Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

International oil & gas

Stock markets and global oil interests (including war) would be included here, as would attempts to get oil out of high risk, low return areas from oil shale in Colorado, to natural gas and heavy oil in the high eastern Arctic. The tar sands are part of this trend and should be seen as such. What happens with the tar sands will have a tremendous impact on what kind of choices are made elsewhere, environmentally and socially.

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International Oil & Gas is a category for stories relating to tar sand production or climate change but not in any of the projects already listed geographically. This includes other regions of the planet with horrible environmental and high energy costs that, like the tar sands, are only a "choice" because of high prices and the global depletion of easily recoverable oil reserves. Such issues as the threat of war on Iran, "instability" in Iraq and Venezuela or disasters like Katrina will all drive up oil prices, which in turn doubly encourages tar sand production-- by price demand and energy demand. Stock markets and global oil interests (including war) would be included here, as would attempts to get oil out of high risk, low return areas from oil shale in Colorado, to natural gas and heavy oil in the high eastern Arctic. The tar sands are part of this trend and should be seen as such. What happens with the tar sands will have a tremendous impact on what kind of choices are made elsewhere, environmentally and socially.

Eastern Canada Vulnerable to Oil Shortages

Eastern Canada Vulnerable to Oil Shortages
New Report Calls for Canada to Set Up Strategic Petroleum Reserves

EDMONTON
Canada is currently the most vulnerable country in the industrial world
to short-term oil supply crises, and we need to establish strategic petroleum
reserves to remedy the problem. This is the key finding of a report released
today by Alberta’s Parkland Institute in conjunction with the Polaris Institute.

Freezing in the Dark: Why Canada Needs Strategic Petroleum Reserves points out

Slavery and Fossil Fuels

Slavery and Fossil Fuels
Charles Justice

The nineteenth century global economy was a like a small scale version of
today's global economy. Trade in slaves, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton were
the drivers of global economic growth. But the growing trade in the above
mentioned non-human commodities was first made possible by slave labour in
plantations in the tropics and the American South.

In our modern global economy, cheap fossil fuels have taken the place of slaves.
Industrial farming, convenient travel by automobile, and the transportation of

Life on the cold side of the country's hottest economy

Life on the cold side of the country's hottest economy
The oil sands dominate Alberta's wealth and growth, but not all parts of the province are taking part – including, surprisingly, the conventional oil industry
GORDON PITTS
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
January 30, 2008 at 12:00 AM EST

In the rolling farmland around Derwent, Alta., the fields are littered with what look like oversized pop cans. These stubby storage tanks contain heavy oil that has been pumped from the ground and is waiting to be trucked away – much of it to the big Husky Oil upgrader in Lloydminster.

"The kinder, gentler energy superpower"

While a few small nuggets of things are coming through in the Globe's series on the tar sands, the articles are not only omitting a lot of important facts, they are distorting others. When the articles talk about "Albertan" opinions on the tar sands, they omit/distort the fact that the province is really split into north and south-- and that a majority of those as far north as Edmonton, let alone south like in Medicine Hat, Calgary and Lethbridge, have never actually seen the tar sands mines (or in-situ operations).

Climate Neros fiddle while Rome burns

Jan 28, 2008 04:30 AM
Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter

Governments and industry love to talk about the things they plan to do, perhaps to detract attention away from what they haven't done or aren't doing.

How many radio or television debates have shown an environmentalist pointing out the devastating effects of oil sands and power production in Alberta, only to have industry officials tout concepts like "clean coal" or "carbon capture and sequestration" – as if the solution is here and the problem is being overcome as they speak?

Energy hogs rule

Energy hogs rule
Elites love to pig out on energy.

Dateline: Monday, January 21, 2008

"We use 30 percent of all the energy... That isn't bad; that is good.
That means we are the richest, strongest people in the world and that we
have the highest standard of living in the world. That is why we need so
much energy, and may it always be that way."

— US president Richard Nixon,
November 1973

Things have changed since Nixon proudly proclaimed America the world's
biggest energy guzzler. Or have they?

"Re-learning" what we've forgotten

by Chris Maser

Culture Change (January 06 2008)

Editor's note: This is Chris Maser's Part Three of his series for
Culture Change. I ate this one up, because ever since I read a 1987
article in Discover magazine by Jared Diamond, about hunter-gatherers'
working only a few hours a day a few days a week, I've been aware that
our modern way of life is not what it's cracked up to be. In Maser's
article there is solid anthropological insight applicable to our current
challenge as a dysfunctional society facing extinction. In his eighteen

Oil Exec Explains the Hunt for Unconventional Oil in Lower 48

Five questions with George Stapleton
Looking for oil where others don't
Jan. 24, 2008, 10:50PM
Moneymakers
Brett Clanton

It's not Saudi Arabia. But there is oil in Kansas. In Montana and Missouri, too.

In fact, the lower 48 U.S. states contain enough heavy crude oil deposits to power the nation's economy for several years. But they've been largely overlooked in favor of much bigger heavy oil deposits in Canada's oil sands and elsewhere.

A licence to pollute dressed up in rhetorical petticoats

Commentary
A licence to pollute dressed up in rhetorical petticoats

JEFFREY SIMPSON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
January 26, 2008 at 12:00 AM EST

Canada's conventional oil supplies are running down. They are being replaced with oil from Alberta's tar sands.

Each barrel of tar-sands oil produces two to three times more greenhouse-gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil. The result is obvious: Greenhouse-gas emissions from Alberta oil have been rising.

A different kind of climate politics is needed

Environment Minister Baird even copied his Washington mentors by holding out to the last minute and then dramatically withdrawing his objections so that the vote could be unanimous.
by Ian Angus
January 16, 2008

“We are ending up with something so watered down there was no need for 12,000 people to gather here in Bali to have a watered-down text. We could have done that by email.” —Dr. Angus Friday, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States