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.
Deep Well Purchases 6 New Sections of Land in the Peace River Area
EDMONTON, ALBERTA, May 28, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) ----Deep Well Oil & Gas, Inc. and its subsidiaries ("Deep Well") (PINK SHEETS: DWOG) are pleased to announce that they have purchased another 6 sections in the Peace River area.
Total postpones oil sands project by a year or more
Shaun Polczer, Calgary Herald
Published: Wednesday, May 28, 2008
CALGARY - Total is pushing the start-up date for its Joslyn integrated oilsands mine back at least a year.
Istead of coming onstream in 2012, the project will now start producing "before 2015" Total Canada president Mike Borrell said today.
Total is seeking to be Canada's next integrated oilsands producer with an open pit mine and upgrading complex near Fort McMurray.
In addition, it owns half of the Surmont thermal project in partnership with ConocoPhillips.
Fort McMurray feels duck glare 'unfair'
Carrie Tait, Financial Post // Saturday, May 17, 2008
CALGARY - Christopher Allen Van Moorsel was crushed by a giant dump truck at an oilsands operation April 26, an accident that received a smattering of attention in Alberta. The national press ignored it.
Three days later, roughly 500 ducks died when they landed on a toxic tailings pond at another oilsands operations. International media from as far away as Turkey covered the story --for days.
Life, Liberty, Water
by Maude Barlow
As climate change and worldwide shortages loom, will people fight over water or join together to protect it? A global water justice movement is demanding a change in international law to settle once and for all the question of who controls water.
The Tar Sands, Downstream
Cancer, and the BC connection.
By Blair Redlin and Caelie Frampton
Published: May 20, 2008
When 500 ducks died earlier this month after landing on a tar sands tailings pond, Canadians got a glimpse into how unfettered tar sands development is taking its toll.
Members of the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations living downstream from the massive industrial projects have been feeling the effects for a lot longer.
Shell 'selling suicide' by preferring tar sands to wind
Terry Macalister // The Guardian // Wednesday May 21 2008
Shell was accused yesterday of "selling suicide on the forecourt" by pressing ahead with tar sands operations in Canada and continuing to flare off excess gas in Nigeria while pulling out of renewable schemes such as the London Array - the world's largest offshore wind scheme.
Time to draw a line in the oil sands
May 01, 2008 04:30 AM
Gillian McEachern
Matt Price
Ontario is on the cusp of helping oil-sands emissions explode. Shell Canada wants permits to be granted by the end of this year for a new refinery in Sarnia to process oil from its oil-sands mines in Alberta for use in gas tanks across the GTA.
The company will be submitting its environmental assessment in June, but the governments of Canada and Ontario are already being pressed to make crucial decisions about the refinery.
Making mention of the Pew Foundation/Charitable Trusts here is ridiculously over-simplified. The groups that the Pew fund, through the money from Sunoco (who continue to refine tar sands oil and make multiple billions), are overwhelmingly among the most tame and market driven ones-- deflecting actual campaigning against the tar sands. The story below, while it contains valuable nuggets of information, must be making those who misdirect resistance to the tar sands smile.
--M
Environmental groups blacken reputation of Alberta oilsands
Sask. to go nuclear?
By NEIL WAUGH, EDMONTON SUN
Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason went off the Richter Scale in the legislature last week. What else is new.
This time it was over Premier Ed Stelmach's nuclear energy policy.
Basically, the policy says let's study it now and come up with a position later after the premier promises to "ask Albertans for their opinions.
"We can't put our heads in the sand," Stelmach told Mason.
(I suspect, though, he was thinking of another place to shove the pesky socialist's noggin.)
Ottawa fast tracks Kearl mine permit
Decision to green-light Imperial oil sands project for a second time now sits with cabinet
DAVID EBNER AND BRIAN LAGHI
Globe and Mail
May 19, 2008
CALGARY, OTTAWA — — Work on an $8-billion oil sands mine that was delayed by the loss of a key federal water permit is now likely to get under way within weeks because Ottawa sees the file as "important" and is putting it on a fast track.
