Energy and how it is captured and consumed is barely viable in tar sands production. While the amount of oil in places such as the tar sands in Alberta or the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela may have deposits of similar size to the reserves of countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iraq, the return of new energy after expending energy in production is not even close. In Iraq, the process of using one barrel of oil generates 100 new barrels. In the tar sands, estimates of 3 to 1 and even as low as 1.5 to 1 have been made. Offsetting the net energy loss would require minimally 25-30 tar sands facilities for one Saudi plant operating at the same capacity.
Oilpatch risks turn from value creation to value destruction
Everybody Wants A Bigger Cut Of The Booming Industry
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=40c0596f-...
Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post
Published: Tuesday, August 07, 2007
For the first time in a generation, Alberta is facing a general strike within its construction trades that threatens to disrupt its booming oilsands industry and is introducing a new type of uncertainty --labour unrest.
Buying our way out of sin
THE TELEGRAM [St Lohn's, NFLD)
The Telegram
http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=51665&sc=80
For such a modern-day problem, it seems like a terribly Medieval solution. The problem is climate change — the way humanity is altering the Earth’s weather by spewing fossil-fuel emissions into the atmosphere.
GLOBE AND MAIL:
Print Edition 31/07/07 Page B1
RESOURCES: EXPANDING IN THE OIL SANDS
Shell unveils plan for biggest upgrader
Proposal could cost up to $27-billion as price of refining Alberta's heavy crude continues to climb
NORVAL SCOTT
July 31, 2007
CALGARY -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC is planning construction on the largest oil sands upgrader to date, even as other firms delay or cancel their own projects in the face of spiralling costs.
Target: tarsands
Greenpeace comes to Edmonton
By NICKI THOMAS, SPECIAL TO SUN MEDIA
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2007/07/31/4383282.html
Greenpeace is setting up shop in Edmonton with their sights set on shutting down Alberta’s tarsands.
“The tarsands are one of the most environmentally destructive projects in Canada, if not the world,” said tarsands campaign organizer Geeta Sehgal.
Sehgal said the tarsands create 40 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year, ensuring Canada can’t meet its commitments to the Kyoto Protocol.
Oil, gas development could harm First Nations' quality of living: Sierra Club
Last Updated: Friday, July 27, 2007 | 12:23 PM MT
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/07/27/nwt-sierra.html
CBC News
Decades of oil and gas activity in northern Alberta has done little to improve the lives of aboriginal people living there, according to a national environmental group that used federal government numbers that gauge community well-being.
Snippets from the Business pages:
1 Enbridge Promises to build Gateway Pipeline without PetroChina & build Alberta Clipper
2 Largest Companies trying to get in on Expansion of Tar Sands
3 CP to further Expand in Tar Sands
4 Husky adding more Refineries
5 Imperial Oil buys huge exploration permit in Arctic /Beaufort Sea
These stories paint a collective picture of development of mock "oil" out of control.
As the article explains, this is not only Suncor but one of many new vast expansions being planned by the "major players". The upgrader facilities are essential and not hard to understand. All of this development is, as always, continuous and along side existing facilities and tar pits, none of it slowing down or remaining static at a certain speed but like a run-away freight train. This train loaded with gas is headed straight for the water.
--M
Suncor to expand tar sands mining operations
By Scott Haggett
Airport expansion plan set to take off
http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/Local%20News/326841.html
Stories by SARAH FOX
Today staff
Friday July 27, 2007
The Fort McMurray airport is bursting at the seams as it welcomes 580,000 passengers a year through its doors.
This is twice the number the terminal was meant to accommodate when it was built in 1986.
Officials are currently planning an $80- to $100-million airport expansion which will include building a second runway and possibly an entirely new terminal building, said airport CEO Darryl Wightman.
This news article below shows, once again, that taking out the ability to construct pipelines to send oil and and bring gas (x2) in is a viable strategy for the cessation of the tar pits expansion. In other words, our fights against the Keystone, Alberta Clipper and North-Central Corridor, along with the Mackenzie Gas Project and Enbridge Gateway (among so many more!) all slow down the speed of flowing mock crude to a bottleneck pace.
Record gas prices not curbing drivers
By Associated Press // July 21, 2007
http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2007/07/21/money/doc46a2c55c375cf8724...
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Record-high prices for gasoline this year haven’t dampened U.S. drivers’ demand for fuel, an industry trade group said last week.
Drivers consumed a record 9.2 million barrels, or 388 million gallons, of gasoline on average every day during the first half of the year, up 1.5 percent from last year’s levels, the American Petroleum Institute said in its midyear review of fuel statistics.
