Tar Sands

Neil Young to Play Benefit Concerts for Alberta First Nation Fighting Oilsands

December 11, 2013 Bob Weber www.canadianbusiness.com Educate! Environment, First Nations, Tar Sands

“The theme of the concerts is honour the treaties,” said Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation spokeswoman Eriel Deranger. “All the ticket sales, all the proceeds from the concerts, not a single cent goes to anyone other than (the First Nation).” Young made his opinion of oilsands development clear when he visited the band and the region last fall. He compared the sight of massive open-pit mines to Hiroshima after the nuclear bomb blast. Young is one of a number of global entertainment celebrities who have visited the oilsands. The list includes actresses Darryl Hannah and Neve Campbell and film director James Cameron.

Santa Fe Passes Resolution Opposing KXL, Endorsing Civil Resistance

December 8, 2013 Staff, www.santafenm.gov Resist! Climate Change, Tar Sands

Tonight the Santa Fe City Council passed a resolution respectfully requesting that President Obama deny the permit application by TransCanada to construct the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The resolution introduced on October 30, 2013 by Mayor David Coss and co-sponsored by Councilors Chris Calvert, Patti Bushee, Peter Ives, and Mayor pro tem Rebecca Wurzburger went to a vote this evening and passed. The Santa Fe City Council strongly supports public expression of resistance to approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, up to and including peaceful, nonviolent and dignified expressions of civil disobedience. “Climate change is happening, we see it with drought and forest fires,” said Mayor David Coss. “Santa Fe needs to be part of the solution and not part of the problem on climate change.”

Leaked Docs: Worst Case Scenario For Industry, Growing Movement, Coming True

December 5, 2013 Katherine Bagley, www.insideclimatenews.org Resist! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Fracking, Tar Sands

Stratfor warning to industry: Letting the movement grow unopposed may bring about "the most significant environmental campaign of the decade." "This worst-case scenario is exactly what has happened," partly because opposition to tar sands development has expanded beyond nonprofit groups to include individual activists concerned about climate change, said Mark Floegel, a senior investigator for Greenpeace. "The more people in America see Superstorm Sandys or tornadoes in Chicago, the more they are waking up and joining the fight." For many, the leaked presentation provided proof that their work was having an impact, boosting their confidence to keep protesting. "Knowing that groups like Stratfor are targeting us, surveying us, and also analyzing us shows how powerful these movements have become," said Parkin of the Rainforest Action Network and Rising Tide North America. "Obviously this wasn't meant for public consumption, but this doesn't intimidate us. If anything, it emboldens us. It encourages us to push harder."

Activists Take Aim at Bay Area Crude Projects

December 5, 2013 Molly Samuel, www.blogs.kqed.org Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Local community and environmental activists are sounding an alarm over four proposed energy projects in the Bay Area. Demonstrators rallied Wednesday morning outside a Bay Area Air Quality Management District board meeting, calling on the Air District to put the developments on hold. Two of the proposals are for crude-by-rail projects. One would be an addition to the Valero refinery in Benicia; the other would be an oil terminal in Pittsburg that would receive crude by pipeline, rail and ship. Activists are concerned about crude-by-rail because, they say, trains would provide a means to bring in what they call “dirty” oil from the Canadian tar sands. The other two projects, at Chevron’s Richmond refinery and the Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo concern equipment upgrades, which, activists say, will position refiners to process heavier grades of crude. “What’s really at stake here is the public’s health,” said Andres Soto, an organizer with the East Bay group Communities for a Better Environment.

Extreme Extraction For Energy Building Environmental Movement

December 5, 2013 Nick Engelfried, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Coal, Energy, Environment, Fracking, Tar Sands

One thing the industries didn’t count on: A new wave of citizen activism in places as far apart as Longview, Wash., and upstate New York. This movement — a patchwork of movements, really — has kept fracking out of New York, and delayed (perhaps indefinitely) the construction of coal ports on the West Coast. It’s rallied Nebraskans against the Keystone XL pipeline, and complicated the gas industry’s attempt to take over California. What should really be worrying fossil fuel companies is that some of the strongest resistance comes from towns like Longview. Places that few people would have predicted would become hotbeds of environmental activism are now some of the best organized and most vocal communities fighting fossil fuels anywhere in the country. Every fracking well placed near a city’s water supply and every coal train rolling through a small town gives some community a reason to hate fossil industries. And by failing to notice this, oil, gas and coal companies may be digging their political graves.

First Nation Clan Blocks Path Of Northern Pipelines In British Columbia

December 3, 2013 Joseph Jones, www.truth-out.org Educate! Energy, Environment, First Nations, Tar Sands

Corporate interests are attempting to drive a set of pipelines through northern British Columbia wilderness, across lands that have never been ceded through treaty. The primary perpetrators in this instance are the Kitimat LNG project (a partnership between Apache Canada Ltd. and Chevron Canada Limited) and Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines (a creation of Enbridge Inc.). Canada’s own legal system says these lands do not really belong to Canada. Yet industry and settler governments show repeated readiness to use subterfuge and illegitimate force to try take over lands that still belong to Indigenous peoples.

Tar Sands’ Next Frontier: Shipments On The Great Lakes

December 3, 2013 Steve Horn, www.desmoblog.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

The Great Lakes, drinking water source for over 40 million North Americans, could be the next target on tar sands marketers' bullseye according to a major new report out by the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes. The 24-page report, "Oil and Water: Tar Sands Crude Shipping Meets the Great Lakes?" unpacks a new looming threat to the Great Lakes in the form of barges transporting tar sands along the Great Lakes to targeted midwestern refinery markets. As the report suggests, it's a threat made worse by an accompanying "Wild West"-like regulatory framework.

Block The Tar Sands Megaload In Umatilla, OR!

December 2, 2013 Portland Rising Tide, www.facebook.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

We will be resisting the load ALL THE WAY THROUGH OREGON! PLEASE JOIN TONIGHT, TOMORROW, ALL WEEK! We can use you for one night or one week. Whatever you can join us for. Tonight we will meet in two places at 7:30 Pacific Time: 5PM At the Desert River Inn, 705 Willamette St. Umatilla, OR 7:30PM At the Megaload, Roxbury Rd. Umatilla, OR Come support! If we have enough folks, we can keep this load in Umatilla! Let's stop it until the weather comes in. We need you! The loads can only move between 8pm and 6am each night so, if you are planning for tomorrow or the next night, we will be meeting in the same area around the same time. Stay tuned to Facebook for location updates.

Reality Check: Air Pollution and the Tar Sands

November 29, 2013 Staff, http://environmentaldefence.ca Educate! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Big Oil is spending millions of dollars on ads, desperately trying to convince Canadians that the tar sands are not harming our air. But don’t believe the slick PR spin. A new report, Reality Check: Air Pollution and the Tar Sands, sets the record straight and shows Big Oil is failing to take care of the air we breathe. The report states that like many of the environmental challenges facing the tar sands, air pollution from the tar sands is not being managed well enough to protect our communities, our environment and our health. Air pollution from the tar sands is already reaching Alberta’s existing limits on pollution, limits which are lower than those set by the World Health Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The report references the latest research such as a study that found increased incidences of rare cancers associated with these dangerously high levels of air pollution, including leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the region around the tar sands. And yet in Alberta tar sands companies frequently break existing environmental rules, and aren’t penalized when they break these rules.

Obama Stabs Environment In The Back, Approves Major Pipeline

November 28, 2013 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Fracking, Pipelines, Tar Sands

Although TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has received the lion's share of media attention, another key border-crossing pipeline benefitting tar sands producers was approved on November 19 by the U.S. State Department. Enter Cochin, Kinder Morgan's 1,900-mile proposed pipeline to transport gas produced via the controversial hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") of the Eagle Ford Shale basin in Texas north through Kankakee, Illinois, and eventually into Alberta, Canada, the home of the tar sands. Like Keystone XL, the pipeline proposal requires U.S. State Department approval because it crosses the U.S.-Canada border. Unlike Keystone XL - which would carry diluted tar sands diluted bitumen ("dilbit") south to the Gulf Coast - Kinder Morgan's Cochin pipeline would carry the gas condensate (diluent) used to dilute the bitumen north to the tar sands. "The extra-thick oil is typically cut with 30% condensate so it can move in pipelines. By 2035, producers could require 893,000 barrels a day of the ultra-light oil, with imports making up 786,000 barrels of the total." Increased demand for diluent among Alberta's tar sands producers has created a growing market for U.S. producers of natural gas liquids, particularly for fracked gas producers.

75 Tons Per Day Of Radioactive Oil Waste Unregulated in North Dakota

November 24, 2013 Amy Dalrymple, www.grandforksherald.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Oil and Gas, Radiation, Tar Sands

North Dakota’s oil industry generates 75 tons of low-level radioactive waste per day and the state has few rules on how to handle it, but does say it can't be dumped here. But the waste does show up in illegally in North Dakota landfills as some companies try to avoid the expense and time it takes to properly transport the waste out of state. North Dakota’s top oil and gas regulator says as the naturally occurring radioactive waste (NORM) associated with oil production will become an even greater issue for the Bakken as development continues. “Now is the time to really work this out,” said Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources. It’s costly to transport the waste out of state, which has led to cases of illegal dumping.

What Happens When A Pipeline Bursts In Your Town

November 24, 2013 Nora Caplan-Bricker, www.newrepublic.com Educate! Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Health Care, Tar Sands

Mason Thompson used to love fishing in the lake he can see from his window in Mayflower, Arkansas, but these days, when he throws a line out into the water, the lure he reels back is covered in a sour, stinking black tar, the skirt of the jig stuck uselessly together. When he brings the fingers that touched the line up to his nose, he gets a whiff of the same putrid stench that filled the air for weeks after the oil pipeline burst—the smell that still rises out of the ground every time it rains. Thompson hasn’t been fishing much. Ever since Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline burst in March and spilled an estimated 210,000 gallons of Canadian heavy crude oil two miles from his house, he’s had headaches of preternatural intensity, so bad they wake him up in the middle of the night. He has nosebleeds, and hemorrhoids even though he’s only 36; there’s a rash on his neck that has only gotten worse in the eight months since the spill; and some days he feels so weak that he can hardly get out of bed.

Video: Tar Sands Battle In Portland, Maine

November 22, 2013 Asher Platts, www.acronymtv.wordpress.com Resist! Democracy, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands, Video

Fighting Tar Sands In New England ExxonMobil plans to build a toxin-spewing export terminal on the shores of Casco Bay in Maine. According to 350.org: “Such a terminal would allow the flow of millions of gallons of Canadian tar sands to be transported through the region, putting our planet, our local waterways, and community health at unacceptable risk. All evidence indicates that ExxonMobil – the majority owner of the PMPL - wants to pump toxic tar sands oil through New England and South Portland is now a crucial battle line in the fight to stop them. In addition to the climate change risks of tar sands oil production, additional local impacts – with or without with a spill or rupture – would be devastating. As the CCSP says firmly, "The threats that tar sands pose to our environment, health, water supply and air quality are simply unacceptable." “ Asher Platts files this report, which includes an interview with Bob Klotz of 350Maine.org.

Harper Government’s Extensive Spying On Anti-Oilsands Groups Revealed

November 22, 2013 Matthew Millar, www.vancouverobserver.com Educate! Canada, Energy, Environment, NSA, Tar Sands

The federal government has been vigorously spying on anti-oil sands activists and organizations in BC and across Canada since last December, documents obtained under the Access to Information Act show. Not only is the federal government subsidizing the energy industry in underwriting their costs, but deploying public safety resources as a de-facto 'insurance policy' to ensure that federal strategies on proposed pipeline projects are achieved, these documents indicate. Before the National Energy Board's Joint Review Panel hearings on the proposed Enbridge oil pipeline, the NEB coordinated the gathering of intelligence on opponents to the oil sands. The groups of interest are independent advocacy organizations that oppose the Harper government's policies and work for environmental protections and democratic rights, including Idle No More, ForestEthics, Sierra Club, EcoSociety, LeadNow, Dogwood Initiative, Council of Canadians and the People's Summit.

Canada Spied On Enbridge Energy Protesters Before Hearing

November 22, 2013 Shawn McCarthy, www.theglobeandmail.com Resist! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Fracking, Idle No More, Indigenous Rights, Oil and Gas, Tar Sands

The National Energy Board worked with the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service to monitor the risk posed by environmental groups and First Nations in advance of public hearings into Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway project, documents released under Access to Information regulations reveal. In one e-mail, dated April 19, a member of the RCMP’s Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team warns that the federal government’s efforts to exclude activist groups from regulatory hearings could result in protesters “targeting” NEB panel members. “These new hearing procedures have refocused protest activity from the content of the hearings to the conduct of the hearings,” Tim O’Neil, an Ottawa-based RCMP “research specialist” says. The e-mail – with the subject heading “Security Concerns – National Energy Board – was sent to a number of federal officials, including NEB’s chief security officer Richard Garber. Noting “sustained opposition” to oil sands expansion, Mr. O’Neil said it was “highly likely that the NEB may expect to receive threats to its hearings and its board members.”

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