Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Social Impacts

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.

warning: Creating default object from empty value in /var/www/drupal-6.28/modules/taxonomy/taxonomy.pages.inc on line 33.

Alberta’s new economic boom

Camp Oil Sands: Alberta’s new economic boom
nathan vanderklippe
CALGARY— From Friday's Globe and Mail
Feb. 09, 2012

The floor of the Atco Ltd. (ACO.X-T62.971.111.79%)manufacturing plant sprawls out across 250,000 square feet of concrete covered with stacks of drywall, boxes of spiced ash mouldings and bags of insulation batting. Next to them is the assembly line, where dozens of 18-metre-long mobile housing units are rapidly taking shape, with workers using overhead cranes to raise completed walls and roofs into place.

Utah tar sands still seeking investors despite questions

By brandon loomis

The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Feb 15 2012

Eastern Utah’s tar sands are just a year or so from producing their first commercial quantities of oil — if environmental appeals are settled and the company planning to mine can attract investors.

Those are big ifs.

Two oil shale mining companies contend they’re right behind and said Wednesday at the Governor’s Energy Development Summit that the state is poised for “the next big play” in energy.

Cenovus gets price boost with direct sale to China

Cenovus gets price boost with direct sale to China
carrie tait
CALGARY— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012

Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE-T38.890.280.73%)sold its first drops of oil directly to China last week, fetching a higher price for its crude than if it sold its bounty in North America, and now plans to strike more export deals with Asian buyers.

EU 'Grandstanding' On Energy Imports, Says Federal Resources Minister Joe Oliver

02/16/2012

CALGARY - Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver is calling a European effort to bar oil imports from Alberta's oilsands nothing more than grandstanding.

Proposed changes to the European Union's fuel quality directive would reduce emissions from transport fuels by 10 per cent in the next decade — a goal that would make it more difficult to import oilsands fuel.

Oliver says the European position is both unscientific and an attempt to single out Canadian crude.

The Enpipe Line: 70,000 km of poetry

Creekstone Press Publications
The Enpipe Line: 70,000 km of poetry written in resistance to the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal

Description: 178 pages, 9X6 inches, perfect bound

ISBN: 978-0-9783195-6-4

Price: $18

Keystone XL key issue in U.S. election

By Yadullah Hussain, Financial Post February 10, 2012

The last time David H. Wilkins came to the National Post office for an editorial board meeting was in 2005. He was then U.S. Ambassador to Canada and President George W. Bush's key man in Ottawa.

Summing up the U.S.-Canada relationship at the time, Mr. Wilkins recalled a meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mr. Bush: "The President said: 'I will tell you what my policy is on Canada. My policy is to help Canada.' "

Keystone Pipeline Blocked From Crossing Texas Farm

Keystone Pipeline Blocked From Crossing Texas Farm
February 15, 2012

DALLAS (AP) — Owners of a northeast Texas farm have obtained a court order to block TransCanada from crossing the farm with a proposed pipeline planned to carry Canadian oil to refineries along the Texas Gulf coast.

If Gateway pipeline can't go to Kitimat then we'll re-examine Rupert, says Enbridge CEO

If pipeline can't go to Kitimat then we'll re-examine Rupert, says Enbridge CEO

By Alan S. Hale - The Northern View
February 10, 2012

The CEO of Enbridge inc., Pat Daniel, says if his company isn't able to build the Northern Gateway Pipeline to Kitimaat, the company would examine the possibility of having the Pipeline go to Prince Rupert instead.

Magical thinking

Magical thinking
Salt Lake Tribune
Updated Feb 8, 2012

It’s appropriate that Gov. Gary Herbert, in attacking a federal proposal to restrict the amount of public land available for oil shale and tar sands mining, should accuse the Bureau of Land Management of waving a “bureaucratic magic wand.” Because all the proposed rule would do is cut back on the amount of land where people would be allowed to carry out some magical alchemy that no one yet knows how to do.

Talk about hocus-pocus.

Tar Sands Represents Bonus and Risk to Great Lakes

Connected by Pipeline from Canada, Tar Sands Represents Bonus and Risk to Great Lakes
Tuesday, 07 February 2012
Circle of Blue
Jacob Wheeler

Transporting and processing corrosive crude raise new questions about consequences
BP is spending nearly $4 billion to expand and modernize its Whiting, Indiana refinery to process tar sands oil from Canada - an investment that has helped to make the Great Lakes Basin both a center of commerce in the two nation’s oil production boom and a target of rising environmental risks to the largest system of fresh surface water in the world.