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.
U.S. activist takes on Syncrude
Colorado woman 'appalled' by the energy used at the Alberta tar sands operation
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070503.OILSANDS03/TPS...
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
Syncrude Canada Ltd. has picked an unlikely David-and-Goliath-type battle with a feisty 85-year-old Colorado grandmother over a website she created that portrays the giant energy company in an unflattering light over the environmental costs of the tar sands.
This new port development, lauded as a part of a Canadian strategy to open up a Gateway to the Asia Pacific, is all a part of the new plans to make northern BC-- in Prince Rupert and further into the shoreline at what is commonly called Kitimat-- a major hub for bringing in diluent fuels from Russia while shipping Tarsand mock oil to China and California.
TransCanada considers Alberta nuclear source
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/208153
Apr 27, 2007 07:02 PM
Dina O'Meara
Canadian press
CALGARY–Pipeline and power giant TransCanada Corp. (TSX: TRP) said today coal is still king in Alberta, but that building a nuclear power plant in Western Canada could be an option in the future.
"The way we look at it, nuclear is primarily an option for supplying electricity demand in Alberta, long-term" Hal Kvisle, president and chief executive said, following the company's annual meeting.
Yet another great example of how impossible it is for a democratic discussion for the people of all of North America to be commenced without a realistic environmental impacts assessment from the tarsands-- an assessment that must take place for the entire continent, necessary components therein, and all of the "natural extensions" that will "guarantee the lifetime" of this or that pipeline (For example in the Mackenzie Valley-- stage one of the pipeline would ultimately lead to a decimation of the Colville Lake/Sahtu region through a gazillion and one gas pads).
Oil pipeline on fast track
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070429/NEWS/7042...
Firm hopes to pump 435,000 barrels per day under S.D. by 2009
By Peter Harriman
pharrima@argusleader.com
April 29, 2007
For South Dakotans used to seeing large projects such as the Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railroad expansion toil for years to gain regulatory approval and fight legal challenges, a proposed oil pipeline through eastern South Dakota appears to be moving at astonishing speed.
Nuclear power plant proposed for Whitecourt
Energy Alberta Corporation, an Alberta-based energy company, is actively looking at the town of Whitecourt and other Alberta communities as a potential host for a nuclear power plant.
http://www.whitecourtstar.com/News/303973.html
Tuesday May 01, 2007
The company has said they expect the plant to be part of an exciting new venture that will benefit Alberta for decades to come and will provide clean, emission free power required by the ever-growing oil sands projects.
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
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.
When we are able to chart where the tar sands are going, and by adding up the component plans that are already announced we can, the sheer size and scope makes ignoring them or allowing -- as the article says-- for "business as usual" a complete, total surrender to being decimated by climate change. Mr Harper has already had private meetings with the US Dep't of Energy and Natural Resources Canada, along with the oil executives.
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.
