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.
Locals lose out in Alberta's oil boom
By Ian McKinnon and Reg Curren Bloomberg News
Published: June 12, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/11/bloomberg/bxoil.php
CALGARY: Marilynn Sjulstad says she is experiencing the pain of an oil-fueled economic boom in Alberta while deriving little benefit from it.
Sjulstad, a 57-year-old Edmonton resident who has arthritis and fibromyalgia, says her rent will soon jump 27 percent - five times the increase in her monthly disability check.
Connector route roughed out
The sections marked in red show where logging roads already exist. The blue is the “to-do’ part of the proposed Connector.
http://www.northernsentinel.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=16&cat=23&id...
By Ryan Calvery
Jul 04 2007
Although a definitive right of way has never been carved out for a Houston-Kitimat road link, one resident has mapped out a plan that involves private investment.
CNPC Signs Canadian Oil-Sands Agreement
2007-07-02
The Wall Street Journal
http://english.cri.cn/3130/2007/07/02/262@244638.htm
In a sign of the expanding international ambitions of China's oil companies, China National Petroleum Corp. has bought the rights to explore for oil in Canada.
The state-owned parent of Hong Kong- and New York-listed PetroChina Co. will develop an oil-sands field that is estimated to contain about two billion barrels of a thick and hard-to-process form of oil called bitumen.
July 6, 2007
Clipper pipeline hearing set Nov. 5
http://dcnonl.com/article/id23517
CALGARY
The National Energy Board has scheduled a hearing on an application from Enbridge Pipelines Inc. to construct and operate the Canadian portion of the Alberta Clipper Expansion Project.
The Canadian portion of Alberta Clipper would involve the construction and operation of approximately 1,074 km of new 914 mm outside diameter (36-inch) oil pipeline between Enbridge’s Hardisty Terminal and the Canada - United States border near Gretna, Manitoba.
Three-year Suncor contract gets nod from union workers
UPDATED: 2007-07-06 01:53:16 MST
By CP
http://calsun.canoe.ca/Business/2007/07/06/4317550-sun.html
FORT McMURRAY -- About half of unionized workers at Suncor Energy Inc. near Fort McMurray have voted in favour of a new three-year contract.
Members of the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) Local 707 approved an agreement including a wage increase of 7% in the first year and 6% in each of the following two years, as well as a $4,000 lump sum payment.
FORT MCMONEY, FORT MCPROBLEMS
http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=6751
ANDREW CISAKOWSKI / cisa@vueweekly.com
For the past decade, Fort McMurray has grown at a rate of 10 per cent per year, over twice the provincial average. During this time it has developed all the characteristics of a boomtown: skyrocketing prices, overstretched infrastructure and a growing homeless problem. Only able to raise money through increasing property taxes, the city is at a loss of how to deal with these problems. More and more, public pressure is mounting for oil companies to foot the bill.
TransCanada boosts size of planned Keystone line
Tue Jul 3, 2007 11:43 AM EDT138
http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&stor...
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - TransCanada Corp. (TRP.TO: Quote) said on Tuesday it plans to boost the capacity of its proposed Keystone oil pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest to 590,000 barrels a day, from 435,000 barrels, after shippers committed to sending more crude on the line.
Oil tanker traffic ‘under radar’ along B.C. coastline
http://www.ladysmithchronicle.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=18&cat=23&...
By Brennan Clarke
Black Press
Jul 03 2007
VICTORIA – Increasing oil tanker activity in B.C.’s northern waters has West Coast NDPers calling on Ottawa and Victoria to “formalize” a long-standing moratorium on tanker traffic and offshore exploration.
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/maya_rolbin_ghanie/1259
posted by Maya Rolbin-Ghanie and Fort McMurray to Fort Chipewyan
June 29, 2007
What in Tarnation?
