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.
Could it be because Syncrude donated $300,000 to Ducks Unlimited in 2001 and that Suncor recently donated another $1.5 million?? After all, Ducks Unlimited only wants to help industry to "soften" its impact on the environment. Never mind all the other cash donations from Weyerhaeuser, Alpac, and Enbridge....
- Tarpit Pete
DU Conservation Awards presented to Alberta Chamber of Resources Companies
More dead birds giving Oilsands a blackeye
May 05, 2008 - 7:25 am
Kevin Usselman & Bryce Kelley
The Alberta oilsands is coming under fire again after a loon was found dead
and two others in distress at the ConocoPhillips tar sands site over the
weekend.
A campaigner with Greenpeace says he received the tip about the loons on
Saturday. It's the second incident involving birds in the oilsands in about
a week.
Last week, 500 ducks were found dead on a tailings pond at the Syncrude
oilsands site. That's because the birds, were found in a pond that has high
As the unsavory connections between multi-national resource extraction companies and fake environmentalists become more and more obvious, individual donors will also discover the non-democratic nature of most environmental organizations and will have no other option than to vote with their pocketbooks: "As a donor there are few opportunities to direct the agency's decisions, he said.
Change in activists' tactics poses serious threat to 2010 Games: analyst
By Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - Changing tactics by Canadian activists pose a serious threat to security
at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, security analysts say.
The usually fragmented, single-issue groups are converging and organizing in ways
never seen before in Canada, said Tom Quiggan, a former security consultant with the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Where there's usually a lull in protest activity in the years leading up to
Oilsands suck dollars from cleaner oil and gas
Dave Yager, For The Calgary Herald
Published: Sunday, May 04, 2008
There's a giant sucking noise emanating from northeast Alberta that gets louder as oil prices rise.
Called the Athabasca Tar Sands, its rapid development is draining imagination from the Stelmach government, flexibility from labour markets and diversification from Alberta's economy. It has also sucked Edmonton into a hopeless global environmental confrontation.
From The Times
April 18, 2008
Fund managers attack BP over tar sands plan
Robin Pagnamenta
A group of American and British shareholders in BP joined forces yesterday to protest over the oil company's decision to start extracting oil from Canadian tar sands.
Eleven fund managers, which together manage total assets worth more than $10 billion (£5 billion), said that BP's move into tar sands last year was “deeply disappointing” and represented a “disturbing step backwards” for the company.
May 1st, 2008
Canada caught on its own tar baby. Tar sand investments now a dead duck?
Posted by Harry Fuller @ 3:41 am
As one Canadian newspaper put it. Ducks in Alberta died a crude death. One of the species of ducks that died on a pond filled with crude oil polluted water: Bufflehead.
Duck Deaths Confirm First Nations' Fears
Fort Chipewyan, May 2, 2008 -- Only one day after the 500 ducks were found dead in the tailings pond at Syncrude Canada in the Alberta tar sands, a local Mikisew Cree hunter killed a duck that was totally covered in oil. Community leaders have no doubt that the duck was a victim of the toxic tailings ponds near Fort McMurray, 300 kilometres south of Fort Chipewyan. The oil-drenched duck will be released to the Canadian Wildlife Service for further investigation.
Dead ducks tar Canada's image, PM says
JOHN COTTER
The Canadian Press
May 2, 2008
EDMONTON -- Alberta is under heavy pressure to strengthen its environmental
standards as the fallout from the death of 500 ducks in a toxic wastewater pond
gets stickier than the province's oil sands.
Images and stories of the dying waterfowl have been appearing on news outlets and
blogs around the world, prompting Prime Minister Stephen Harper to suggest that
the dead ducks have tarred Alberta's and Canada's international image.
The hottest housing market in North America, driven by oil
By Marshall Loeb, MarketWatch
Last update: 7:38 p.m. EDT April 21, 2008
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- A boom of unprecedented dimensions is sweeping Canada's spectacularly scenic western province of Alberta, the Texas-sized territory with a population of 3 million that is home to a pair of world-class cities -- Calgary (population 1.2 million) and Edmonton (population 1.1 million).
