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.
Our leaders don’t get it
SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki
http://commonground.ca/iss/0706191/cg191_suzuki.shtml
When Environment Minister John Baird announced his government’s new climate change plan, I was in Toronto, getting ready to shoot some television commercials promoting energy conservation. I volunteered to do the commercials because I believe that everyone has to do his fair share to reduce the threat of global warming. Mr. Baird and Prime Minister Harper apparently disagree.
Ban doesn't apply in this case, ministers say
Moratorium 'applies only to southbound oil-tanker traffic'
Christina Montgomery, The Province
Published: Sunday, June 03, 2007
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=8eab3918-c7b2-49ca-...
When is a moratorium not a moratorium? Apparently, when governments decide it's just a "policy."
China warms to B.C. coal
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=d73404f8-...
Transportation problems in Australia create opportunity for West Coast producers
Joanne Lee-Young, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, June 04, 2007
China's steel-makers are hungry for coal as the world's fastest-growing economy continues to overheat, and that is fuelling Chinese interest in B.C.'s coal resources, which have traditionally served Asian markets other than China.
Peak oil: A detailed and transparent analysis
(the article at the link provided below includes many graphs to help understand the issue ever more clearly)
by Phil Hart and Chris Skrebowski
http://www.energybulletin.net/30537.html
Baghdad Burns, Calgary Booms
By Naomi Klein // The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070618/klein
The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in
history. All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up
national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely
"tax holidays" and pay a laughable 1 percent in royalties to the
government.
This isn't the boom in Iraq sparked by the proposed new oil law--that
will come later. This boom is already in full swing, and it is
The shocking price of using up fossil fuels
Emissions would stay in the atmosphere for more than 5,000 years, scientist says
Margaret Munro, CanWest News Service
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=e605ed94-9c7f-42fa...
Published: Thursday, May 31, 2007
Burning all known reserves of fossil fuels, from Alberta's tarsands to China's vast stores of coal, would have much graver long-term consequences than previously thought, according to climate scientists.
CANOE -- CNEWS: Macleans - Harper embraces the nuclear future Page 1
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Rogers/Macleans/2007/05/03/pf-4150972.html
May 3, 2007
Harper embraces the nuclear future
Climate-change anxiety breathes new life into nuclear power,
and shifts Ottawa's plans
By JOHN GEDDES -- Maclean's
Stephen Harper would seem an unlikely pitchman for nuclear
power. When the Prime Minister launches into his familiar spiel
about Canada as an emerging "energy superpower," we all think
we know what he's talking about - he's an Alberta MP, after all, and
Too Good to Be True
Certain organizations--Pew is one--are routinely treated as benign and neutral, beyond partisan politics. They're not.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006499
BY MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER
Friday, April 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
Environmentalism can't succeed until it confronts the destructive nature of
modern work - and supplants it. (Last of a two-part series)
by Curtis White
Orion magazine (May / June 2007)
Environmentalists see the asphalting of the country as a sin against the world
of nature, but we should also see in it a kind of damage that has been done to
humans, for what precedes environmental degradation is the debasement of the
human world. I would go so far as to say that there is no solution for
environmental destruction that isn't first a healing of the damage that has been
Oil Sands Gaining Ground With Rising Costs Of Crude Oil
5/21/2007
http://www.oilandgasonline.com/content/news/article.asp?DocID=%7B3902492...
Palo Alto, CA - As prices and global demand for crude oil continue to increase, the North American oil sands market is poised for remarkable growth. Recent technological developments have considerably reduced the extraction and upgrading costs of bitumen. This, along with high crude oil prices, has made oil sands an attractive proposition for oil companies.
