Land, regardless of whether covered by forests, tundra or grasslands, is threatened by mining operations such as Alberta’s vast open tar pit operations, or through incredible networks of “right of way” cuts for pipelines that extend in the hundreds of thousands of miles, all told, and across the continent in four directions and to three oceans—either through feeding the tarsand operations with fossil fuel energy or through feeding energy markets from tarsand operations after production. In the case of pipeline right of ways, they can blast directly through mountains or be buried in permafrost if needed, to get the energy to move.
January 6, 2008
Government Responsible for Sustainable Tar Sands Development
by Rachel Penner de Waal
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Alberta's current royalty regime has likely cost the province more in lost revenue than Trudeau's National Energy Program did, according to a senior policy analyst at the Pembina Institute.
BLM: Tar sand development may hurt parks
By BOBBY MAGILL
The Daily Sentinel
Monday, January 07, 2008
Tar sands development could severely affect Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and a stretch of the San Rafael Swell along Interstate 70, according to a Bureau of Land Management report.
Gas producers await fate of Alaska pipeline
West at risk
Jon Harding, Financial Post Published: Tuesday, January 08, 2008
CALGARY -- Almost half the natural gas pipeline capacity leaving Alberta today for markets across the continent could sit empty by 2018 unless an Alaska pipeline gets built and connects to the Alberta hub, says a new study by the Canadian Energy Research Institute.
Still no interest in exploring high Arctic: official
Last Updated: Friday, January 4, 2008 | 9:36 AM CT
CBC News
Companies have yet to take up the federal government's invitation to explore the high Arctic for oil and gas, even though that invitation has been extended for the sixth year in a row.
Richard Casey, an official with the federal Indian and Northern Affairs Department, told CBC News that there has been no interest from any company to explore for oil and gas around Axel Heiberg Island, located west of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, or in any surrounding areas.
Hear no peak
by David Strahan
Letter to the Financial Times
Sir:
Just as the Financial Times’ news coverage of oil was beginning to improve (“Oil watchdog reworks reserves forecasts”, 27.12.07), Lex goes and spoils it with a truly shoddy analysis: “Peak no evil” (03.01.08) rehearsed all the old myths that have been comprehensively debunked in recent years.
Price too high: Weigh all costs of energy from oil shale, tar sands
Salt Lake Tribune Editorial // 01/01/2008 02:13:04 PM MST
It's obvious the Bush administration wants to go on record with the energy industry as having done everything it could to encourage development of oil deposits in the West, even those embedded in tar sands and shale, no matter the cost to the region's wild lands.
A very significant statement, buried within the article below, produced for a North Dakota audience, in that is shows basically why EVERY SINGLE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT is a crock of doo-doo. Cumulative Impacts are measured, or there is nothing to look at within a report. It's really quite simple-- if the report does not factor in all the ways in which the environment is impacted by development, then you don't have an impact of development to the environment report. Everything else then, is a smoke and mirrors game.
Canadian National acquires oil sands rail line
Canadian National Railway (CN) has acquired the Athabasca Northern Railway in Alberta for $25.3 million and plans to invest as much as $136 million to upgrade the rail link to the oil sands region of Northern Alberta. Athabasca Northern, which runs from Boyle, Alberta, to near Fort McMurray, Alberta, had been owned by Cando Contracting, but Reuters reports it was threatened with abandonment because of deteriorating tracks.
What the Tar Sands Need
Processing requires massive inputs of water, energy, land, labour
December 31, 2007
by Dru Oja Jay
The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca
Water
For each barrel of oil produced from the tar sands, between two and 4.5 barrels of water is needed. The water is used in the process of extracting bitumen from the naturally occurring the tar sand. The bitumen is later "upgraded" into synthetic crude oil.
December 28, 2007
Greenwashing Energy Crops
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
By JIM GOODMAN
