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.

It's not just about 500 dead ducks

It's not just about 500 dead ducks
May 11, 2008 04:30 AM
Gillian Steward

Who could have known that a flock of ducks on its way home for the summer was fated to become a powerful symbol of all that is wrong with Alberta's most vital industrial project – the tar sands?

As much of the world knows by now, about 500 of them died when they set down on a lake of oily goo, usually referred to by the petroleum industry and the government as a tailing pond – a much more neutral phrase than 22 square kilometres of toxic sludge produced when oil is extracted from the sandy soil.

Big Oil Strike in Brazil has Tongues Wagging, but We Continue Towards Peak Oil

By Pedro Prieto, Tlaxcala. Posted May 7, 2008.

Since the 1980's, the world has discovered less oil than it has consumed every year.

note: This was translated from the Spanish original by Miss Machetera, proprietor of the Machetera blog.

The world press, especially the Western press and specifically the financial press, has jumped all over the headlines of the discovery of a huge oil field in Brazil's continental shelf.

Suncor Issues latest Greenwash report

For your daily Greenwash dose... Suncor sympathetic over ducks... and not a hint of sympathy for the loss of other human lives.

--M

Suncor CEO defends record on environment
Rick George sympathizes over duck loss
Dan Healing, with a file from Shaun Polczer, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, May 10, 2008

A speech about the business outlook for Alberta's oilsands industry Friday morning turned into a defence of its environmental record for Suncor Energy Inc. CEO Rick George.

Across Alberta Work- place deaths up 24%

Work- place deaths up 24%
154 Alta. workers died on job last year, 30 more than in 2006
Archie McLean, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Friday, April 18

EDMONTON - Alberta workplace deaths jumped 24 per cent in 2007, but injuries fell slightly during the same period, new provincial statistics show.

A total of 154 people died on the job or as a result of their work last year, which is up from 124 in 2006, which was a 15-year low. The government says the number of deaths last year is consistent with the rates from the past 10 years.

How to Deflect the Real Story: "Last surviving duck hangs in"

Last surviving duck hangs in
By Victoria Handysides
May 13, 2008

A female mallard duck is the only surviving creature that took a dip in Syncrude’s toxic tailings pond that will live to tell the tale.

In total, 18 birds have been brought to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Society of Edmonton from different tailings ponds in the Fort McMurray area. Only six have survived.

Imperial fears year delay to Kearl tar sands project

Imperial fears year delay to Kearl oilsands project
Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post Published: Thursday, May 08, 2008

CALGARY -- Imperial Oil Ltd. said in Federal Court Thursday its $8-billion Kearl oilsands project faces a delay of a year or more if a key water permit pulled by the federal government isn't quickly re-instated.

"It took nine months to get this piece of paper," lawyer Munaf Mohamed, of Fraser, Milner Casgrain LLP, argued before Justice Douglas Campbell. "What

is sufficient in terms of the sting of the lash?

Industry backlash against BC uranium mining ban

B.C.'s uranium ban is irrational, economically irresponsible

Vancouver Sun

Friday, May 09, 2008

The provincial government has slapped a ban on exploration for uranium, outlawed any development of known deposits and imposed a "no registration reserve" to ensure no future claims include rights to the mineral. It has offered no rationale for these draconian measures.

Citizen Opposition to the Proposed Nukes in Peace River

No mention here about the real reason for locating the nukes in Peace River, which is to supply power for Shell in the nearby Grosmont formation for their electric heaters to extract bitumen from limestone.
-Tarpit Pete

Alberta's Peace River area split over bid to build nuclear power plant

1 day ago

PEACE RIVER, Alta. — Dan and Huguette Ropchan stand on the grainy edge of ice-crusted Lac Cardinal in northwest Alberta and worry that in a decade they'll have to raise their wheat and canola in the shadow of monster nuclear cooling towers.

The Real Need for Nukes in Peace River

After over a year of very low-key manoeuvering through their privately held subsidiary Sure Northern Energy, Shell finally comes clean with their proposal to use electric heaters to extract bitumen from the limestone-based Grosmont formation, which may host more oil than all the other tar sands combined. If successful, this new "in-situ" method will require massive amounts of electricity convenienty located to the south at the proposed nuclear plants in Peace River and possibly Whitecourt. The perversity of using nukes to heat the earth to extract mock oil is utterly astounding!

Scenes From the Tar Wars

NEWS: As Canada scrambles to dig up some of the world's dirtiest oil, a bush doctor
tracks mysterious diseases, poisoned rivers, and shattered lives.

By Josh Harkinson

May/June 2008 Issue

At a small airport in the northern Alberta town of Fort McMurray, a rickety,
single-engine Cessna hurtles off the ground with a roar. Dr. John O'Connor ignores
the shuddering fuselage, the tail wiggle, the steep climb above the spruce trees at
the end of the runway. For O'Connor, a bush doctor who has tended to some of