Social Impacts. Overnight injections of migrant workers will not build healthy communities and can have severely adverse impacts on existing communities, especially those of indigenous nations on their traditional lands. Such development brings vices and long term displacement too often. Drugs, alcohol and associated violence spreads. Hunting becomes difficult when the land is threatened, leading to a further loss of culture and tradition. In towns like Fort McMurray there is no planning for the future, but merely consumption in the present. However transient the individuals may be, the populations will not leave, as “development” takes on a logic all its own. All levels of run away development are subordinate to that development, not social need.
Environmentalists ask Chicago mayor to investigate BP oil spill
By Tara Kadioglu Post-Tribune
March 25, 2015
Environmentalist claim heavy oil leak was tar sands
Environmental activists delivered a letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel Wednesday demanding a public report and investigation into at least 1,600 gallons of heavy crude oil spilled into Lake Michigan last year from BP's Whiting refinery.
BP confirms oil spill into Lake Michigan from Whiting refinery
While We’ve Been Debating Keystone, The U.S. Has Grown Its Pipeline Network By Almost A Quarter
by Katie Valentine Posted on March 16, 2015
Americans have been waiting for the federal government to come to a decision over the Keystone XL pipeline for more than six years, enduring countless protests, Congressional hearings and even a Presidential veto over the controversial project.
But during that time, pipeline construction in the U.S. hasn’t slowed — in fact, it’s surged.
Environment: Canadian Citizen groups say new tar sands rules too weak to protect the Athabasca River
Posted on March 14, 2015
by Bob Berwyn
Staff Report
FRISCO — A set of proposed new water rules has unleashed a storm of protest in Canada, where citizen and conservation groups charge that the government is giving away the store to energy companies exploiting the tar sans of Alberta.
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.
