Economics drive tar sands operations. Record highs in oil prices, though still fluctuating, will make tar sand oil ‘economical’ (read: profitable) well into the future. Government subsidies to this environmentally disastrous process remain in place from a time when the federal government was sponsoring research into the possibility of recovering this oil. Stock prices of tar sands developers grow the more conventional oil is scarce.
Koch company buys up more oil sands licenses in Canada
Jenny Uechi
Mar 12th, 2015
Koch Oil Sands Operating ULC is buying up more licenses in Alberta's oil sands, Oilsands Review reported today.
"Bulletin records show that 15 licences were issued on March 3, 2015, for operator Koch Oil Sands in the Cadotte area," the Review reported.
Oilsands leases comprised $21 million of the $44.67 million generated by Alberta's Wednesday land sale.
U.S. Senate fails to override Obama’s veto of Keystone XL bill
Paul Koring
WASHINGTON — The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Mar. 04 2015
Keystone XL backers in the U.S. Senate failed Wednesday to override President Barack Obama’s veto of congressional efforts to approve the controversial Canadian oil sands pipeline.
Cut costs or face ‘death spiral,’ CNRL warns oil sands
PETER SCOWEN
FORT McMURRAY, ALTA. — The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Feb. 19 2015
The president of one of Canada’s biggest oil and gas producers delivered a stern warning to the oil sands industry, telling a room full of Fort McMurray business people that they need to start cutting costs or the industry will fall into a “death spiral.”
The “made in Fort McMurray cost” of doing business has risen too quickly and must end, Steve Laut of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. told members of the local Chamber of Commerce.
Tar sands campaigners are Canada's new 'terrorists'
Pete Dolack
5th March 2015
Canada's 'Anti-Terrorism Bill' proposes a massive increase in the power of security services, writes Pete Dolack - and in the crosshairs are campaigners against a tar sands industry that's intent on releasing 240 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, and those fighting the pipelines needed to get the heavy crude to market. Who are the real 'extremists'?
Koch brothers' tar sands connection revealed
U.S. billionaire duo's huge stake in northern Alberta fields more than Conoco, Exxon and Chevron put together
by Enzo DiMatteo
March 4, 2015
A map released by the San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization (IFG) shows that the U.S. billionaire Koch brothers own more of the Alberta tar sands, some 890,000 hectares (2 million acres), than oil and gas giants Exxon, Chevron and Conoco combined.
With Keystone XL pipeline uncertain, Alberta floats idea of moving tar-sands oil through Alaska
02/10/2015
Officials in the Canadian province of Alberta say they hope to talk to Alaska leaders about shipping tar-sands crude oil through the state as the Keystone XL pipeline route through the Lower 48 remains bogged down in politics.
An Alaska economist said the idea faces many challenges but is possible.
"The desert is full of mirages, but the desert also has water," said Gunnar Knapp, director of the University of Alaska Anchorage's Institute of Social and Economic Research.
New hopes that tar sands could be banned from Europe
Landmark EU fuel quality directive gets a reprieve, opening the way for more-polluting tar sands oil to be taxed at a higher rate effectively pricing it out of the market
Arthur Neslen in Brussels
Thursday 19 February 2015
A landmark directive with the potential to ban tar sands oil from Europe has been reprieved, the Guardian has learned.
The EU’s most senior energy official confirmed that the fuel quality directive (FQD) to encourage greener road fuels will not be scrapped at the end of the decade, as had been thought.
Shell Withdraws From Largest Tar Sands Project Yet
by Ari Phillips Posted on February 25, 2015
"Shell Withdraws From Largest Tar Sands Project Yet"
Keystone XL is not the only deciding factor in the future of tar sands extraction.
Anti-oil sands activists in the U.S. are getting visits from the FBI
Alexander Panetta
WASHINGTON — The Canadian Press
Published Saturday, Feb. 07 2015
Unexpected visitors have been dropping in on anti-oil activists in the United States — knocking on doors, calling, texting, contacting family members.
The visitors are federal agents.
Opponents of Canadian oil say they’ve been contacted by FBI investigators in several states following their involvement in protests that delayed northbound shipments of equipment to Canada’s oilsands.
Shell shelves plan for tar sands project in face of low oil prices
Withdrawal from the Pierre River project is the latest in a series of blows to industry reliant on high cost production struggling with oil prices at six-year lows
Shell has shelved plans for a major new tar sands mine in Canada, the largest project yet to fall victim to low oil prices.
The company has withdrawn its application for the 200,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Pierre River project and will instead concentrate on boosting the profitability of its existing 255,000-bpd oil sands operations.
