Oilsands needs special reporting rules: Environment, investor groups

Randy Boswell

Canwest News Service

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Canada’s oilsands industry, already the target this week of a major British investment firm’s campaign against the “climate-hostile fuel,” is now under fire from an international alliance of environment and investor groups, which has urged the U.S. securities regulator to rewrite proposed new rules on reporting petroleum reserves to reflect the “potentially enormous risks” – financially and ecologically – associated with the “carbon-intensive” Canadian energy source.

Poll: Albertans want a healthy environment

Albertans torn between resource riches, protecting environment

Kelly Cryderman

Canwest News Service

Saturday, September 13, 2008

CALGARY — Albertans are torn between wanting to reap the full benefits of their natural resource wealth and protecting the environment, a new survey suggests.

“They’re very concerned about the environment, but they don’t want to mess around with the economy,” says Leger Marketing pollster Marc Tremblay.

More than half the Albertans surveyed in the poll for the Calgary Herald – 58 per cent – said governments should take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – even if it means limiting economic development or eliminating jobs.

Fort Chip to World: SOS

Climate change, water policy and aboriginal health. Three issues that should be atop the election agenda. Three issues that start with the oil sands.

Canadians are dying. Our government is doing nothing about it. Will it take world attention to end this injustice?

That’s what some residents of Fort Chipewyan, the small northern Alberta town at the mouth of Lake Athabasca, have concluded, starting a campaign for an oil sands moratorium that they plan to take across North America and Europe, until health and water concerns are addressed.

Residents in Fort Chipewyan, Alta., say they saw this fish, seen in this Aug. 15 photo, caught from Lake Athabasca the previous week. (Courtesy of Ling Wang)

Fort Chip, an aboriginal community of 1200, has received increasing attention due to the high levels of cancer in the community. Dr. John O’Connor, a fly-in doctor first raised the issue publicly in 2005, noting the unusually high levels of a rare bile duct cancer, but was soon silenced by Health Canada and reprimanded by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta for causing “undue alarm”. Only last December was he finally cleared.

Abandon Tarsands says Investor

Abandon oil sands, urges big investor

• Heather Connon, investment editor
• The Observer,

One of Britain’s biggest investors will launch a campaign this week to persuade Shell and BP to drop their plans for heavy investment in oil sands and shale projects in North America.

Co-operative Asset Management is concerned that the huge environmental costs of producing crude from oil sands or shale could change the economics of these so-called ‘unconventional’ fuel sources, putting the oil companies and their investors at risk of a huge wasted investment.

More Birds Die in Alberta

Alberta oil leak kills 300 birds

By BILL KAUFMANN — Sun Media

Crude oil leaked from an untapped well in southeastern Alberta has killed up to 300 birds, sparking outrage among environmental critics.

The leak of 60 to 90 barrels of sweet heavy crude oil from a suspended well at CFB Suffield, 200 km southeast of Calgary, has killed hundreds of birds, said David Inkstrup, a spokesman for the federal Canadian Wildlife Service.

Drilled in 2005 but never put into production, the well is licensed to Calgary-based Harvest Energy Trust.

The latest mass death of birds is part of a disturbing trend which governments are neglecting to halt, said Greenpeace Canada spokesman Mike Hudema.

“It’s imperative there be enough people in the field to make sure these kinds of mishaps don’t occur,” said Hudema. “There seems to be an environmental incident in Alberta every week.”

Target Tar Sands

Layton targets tar sands
GLORIA GALLOWAY
Globe and Mail Update
September 8, 2008 at 7:04 PM EDT
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 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.

Linda Duncan, the environmental advocate who is running for the New Democrats in Edmonton-Strathcona, offered a running description of the devastation below. Wildlife has been displaced, she said, and ground water has been drained.

In Fort Smith, more than 300 kilometres north of the tar sands that lie outside Fort McMurray, Alta., people fear the chemicals they say may be flowing their way.

Layton Targets Tar Sands

Layton calls for halt to tar sands approvals

Updated Mon. Sep. 8 2008 10:05 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

NDP Leader Jack Layton cast doubt on Stephen Harper’s environmental policies as he flew over the Alberta oil sands in his campaign plane on Monday.

“We’re looking at the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world,” he said, “and Mr. Harper is responsible because he is giving away the store to big oil companies.”

Layton has demanded a moratorium on oil sands development, and criticized the “tax grab” it provides to oil and gas companies.

In a statement released on the NDP website Layton said: “Despite warnings from his own government agencies, Harper fast tracked Imperial Oil’s Kearl tar sands development, north of Fort McMurray, without any conditions to mitigate the significant impacts on the environment.”