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.
Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska
By Yuriy Humber and Bradley Cook
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=a5OJJzlp0xwM&refer=c...
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Russia plans to build the world's longest tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.
The approval of the port in Gitimaat ["Kitimat"] needs to be rescinded. This port is completely useless if there is a shipping moratorium, and with a port approval it is politically much harder to imagine both the maintenance of the shipping ban (building a port is for use) and to prevent the construction of the Enbridge Gateway Pipeline.
Two notes: This story comes from within the industry.
Two: the point about "The high oil prices and sharply increased upstream spending budgets of most oil companies..." translates into how expensive it is to drill/mine/pump/dig the heavy crude out of the earth and into a pipe-- the term "upstream" means the oil equivalent of a watershed. "Downstream" would be the refinery.
Oil Shale, burning much like coal after a more -involved extraction process than "regular" tar sands, is perhaps the energy equivalent of a scoundrels refuge. If we see the energy economy go to this form of extraction without coming up with a plan for a non-oil existence, then we may as well give up on most everything save the immediate future, for it will be the final surrender to climate change and the destruction of the liveable biosphere, for the purpose of fuelling a riding lawn mower...
--M
Hatch urges use of Utah's tar sands and oil shale
Company plans more than 100 oilsands wells
Japan Canada wants to eventually produce 35,000 barrels per day
Ashok Dutta, CanWest News Service
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=5346caff-...
Published: Friday, April 13, 2007
CALGARY -- Japan Canada Oil Sands Ltd. (Jacos) is pressing ahead with a three-year program to drill more than 100 delineation wells and shoot over 65 square kilometres of new 3-D seismic data at its lease in Athabasca's oilsands.
Shell reserves show shift from oil to gas
Mon Apr 2, 2007 11:51AM BST
Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/stocksNews/idUKNOA23899520070402
By Tom Bergin
LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell pumped twice as much oil as it
found last year, forcing the company to rely on traditionally
lower-margin natural gas and oil sands to boost its reserves.
Figures issued on Monday echoed a trend across the industry as resource
holders increasingly shun the oil majors.
A spokesman said on Monday that Shell's reserve replacement ratio (RRR)
Pioneering Welsh town begins the transition to a life without oil
As the supply of cheap fuel dwindles, rural Lampeter embarks on 'energy descent'
Felicity Lawrence
Saturday April 7, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,2051911,00.html
There is, as the ads say, no Plan B. The age of cheap oil is drawing to a close, climate change already threatens, and politicians dither. But the people of Lampeter, a small community in the middle of rural Wales, gathered together earlier this week to mobilise for a new war effort. They decided to plan their "energy descent".
Tar sand proposal for locals at Shell Open House
Thu, March 29, 2007
The curious and the committed came to learn details of a proposed refinery.
By JOE MATYAS, SUN MEDIA
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/CityandRegion/2007/03/29/3861392-sun.html
WALLACEBURG -- Shell Canada officials were anything but lonely here yesterday as they gave the public its first look at a proposed refinery that could cost between $6 billion and $8 billion.
Tree huggers, job seekers, property owners, politicians, the media and the just plain curious came to the Oaks Inn for a five-hour, show-and-tell.
Potential tar sands project sparks suit
By BOBBY MAGILL
The Daily Sentinel (Colorado)
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/03/15/3_15_1a_T...
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Four environmental groups are accusing the Bureau of Land Management of violating various federal laws in order to allow tar sands development near Canyonlands National Park’s Maze District in Utah and within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Much of the gas in the northeast region of British Columbia (and a little from Yukon and the Liard region of the NWT) is already being fed into pipes in the Albertan system. A corridor pipe, short and innocuous seeming, is to be proposed soon, taking this and much much more gas from all over northwestern Turtle Island directly to the tar sands.
This health cost is only going to grow exponentially.
Macdonald
Oil and Gas industry battles worker death toll
41 workers have died in the B.C. oilpatch in the past six years
Michael Kane, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, March 28, 2007
