Alberta Tar Sands is a category limited to the location and production of tar sand bitumen, an area the size of the state of Florida in northern Alberta province. The giant processing plants near Fort McMurray where the land itself is strip mined as well as the primarily "in situ" in-ground steam separation/production and extraction plants in the Peace and Cold Lake Regions, all in Alberta, are the "Ground Zero" of the single largest industrial gigaproject ever proposed in human history.
The process of removing the tar from the sand involves incredible amounts of energy from clean-burning natural gas (with nuclear proposed along side), tremendous capital costs during build up, incredibly high petroleum prices to protect investments, and the largest single industrial contribution to climate change in North America. Production also involves the waste of fresh water from nearby lakes, rivers and aquifers that have already created toxic tailing ponds visible from outer space. None of the land strip mined has yet to be certified as reclaimed. It takes 4 tonnes of soil to produce one barrel of oil. The tar sands are producing over 1.2 million barrels of oil a day on average. The oil companies, Canada and the United States governments are proposing to escalate production to 5 million barrels, almost all destined for American markets-- and lower environmental standards while doing so. They also would need to violate the national and human rights of many indigenous nations who are rightly concerned about many dire social, environmental and economic repercussions on their communities.
To get the needed energy supplies, diluent for the bitumen and diverted freshwater to produce and then to transport the flowing heavy bitumen for refining would require massive new infrastructure and pipeline building from three different time zones in the Arctic, across British Columbia and through Alberta in a criss-cross pattern, into pipelines to such destinations as California, China, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ontario, Illinois, Wisconsin and Texas. This entire project is now estimated at over $170 billion dollars. And after the whole process described so far, only then will all this dirty petroleum get burned and expel greenhouse gasses into the air causing further climate change.
clip:
"The Alberta tar sands are big, but even the Canadian government does not project them paying out much more than three million barrels a day when they reach maximum production in five or ten years, and the process will probably poison all the groundwater east of the Canadian Rockies."
Rigged to Blow
Tuesday, 15 May 2007
by James Kunstler
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1579/81/
A press release below from the EUB-- the same people telling us that Nuclear Powerplants that take years to construct, and then more years of operation to start being a reduction in Greenhouse gas emissions, are an "environmental benefit". Their track record is no longer credible. Here below, spilling oil is not dangerous to your health. So says the EUB.
--M
EUB Completes Investigation Into Rainbow Pipeline Failure Near Slave Lake
Calgary, Alberta (May 9, 2007) The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board
(EUB) has completed its investigation into a pipeline leak that
Tory MPs storm out of meeting on energy sharing; Canada left short to aid U.S., says professor
The Edmonton Journal (A6) The Ottawa Citizen (A3) The Montreal Gazette (A12)
Fri 11 May 2007
OTTAWA - Amid heated charges of a coverup, Tory MPs on Thursday abruptly shut down parliamentary hearings on a controversial plan to further integrate Canada and the U.S.
The point of this article is, unfortunately, to give advice to major corporations who are decimating nature at a nearly unparalleled rate a way to do so less horridly (like a smart bomb, the terminology is far more distracting than illuminating). Nonetheless, the developers who look at the single largest industrial project in history are salivating at ways to expand it into their own realm.
Whitecourt bids for nuclear plant
Upstart Calgary firm prepares to file applications for $6.2-billion Candu project
Jason Markusoff, The Edmonton Journal
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=24103fc4-5cc5-4...
May 04, 2007
EDMONTON - An upstart Calgary energy firm is thrusting Alberta headlong into the nuclear debate, with plans to apply next month to build a $6.2-billion twin reactor in northern Alberta that would become the largest -- and most controversial -- power plant in the province.
Too few bright ideas
David Suzuki
Editorial - Friday, May 04, 2007
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?cont...
When Environment Minister Baird announced his government's new climate change plan, I was in Toronto, getting ready to shoot some television commercials promoting energy conservation. I volunteered to do the commercials because I believe that everyone has to do his fair share in reducing the threat of global warming. Mr. Baird and Prime Minister Harper apparently disagree.
Colo. woman tweaks energy giant
Her website has prompted legal action from the Canadian company and increasing media attention.
By Andy Vuong
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5813210
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 05/03/2007 11:00:24 PM MDT
A Lakewood woman has drawn the ire of a Canadian energy giant after creating a website that sheds an unfavorable light on the environmental impacts of the company's oil-sands production.
"Meanwhile, Canada falls farther behind in its rail infrastructure, continues to build sprawling, car-dependent, single-family houses on local farmland, and continues to invest in the appallingly destructive Alberta Tar Sands, Harper's home turf and financial base.
Canada cannot do its part to save the lives of those millions of people who will be victims of climate change until it decarbonizes its economy. That means no more Tar Sands and no more automobile suburbs."
National Climate Change Plans Come Nowhere Near What We Need to Do
Posted 2007/05/01 | By: Ryan McGreal
The language of "inevitability" is the only thing that is truly inevitable. A rule of thumb for something that your instincts tell you may not be a good idea and perhaps might see opposition is that the moment it is treated as "inevitable" means that those who plan such things truly fear it is actually not at all inevitable.
China's consul general flies to Fort McMurray
Meets with 120 Chinese workers after fatal accident
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=0166748b-62c8-4...
Published: Friday, April 27, 2007
EDMONTON Chinas Calgary-based consul general flew to Fort McMurray Friday to meet with a group of Chinese workers based at Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.s Horizon oilsands project in the wake of a workplace accident that left two men dead and four others injured.
