Greenpeace Blocks Syncrude Toxic Lake

News Release:

Greenpeace activists obstruct Syncrude tar sands operation

24 July 2008 (Fort McMurray) — Braving toxic fumes and the same toxic tailings waste that earlier this year killed 500 ducks, Greenpeace activists entered Syncrude’s Aurora North tar sands operation and blocked a pipe into the two-kilometre wide tailings pond.

Shortly after 11:00 a.m today, 11 Greenpeace activists blocked the pipe to prevent further toxic contamination of Alberta’s environment. The activists capped the opening of the pipe, locking a large device in place while several other activists erected a triangular banner over another pipe depicting a skull and crossbones which hung above the pipe’s opening, giving the illusion of toxic water gushing from the “mouth” of the skull. Several other activists deployed a massive banner along the bank of the tailings pond, reading “World’s Dirtiest Oil: Stop the Tar Sands.”

Oil Sands Boom Swamps Canadian Wilderness

Oil sands boom swamps the Canadian wilderness
Environmentalists want tougher laws to halt the damage, writes Tim Webb
Tim Webb
Sunday July 20 2008
The Observer

Todd Dahlman scoops up a handful of oily sand and smiles. ‘This is the money
- it even smells like money,’ says the manager of Shell’s Muskeg River oil
sands mine in the Athabasca region of North Alberta in Canada.

We are standing in the middle of a pit 50m deep that giant diggers have
hollowed out of the earth. Some 150m beneath our feet lie almost a billion
barrels of oil.

Radio Show on Tar Sands

Indigenous Leaders Meet to Strategize Against Bitumen Extraction on Their Lands

Click Above for  full broadcast.

• Length: 5:09 minutes (4.72 MB)
• Format: Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

The market may be in recession, but the United States is still the
world’s most oil-hungry economy. And its corporations are busy tapping
new energy sources like tar sands, a mixture of sand and an extremely
dense form of petroleum called bitumen. The world’s largest deposits of
tar sands are in North America and companies use it to produce more
than a million barrels of oil per day. But the explosive growth of such
projects has huge environmental costs.  They damage land, air, water,
forests, and the climate. FSRN’s Christina Aanestad traveled to Lee,
Nevada for the 15th annual indigenous environmental network conference
where she talked to people who live in areas environmentally impacted
by bitumen production.

Clean Tech not Dirty Oil

Clean Tech Is the Answer to the Global Oil Crunch

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Category: Oil & Energy

Tags: credit crisis • Crude Oil Prices • FNM • FRE • Geothermal Stocks • Hank Paulson • Kate Incontrera • peak oil • solar stocks • Tar Sands • WB

By Kate Incontrera

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Dan Denning in The Daily Reckoning Australia says the world is facing a global oil crunch. And new ’solutions’ like Canada’s tar sands and Colorado’s shale oil are actually hugely wasteful of energy. We need an real advance in solar technology, says Dan…

The efforts to turn Canada’s tar sands and Colorado’s oil shale into energy are really just efforts to speed up what would happen naturally over time. But we don’t have time. So we throw excess energy at the problem, trying to cook shale in situ or use huge quantities of natural gas to increase oil production via the tar sands. We don’t have much excess energy, either.

2000 Tickets Issued on Highway of Death

Police issue 2,000 speeding tickets this year on deadly road

Posted By JOHN COTTER, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Posted 2 days ago

Police are getting fed up with motorists who are using a deadly road that links Edmonton to the oilsands region in northern Alberta as a speedway.

Since January, RCMP and provincial sheriffs have issued more than 2,000 speeding tickets to people driving on Highway 63, including 363 tickets over the weekend.

Alberta Needs an Energy Plan

Albertans deserve a viable energy plan for the future

Nigel Hannaford

Calgary Herald

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Say what you like about oilman T. Boone Pickens, and his campaign to cut U.S. oil imports by generating electricity with windmills, and using the natural gas this would free up for transportation fuel: At least, he has a plan.

The question is, does Alberta have an energy plan?