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.
Will Canada last?
by Murray Dobbin
June 30, 2008
What will it take persuade Canadians that if they do not act soon to reverse the course of their nation, there will be nothing left to save? I am talking, of course, about so-called "deep integration" and its official expression, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).
Greenpeace takes poke at Alberta oil sands
The Canadian Press
June 27, 2008
CALGARY -- Greenpeace is stepping up pressure on the environmental record of Alberta's oil sands with a tongue-in-cheek website that offers mock tours of the province's industrial northeast.
The site, with an address similar to the province's official tourism website, tempts travellers with black sand beaches, toxic lakes and clearcut forests.
It recommends starting the day with a "propane cannon wake-up call" and suggests a little open-pit paragliding over the vast oil sands mines.
By Michael Klare
Truth and consequences in the last days of cheap oil
At the hastily convened global oil summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on June 28, top officials of producing and consuming nations from around the world attempted to find a combination of solutions that would somehow extricate us from the current crisis over sky-high energy prices. These proposals ranged from increased output by major producers like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to restrictions on the activities of international oil speculators.
Tar-sands stocks will sink if oil price slides
Jun 27, 2008 04:30 AM
Bill Carrigan
Proponents prefer the cleaner "oil-sands" tag and opponents prefer the dirtier "tar-sands" tag. Of course, investors older than 50 tend to use the original term, tar sands.
Lately it's difficult not to notice the growing controversy over the runaway development of Canada's tar sands and its contribution to global warming. Migratory bird deaths at a Syncrude tailings pond in April delivered another public-relations blow to tar-sands companies.
Macdonald Stainsby gives http://h2opodcast.com/ an overview of the tar sands, their history in development, why now, the connection to the war on terror & Iraq, trade deals, expansion of the temporary foreign worker programs in such development, violation of indigenous nations' self-determination and environmental destruction unparalleled in the world. (Part I of II)
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Part II of II:
Macdonald Stainsby gives http://h2opodcast.com/ an overview of the tar sands, their history in development, why now, the connection to the war on terror & Iraq, trade deals, expansion of the temporary foreign worker programs in such development, violation of indigenous nations' self-determination and environmental destruction unparalleled in the world. Part II of II.
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The International Boreal Conservation Campaign is yet another front group of the Pew Charitable Trusts/Sunoco, the very same folks who brought you the original "Great Canadian Oil Sands Project" in 1967 (now Suncor). The focus in their "messaging" about ensuring energy security, perhaps for their Sunoco refineries now being converted to process dirty oil in Ohio and eventually Philadelphia, is telling indeed.
- Tarpit Pete
Talk is cheap, skeptics say of oil sands message
Tue Jun 24, 2008 7:37pm EDT
By Jeffrey Jones - Analysis
Abuse of foreign workers unavoidable, Alta. Tories suggest
Elise Stolte , Canwest News Service
Published: Wednesday, June 18, 2008
EDMONTON - Some abuse of foreigners working temporarily in Alberta is unavoidable because of conditions in their home countries, Alberta's minister of Employment and Immigration suggested Wednesday.
Hector Goudreau was reacting to news that as many as 120 Chinese workers were paid a fraction of what they were owed for work building tanks at a northern Alberta oilsands site.
No one wants to be on the outside looking in. When there is a great issue and movement underway, most people-- certainly most people who are political in one form or another-- will do whatever needed to be relevant, to have a comment, to be a part of what is going on, shall we say. This is always the case in presidential elections. The article below has some incredibly good information and is a piece that contains very important information about the whole process of NAFTA, et al.
The SPP and Merging Military Command Structures
by Dana Gabriel
Global Research, June 18, 2008
