Water is needed in huge amounts in tarsands production and in all other construction stages of tarsands infrastructure across the continent. It takes five litres of water to produce one of usable petrol. There is also water used to move gas, build new tar pits or that water which becomes polluted in the outlying areas. Waste tailings ponds are so vast as to be visible from outer space at this early point in production. Water is now being privatized in slow motion, as “access rights” are available in Alberta. As production grows and climate change continues to parch southern Albertan land, more and more water will be needed to help supply fuel for the American market. This water will ultimately be diverted from rivers, lakes, farms and cities throughout Canada; the water levels in the Athabasca River have already dropped several meters. The Deh Cho/Mackenzie River is already threatened, both from development along its valley and it is downstream from tar sands operations. A generation ago, the Athabasca River was clear and drinking was common. Now, those that live with the river consider it poison and off-limits.
Oilsands fatality raising eyebrows
By KEVIN CRUSH, SUN MEDIA
The second fatal incident on the Horizon oilsands project in less than two years has officials raising eyebrows.
Richard Boyd Boughner, 47, of Love, Sask., was killed Wednesday when the floating backhoe he was operating flipped in a tailings pond at the Horizon site north of Fort McMurray.
On April 4, 2007, a tank collapse on the sprawling site killed two foreign workers from China.
This project should likely become a lightening rod against Sag-D production as it is also one of the dirtiest in history, as it uses a gunk it calls "asphaltene"-- the left over crap from the Sag-D project. This produces vastly higher GG emissions, which are already on average 3-4 times higher than in regular oil in tar sands production, and slightly more in Sg-D production. This plant is only 8 kilometers from the indigenous and Metis settlement of Anzac.
--M
Long Lake tar sands project on track for first production later this month
September 2, 2008 - 21:58
COMMENTARY: The Business of Water
Shrinking Water Supplies and Growing Energy Demands—an Emerging Strategic Headache
By David Hampton
The Sonora Desert in Mexico. Rising populations and increased energy demand are straining limited global water resources.
Layton targets tar sands
GLORIA GALLOWAY
Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press
September 8, 2008
FORT SMITH, NWT — The plane carrying New Democrat Leader Jack Layton and his NDP entourage swooped over the Alberta tar sands Monday to show vast expanses of northern wilderness despoiled by development.
Ponds filled with tar and the chemicals that remain from oil extraction, forest that have criss-crossed with strips that have been cleared of trees, mines that rise out of nowhere.
Shell puts cork in methane-drilling plans - for now
Company agrees to speak with Tahltan about natives' concerns about impact of project on northwestern B.C.
WENDY STUECK
September 6, 2008
VANCOUVER -- Shell Canada Ltd. has temporarily shelved its plans to drill for coal-bed methane in northwestern British Columbia, delaying work for at least one more season and highlighting concerns over the potential impact of the projects in the remote wilderness area.
Will oilsands tar Winter Games?
The Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, August 19
Canadian officials surveying the Beijing Olympics must be paying special attention to the myriad protests and criticisms -- some overdrawn and overwrought -- that have dogged China before and during the Games. If they are wise, our observers should fight the temptation to feel smugly superior.
Warning: The author of this article is a well-known climate change denier, and advocate of wars of aggression around the planet. Nonetheless, it is interesting to read pro-war arguments for the West to use the tar sands as a weapon in their escalation of a new Cold War against Russia, which they actually claim is about "territorial integrity" and "Russian aggression". To hear advocates of the Empire (who just destroyed the "territorial integrity" of Yugoslavia and then Serbia itself? Who continues to wage war on the people of Iraq without provocation?
BLM sets environmental rules for shale energy
Utah Republicans praise the action, but actual development of the lands likely far in the future
By Christopher Smart
The Salt Lake Tribune 09/06/2008
Utah's Uinta Basin holds a lot of oil shale and some tar sands, but what it will take to turn that potential into petroleum remains a question with no easy answers or time frame.
MAN KILLED IN CNRL TAILINGS POND
September 4, 2008
Man killed in CNRL pond
Posted By By CAROL CHRISTIAN
Alberta’s shadow minister of employment wants a Canadian Natural Resources site shut down until the company can prove once and for all its Horizon site is safe.
Liberal MLA Hugh MacDonald called for the closure Wednesday after a third fatality in less than 18 months at the site, about 70 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.
