Tar Sands

Video: Bomb Detonated at First Nation’s Activist Camp in Canada

October 29, 2013 Unist'ot'en Camp, www.youtube.com Resist! Environment, First Nations, Tar Sands

A small homemade explosion was detonated at the Unist'ot'en Camp last night about 10:20 pm. The culprits left the scene before facing any of the defenders. Efforts to keep the tensions in check are being stretched to its limits. Sentries are on duty all night to ensure that the perpetrators do not return while the defenders attempt to rest for the evening. Everyone is doing well and we remain optimistic that the Creator will continue to look after us all. The Unist'ot'en Camp is a resistance community whose purpose is to protect sovereign Wet'suwet'en territory from several proposed pipelines from the Tar Sands Gigaproject and shale gas from Hydraulic Fracturing Projects in the Peace River Region.

Big Oil’s Bid to Crush Small Town Stand Against Tar Sands

October 28, 2013 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Educate! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Big Oil is sparing no expense in its bid to crush efforts by residents of South Portland, Maine who are taking the fossil fuel industry head-on to save their waterfront from tar sands. Campaign finance reports revealed Friday that the oil industry has poured over $600,000 into a campaign to defeat the Waterfront Protection Ordinance—a land-use zoning ordinance up for referendum in the November election, that is backed by grassroots organizations and would block oil industry efforts to build a tar sands export facility.

Hundreds Protest Tar Sands, Expert Warns Leak 90% Probability

October 27, 2013 Derek Leahy, www.desmog.ca Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

The international pipeline safety expert who last August described Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline as “high risk for a rupture” now says the probability of Line 9 rupturing is “over 90 percent.” “I do not make the statement ‘high risk for a rupture’ lightly or often,” said Richard Kuprewicz in an interview with DeSmog Canada. “There are serious problems with Line 9 that need to be addressed.” Kuprewicz is a pipeline safety expert with over forty years of experience in the energy sector. Kuprewicz also expressed concerns about transporting diluted bitumen through Line 9 saying it will increase the growth rates of cracks on the pipeline. Line 9 lies in the most populated part of Canada and crosses the St. Lawrence River and major waterways flowing into Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. A Line 9 spill could pollute the drinking water of millions of Canadians.

Keystone Foes Pledge Sit-Ins If Pipeline Advances

October 27, 2013 Jim Snyder, www.bloomberg.com Resistance Report Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Rainforest Action Network, Credo Action and the Other 98% have convinced about 76,000 volunteers to sign a “pledge to resistance.” In doing so, Keystone opponents are joining anti-nuclear activists and others who have used sit-ins and other forms of non-violent protest over the years to bring publicity to a cause. “We believe that whether or not this pipeline is built is in President Obama’s hands and his alone,” Elijah Zarlin, senior campaign manager for advocacy group Credo Action, said. “We will engage in peaceful and dignified sit-ins if necessary to urge him to reject Keystone XL.” The push highlights how the fight over Keystone, now in its sixth year, shows no sign of abating as both sides await the release of a final environmental impact statement from the State Department that will estimate Keystone’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions. After that, the agency, which has jurisdiction because Keystone crosses the border, must determine if the pipeline is in the national interest before Obama’s final decision.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Building A National Culture Of Resistance

October 25, 2013 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Fracking, Nuclear Energy, Poverty, Tar Sands

We are starting to see how the movement is in fact changing the political system without focusing on elections, but instead by focusing on the big issues of a failed economic system that creates inequity and puts profits before the people and the planet. An example is the extreme austerity measures, including threats to Social Security and Medicare, that need our attention. Building alliances and creating solidarity across the movement are critical ingredients to our success. In the end, we are confident that it is not who is in office, but the environment we create for them to operate in. We need to continue to protest when elected officials go off in the wrong direction – which is too often – but always build a mass national movement of communities across the country networked together and working to end the rule of money in each of its manifestations and to shift power to the people.

Decolonization For Your Momma – A Tool For Idle No More

October 25, 2013 Clayton Thomas-Muller, www.lastrealindians.com Organize! Idle No More, Tar Sands

Clayton Thomas-Muller, co-director of the Indigenous Tar Sands (ITS) Campaign, has put together the following workshop format/tool for communities engaged in Decolonization work. It gives a framework for communities to start the process to engage in conversations to unpack oppression, “his” story, and to develop community based solutions to unlocking the potential of our peoples in today’s Movements. - Historically, Capitalism has been and is the motive for the Colonial and Imperialist policies that have disempowered and dispossess Indigenous people around the world...

Cold Lake Oil Leak Likely Contaminating Groundwater

October 25, 2013 The Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.ca Educate! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

The leak at the Primrose oilsands project in northern Alberta has likely contaminated groundwater aquifers, the province states in an environmental order. Sticky bitumen, which rose to the surface over six months ago, says the order, “has entered local non-saline groundwater aquifers, likely contaminating the groundwater,” according to the Edmonton Journal. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (TSX:CNQ has been ordered to determine the full impact to subsurface groundwater and work to find the root cause of all four bitumen releases. The province says that will require a drilling program, adding that doing so in the winter months minimizes the environmental impact of the drilling activities.

Open Letter To The Anti-Tar Sands Movement

October 23, 2013 MI Coalition Against Tar Sands, www.michigancats.org Strategize! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

We are from the occupied territory called “Michigan,” where tar sands oil is still poisoning ecosystems, water, and humans three years after the largest inland oil spill in our history. In addition to this ongoing destruction, our elected officials are allowing Enbridge to expand this same pipeline to more than double its capacity, all while opposition to the kxl has gotten stronger. While kxl is a large part of the problem, it is time for the mainstream movement’s figureheads to stop exclusively referring to this pipeline and discouraging us from working on other tar sands issues. With urgency and strength, we implore all tar sands activists and organizations to reframe this movement to something that is more than a convenient political symbol and into something that can stop the amoral and unlawful devastation of life and our responsibility to it.

Greenpeace Anti-Pipeline Protesters Occupy Kinder Morgan’s Burrard Inlet terminal

October 18, 2013 Frank Luba, www.theprovince.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Greenpeace protesters displayed their displeasure with increased bitumen oil shipments into Burrard Inlet Wednesday with a message to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. ‘Harper: No Tar Sands Pipeline’ read a banner that was unfurled from a storage tank at the Burnaby facility where Kinder Morgan-Canada unloads the controversial oil from Alberta onto tanker ships for export. Two protesters chained themselves to the gates of the facility while another 14 spread their message around the grounds in advance of Harper’s delivery of his legislative agenda in the Throne Speech in Ottawa. In addition to the giant banner, a storage tank received a painted message while a camping platform was erected atop two towers for some more protesters to use as an occupation base. Mike Hudema, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace, said the protesters were “prepared to stay overnight” but the day-long protest wrapped just before 8 p.m.

Infographics: Why TransCanada Is Losing Keystone Pipeline Debate

October 17, 2013 Richard Levick, www.forbes.com Strategize! Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Activists understand that in the land where no politician wants to be first, but all clamor to be second, controlling the epicenter of public opinion has never been more important. As such, they have transformed social media engagement into a force multiplier that swells their ranks; amplifies their messages; mobilizes support on local and national levels; and provides policy makers with a false sense of where public sentiment really lies. And activists’ successful domination of online sentiment isn’t just relegated to Keystone. Research conducted by my firm and others shows that activists are winning on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), arctic drilling in the ANWR, offshore drilling, coal, and even energy production tax credits. Congratulations to the activists, but where are the interested companies in this hyper-Democratic age?

Indigenous Nations At Forefront Of Conflict With Transnational Corporate Power

October 17, 2013 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.truthout.org Resist! Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Fearless Summer, Food and Agriculture, Fracking, Indigenous Rights, Tar Sands

Idle No More is an indigenous-led movement, but it is not a movement exclusive to indigenous people. As Clayton Thomas-Muller, an organizer with Defenders of the Land and Idle No More, states, "We understand that the rise of the native rights-based strategic framework as an effective legal strategy supported by a social movement strategic framework is the last best effort not just for Indigenous People but for all Canadians and Americans to protect the commons ... from the for-profit agenda of the neoliberal free market strategists that have taken over our governments ... and indigenous peoples have been thrust into the forefront of global social movements not just because of our connection to the sacredness of Mother Earth and our traditional ecological knowledge and understanding of how to take care of the Earth as part of that sacred circle of life but also because our ancestors ... made sure we had the legal instruments to be able to confront the enemies of today and that is what Idle No More is doing in the US and Canada and across the world where Indigenous People continue to live under occupation and oppression."

Protests Against The Shipment Of Tar Sands Across Canada

October 16, 2013 Lyn Adamson, toronto.mediacoop.ca Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

A banner drop and a series of gaged protestors demonstrated what is being left out of the National Energy Board (NEB) hearings that are taking place this week in Toronto. The subject of the hearings is Enbridge's Line 9 reversal and expansion proposal, which would allow the company to ship tar sands bitumen from Sarnia to Montreal. Groups today protested the fact that the hearings have explicitly banned discussion of upstream and downstream impacts of the pipeline reversal and expansion, which would allow the tar sands to expand production and refining.

The Grassroots Battle Against Big Oil

October 15, 2013 Wes Stephenson, www.thenation.com Resist! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Since the blockaders began showing up at his church, Childress told me as we drank coffee on his back porch the next morning, people have noticed a change in his preaching. “There’s an urgency that maybe I didn’t have before. They’re reminding us that climate change is not something we’re going to fiddle-faddle around with. I mean, you’ve got to step up now.” But there’s more to it, Childress continued: “I’m preaching to young people who are putting their lives on the line. They didn’t come down here driving a Mercedes Benz, sitting around under a shade tree eating grapes. They hitchhiked. They rode buses. And they get arrested, they get pepper-sprayed, they get some stiff penalties thrown against them.” (In January, Tar Sands Blockade and allied groups settled a lawsuit brought by TransCanada seeking $5 million in damages for construction delays, forcing them to stay off the pipeline easement and any TransCanada property.)

Canadian Scientists Expose Government’s Tar Sands Obsession

October 13, 2013 Staff, www.ecowatch.com Educate! Fracking, Government, Tar Sands

A delegation of Canadian scientists and activists participated in a briefing today at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to set the record straight on the government’s strategy to undermine anything that might stand in the way of its goals to triple tar sands production, according to a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Sierra Club press release. As the Canadian government launches a $24 million pro-tar sands advertising campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper digs his heels in by saying he “won’t take no” for an answer on the Keystone XL pipeline. “The Harper government will stop at nothing to ruthlessly promote tar sands expansion,” said Tzeporah Berman, Canadian author and resource development activist, and panel member at today’s briefing.

Toshiba Nuclear Reactor For Tar Sands Extraction

October 10, 2013 Staff, www.huffingtonpost.ca Educate! Energy, Environment, Nuclear Energy, Tar Sands

Toshiba Corporation has developed a small nuclear reactor to power oilsands extraction in Alberta and hopes to have it operational by 2020, according to news reports from Japan. The Daily Yomiuri reports Toshiba is building the reactor at the request of an unnamed oilsands company. The reactor would generate between one per cent and 5 per cent as much energy as produced by a typical nuclear power plant, and would not need refueling for 30 years. It would be used to heat water in order to create the steam used to extract bitumen from the oil sands. Toshiba has completed design work on the reactor and has filed for approval with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Nikkei.com reported. The company is expected to seek approval from Canadian authorities as well.

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