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.

warning: Creating default object from empty value in /var/www/drupal-6.28/modules/taxonomy/taxonomy.pages.inc on line 33.

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.

Canadians need to "reel in" Big Oil: The Need for Law Reform

Canadians need to "reel in" Big Oil: The Need for Law Reform
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20070526122247132
by PatriotPete/bcpolitics.ca Peter Dimitrov, May 26, 2007

"Orinoco Seizure by Hugo Chavez Threatens Global Oil Stability"

It should come as no surprise that this move is "welcomed" in such reactionary fashion; radicals act, reactionary anti-movements react. Here is just such an ideological reaction below.

Orinoco Seizure by Hugo Chavez Threatens Global Oil Stability
Martin Hutchinson on May 18th, 2007
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/orinoco/2007/05/18/

More Firms moving into the Tarsands

This article is quite notable in that it comes from Qatar, and it is basically a Middle Eastern tip of the hat to peak oil. As the world continues to search for new sources of bitumen to make [mock] oil from the tarsands, this description of the mini rush for nation-states and companies to diversify their portfolios to include tarsands oil is yet more indication less and less people in positions to know about it believe that oil prices will drop below "economical levels" for the tarsands. That is roughly $30 barrels.

--M

More firms moving into costly oil sands

SPP "Could Dwarf NAFTA"

The SPP, let us not over-state things, is designed to allow the fastest use of tarsands oil while moving goods and other trasport items, including 'temporary workers' across borders that are no longer free for travel minus a passport. One giant set of rules built up to achieve the maximum flow of goods, in particular energy, while restricting the same among people.

The sovereignty of energy and capital.

--M

Wide-ranging accord with U.S., Mexico could dwarf NAFTA, MPs hear
http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/270407_dwarf_nafta.html
Don Butler / CanWest News | April 27, 2007

Harper and Bush "Under Fire From Environmentalists"

Harper and Bush under fire from environmentalists
Mike De Souza, CanWest News Service
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=80120b49-2802-4...
Published: Saturday, May 19, 2007

OTTAWA -- Canadian and American politicians renewed attacks on their respective governments Friday over concerns the Harper and Bush administrations are cooking up a scheme to undermine international action on climate change.

Presentation on the SPP to the International Trade Committee [Parkland Institute]

Gordon Laxer
Political Economy Professor, and The Director
Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta
May 10, 2007

Introduction
Parkland Institute is an Alberta-wide research network at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. We are supported by over 600 individual members and dozens of progressive organizations. Parkland Institute conducts research and education for the public good.

My remarks are on the energy and climate change implications of the SPP.

Why No Energy Security for Canadians?

Fidel Castro on the Lie of Ethanol Production as an Alternative Energy Source

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2007/ing/f140507i.html
Fidel Castro
May 14, 2007

María Luisa Mendonça brought to the meeting in Havana, a powerful documentary film on the subject of manual sugarcane cutting in Brazil.

As I did in my previous reflection, I have written a summary using María Luisa’s own paragraphs and phrases. It goes as follows:

Rigged to Blow

clip:
"The Alberta tar sands are big, but even the Canadian government does not project them paying out much more than three million barrels a day when they reach maximum production in five or ten years, and the process will probably poison all the groundwater east of the Canadian Rockies."

Rigged to Blow

Tuesday, 15 May 2007
by James Kunstler
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1579/81/

National Energy Board: Six fold increase in hearings related to energy sector

Signs of out-of-control growth...

May 1, 2007 6:37:00 PM MST
National Energy Board says hot energy climate means six fold increase in hearings (NEB-Hearings)
http://www.oilweek.com/news.asp?ID=8834

CALGARY (CP) _ The National Energy Board, Canada‘s federal energy regulator, says its hearings days increased six-fold last year thanks to a hot energy sector.

The NEB Annual reports says the regulator spent 141 days last year hearing applications for development to Canada‘s energy sector; nearly one-third devoted to the multi-billion dollar Mackenzie Gas Project.

'It doesn't feel the same'-- Oil Shale from the US Midwest

The oilshale investors should feel safe. The dwindling of energy reserves globally combined with the "instability" of the larger conventional oil fields left makes the price of petroleum safely unable to go down as it did in 1982 with the Saudis unleashing massive new volumes to undermine the USSR (it worked). That cannot happen today because the Saudis don't have such reserves.

So now, cutting the top off of Colorado, flipping it over and melting it down like lead is on the agenda. Good business sense is not necessarily good sense, and in this case it is suicide by petrol.