With the land already compromised South and the tarsands themselves so vast and ugly, these are the projects that we can safely overlook or play down, right?
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.
With the land already compromised South and the tarsands themselves so vast and ugly, these are the projects that we can safely overlook or play down, right?
When these are the types of editorials written by those most sympathetic to the tarsand producers, we know the tide is slowly yet surely turning.
-M
Showdown With Big Oil
April 3, 2007
By NEIL WAUGH
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Business/Columnists/Waugh_Neil/2007/04/03/390...
There’s a battle brewing out there. People are getting right ticked off.
The boom-to-end-all-booms is starting to look like a bust for many. And they are getting mad.
Already Premier Ed Stelmach has three not-in-my-backyard movements going in his constituency alone.
Dehcho Process talks on hold
Last Updated: Monday, March 19, 2007 | 6:39 PM CT
CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2007/03/19/nwt-dehcho.html
Dehcho land-claim negotiations remained in limbo on Monday with the cancellation of the latest round of negotiations this week.
As well, the Dehcho First Nation announced it will not nominate any members to the two boards looking at Mackenzie Valley resource management. In the past, Grand Chief Herb Norwegian has claimed the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act does not apply to the Dehcho.
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.
The following article from Alberta Views Magazine also received an important letter to the editor follow up from Reinie Jobin, the Elder mentioned at the outset of the piece. His response is attached and appended at the conclusion of the original article below, on this same posting.
Thanks to the Ontario based solidarity organization, Friends of the Lubicon for providing these two articles:
http://www.tao.ca/~fol
ALBERTA VIEWS MAGAZINE
MARCH 2007
FEATURE REPORT
NO DEAL
Oil sands boom adds to worker shortage woes
BRIAN BAKER
staff writer
http://dcnonl.com/article/20070402300
In labour hungry Alberta, more oil sands production is predicted through to the year 2020, a portent that may compound the province’s construction industry woes.
A Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) study predicts the oil sands in Fort McMurray will triple production, pushing spending over $7.5 billion mark.
Limited time for training and demand in ICI sector construction will be pushed to the limits when the bitumen boom hits its full potential.
Does anyone remember when nuclear power was considered dangerous and of grave, permanent risk for millions of years at a time to all the lands in and around any nuclear plant?
Analysis: Nuclear-powered oil sands
By BEN LANDO
UPI Energy Correspondent
http://www.upi.com/Energy/analysis_nuclearpowered_oil_sands/20070330-063...
WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- Nuclear companies and those mining Canada's oil sands are poised to team up to separate crude from deep Earth and pump it to the surface.
On the homepage of Enbridge, you can find this declaration about the Spearhead Pipeline:
"Enbridge intends to reverse the flow of the pipeline to transport
Canadian crude oil south from the company's mainline system at Chicago
to the storage and refining hub at Cushing, Oklahoma."
Yet another pipeline project that is absolutely dependent on the existence of the tar sands expansion.
-Macdonald
--
Open season extended for Enbridge expansion
Sat, March 31, 2007
http://calsun.canoe.ca/Business/2007/03/31/3879325-sun.html
By CP
Like the bulk of the proposed pipelines to head south after leaving the Tarsands, this pipeline project run by Enbridge is actually taking heavy bitumen to be refined in the southern 48. That isn't merely to keep the corporations in the southern US functioning, but as the rest of the world's capacity shrinks while demand grows, as it is wont to do, this is the only feasible way that the US Dep't of Energy's strategy of bleeding the Albertan tarsands as fast as possible can actually get refined, for there would be no way to construct the needed infrastructure fast enough.