Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Peak Oil

Peak Oil is starting to be understood across a broad spectrum, but the direct connection between peak oil, climate change and the American market-led attempt to squeeze all energy out of Alberta cannot be overstated. The smaller the global supply of oil gets, the more CO2 has been emitted and the more climate change will have advanced. This leads to more interest in the tar sands—because the profit margin goes ever higher the fewer alternatives there are for petroleum. Without Peak Oil bearing down on humanity, no economical reason would exist to produce this energy intensive, low-output petrol.

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Peak Oil is starting to be understood across a broad spectrum, but the direct connection between peak oil, climate change and the American market-led attempt to squeeze all energy out of Alberta cannot be overstated. The smaller the global supply of oil gets, the more CO₂ has been emitted and the more climate change will have advanced. This leads to more interest in the tar sands—because the profit margin goes ever higher the fewer alternatives there are for petroleum. Without Peak Oil bearing down on humanity, no economical reason would exist to produce this energy intensive, low-output petrol.

More Firms moving into the Tarsands

This article is quite notable in that it comes from Qatar, and it is basically a Middle Eastern tip of the hat to peak oil. As the world continues to search for new sources of bitumen to make [mock] oil from the tarsands, this description of the mini rush for nation-states and companies to diversify their portfolios to include tarsands oil is yet more indication less and less people in positions to know about it believe that oil prices will drop below "economical levels" for the tarsands. That is roughly $30 barrels.

--M

More firms moving into costly oil sands

Harper and Bush "Under Fire From Environmentalists"

Harper and Bush under fire from environmentalists
Mike De Souza, CanWest News Service
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=80120b49-2802-4...
Published: Saturday, May 19, 2007

OTTAWA -- Canadian and American politicians renewed attacks on their respective governments Friday over concerns the Harper and Bush administrations are cooking up a scheme to undermine international action on climate change.

Presentation on the SPP to the International Trade Committee [Parkland Institute]

Gordon Laxer
Political Economy Professor, and The Director
Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta
May 10, 2007

Introduction
Parkland Institute is an Alberta-wide research network at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. We are supported by over 600 individual members and dozens of progressive organizations. Parkland Institute conducts research and education for the public good.

My remarks are on the energy and climate change implications of the SPP.

Why No Energy Security for Canadians?

Rigged to Blow

clip:
"The Alberta tar sands are big, but even the Canadian government does not project them paying out much more than three million barrels a day when they reach maximum production in five or ten years, and the process will probably poison all the groundwater east of the Canadian Rockies."

Rigged to Blow

Tuesday, 15 May 2007
by James Kunstler
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1579/81/

Tories Storm out of Hearing when Confronted on Tarsands Energy Policy

Tory MPs storm out of meeting on energy sharing; Canada left short to aid U.S., says professor
The Edmonton Journal (A6) The Ottawa Citizen (A3) The Montreal Gazette (A12)
Fri 11 May 2007

OTTAWA - Amid heated charges of a coverup, Tory MPs on Thursday abruptly shut down parliamentary hearings on a controversial plan to further integrate Canada and the U.S.

'It doesn't feel the same'-- Oil Shale from the US Midwest

The oilshale investors should feel safe. The dwindling of energy reserves globally combined with the "instability" of the larger conventional oil fields left makes the price of petroleum safely unable to go down as it did in 1982 with the Saudis unleashing massive new volumes to undermine the USSR (it worked). That cannot happen today because the Saudis don't have such reserves.

So now, cutting the top off of Colorado, flipping it over and melting it down like lead is on the agenda. Good business sense is not necessarily good sense, and in this case it is suicide by petrol.

Norway Buys Into Tar Sands

It is going to be incredibly illustrative how Canadian elites treat this-- if it gets a mention in more than stating-the-facts ways such as this announcement below. Silence would be every bit as loud. A major, non-private oil corporation for a 'foreign' country (that is, not the United States or Canada) has purchased Calgary based North American Oil Sands. Will the same level of fear mongering that accompanied Chinese investments be unleashed, along with a 'white peril' thinly veiled reference to base reactions towards Norway?

I seriously doubt it.

--M

Ali Samsam Bakhtiari and Peak Oil

Published on 24 Apr 2007 by Energy Bulletin / Whiskey & Gunpowder. Archived on 25 Apr 2007.
Ali Samsam Bakhtiari and Peak Oil
http://www.energybulletin.net/29162.html
by Byron King

I HAVE RECEIVED more correspondence from Ali Samsam Bakhtiari of Tehran, Iran. I want to bring Dr. Bakhtiari's important work to the attention of the readers of Whiskey & Gunpowder.

Sunoco Gives More to Democrats now than Republicans

The tactic being assumed by all the major players in the tarsands as of late is to pretend to love the earth too, but just that they have a different idea of what it will take to save the atmosphere and, well, life. This is right up the alley of the Democratic Party, who have a long history of pretending to care about green causes while assassinating all legislative and participatory attempts to make them back it up.

Nor is it at all surprising that Sunoco would be involved today. The story of Sunoco in tarsands?

Husky CEO Promises to Pass on 'Greening Costs' of Tar Sands to Customers

Public to pay for green policy: Lau
Husky CEO blunt about passing on government-mandated higher costs
Jon Harding, Financial Post
April 20, 2007
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3ba6045c-...

CALGARY - John Lau, president and chief executive of Husky Energy Inc., fired off a warning yesterday to Alberta and Canadian legislators circling the oilsands: Consumers, not oil companies, will bear the brunt of government policies that add costs to the massive energy developments.