Tar Sands

U.S. Tar Sands Action: Reports From Front Lines

October 28, 2014 Ben Jervey, www.desmogblog.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Tar Sands

For the past five months, activists from the Utah Tar Sands Resistance have camped out on the sage-swept, high plateau lands known as PR Springs in eastern Utah. From the site—where the first tar sands mine in the United States is planned, and preliminary clearing work is already underway—you can’t miss the majestic Book Cliffs that tumble from the East Tavaputs Plateau and the canyons full of tall conifers. Book Cliffs is an area cherished by sportsmen and sportswomen—the public lands a place where Rocky Mountain Elk roam free, a place beloved by hunters and anglers and campers and backpackers. Book Cliffs is also an area presently threatened by oil, gas, and tar sands development. Activists with Peaceful Uprising and the Utah Tar Sands Resistance are working to stop the tar sands projects in their tracks.

Tar Sands Trade: Kuwait Buys Stake In Alberta

October 15, 2014 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Canada, Climate Change, Energy, History, ISIS, Kuwait, Tar Sands, Wars and Militarism

Chevron made waves in the business world when it announced its October 6 sale of 30-percent of its holdings in the Alberta-based Duvernay Shale basin to Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KUFPEC) for $1.5 billion. It marked the first North American purchase for the Kuwaiti state-owned oil company and yields KUFPEC 330,000 acres of Duvernay shale gas. Company CEO and the country's Crown Prince, Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, called it an “anchor project” that could spawn Kuwait's expansion into North America at-large. Kuwait's investment in the Duvernay, at face-value buying into Canada'shydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) revolution, was actually also an all-in bet on Alberta's tar sands. As explained in an October 7 article in Platts, the Duvernay serves as a key feedstock for condensate, a petroleum product made from gas used to dilute tar sands, allowing the product to move through pipelines.

Rational Synergy Convergence

October 15, 2014 Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, www.linkis.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Protests, Tar Sands

Join us for the Rational Synergy Convergence! The Rational Synergy Convergence is a public gathering of local leaders and thinkers committed to economic equity and environmental justice. Speakers discuss the bleak state of global capitalism and envision a more economically just and ecologically sustainable future. The convergence will focus on economic inequality in the midst of a “fracking boom” and the effects of imperialism on human lives & biological communities. The Rational Synergy Convergence will be meeting in protest of the International Energy Conference!

Activists Chained To Fence In Montreal To Protest Enbridge’s Line 9

October 8, 2014 Amanda Kelly, www.globalnews.ca Resist! Civil Disobedience, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

According to a statement, the activists are hoping to disrupt Suncor’s refinery operations to raise awareness of the issues involved in transporting oil across the country. You can view a detailed map of Line 9′s route here. Activists said they are expressing public outrage against the arrival of tar sands oil in Quebec. The oil will by transported by the Enbridge pipeline 9B, which activists say will ship up to 300,000 barrels of crude oil to the province from Alberta every day. MONTREAL — It took nearly seven hours for Montreal police to finally remove a protestor chained to a fence outside Enbridge’s Montreal headquarters in Montreal’s east end. One of the activists, Alyssa Symons-Bélanger, said in a statement that the reason for the protest is that many feel there are no other means to have their voices heard.

We Need To Win The Tar Sands Battle

October 4, 2014 Brad Hornick, www.rabble.ca Educate! Canada, Energy, Environment, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Tar Sands

The tar sands agenda, argues Martin Lukacs, empowers the political machinations of the reactionary Right in Canada. It reinforces a corporate constitutionalism that locks-in trade and investment through bilateral and multilateral agreements that secure investment "certainty" through the engineered collapse of environmental regulatory frameworks. "In other words," says Lukacs, "these are not pipelines to build a nation. They are a scheme by which to swindle it." The climate justice movement will continue to radicalize and abruptly challenge the priorities of capital. It will confront the traditional environmental movement as well as Left politics as it forges a new constellation of political forces concerned with Indigenous rights and title, migrant rights, labour rights and the rights of nature.

Chipmunk Resistance Stops Work At Tar Sands Mine

October 3, 2014 Raphael Cordray, www.creativeresistance.org Resist! Creative Resistance, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands, Utah

Protesters again stopped work at the construction site of the first tar sands mine in the US. Five people were later arrested and jailed but the campaign to stop the mine said the resistance will not relent until all tar sands plans are canceled. By moving quickly through the site to obstruct numerous construction vehicles, just a handful of speedy protesters were able to shut down the enormous construction project on a sprawling 213 acres in Utah’s Book Cliffs. “Direct, physical intervention is necessary to halt the completion of this toxic project,” said one protester.

The Battle Against Tar Sands Can Be Won

September 30, 2014 Mike Hudema, www.westcoastnativenews.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights, Tar Sands

The fight against the tar sands is a big one. We stand in defense of the land, water, climate and communities against the richest companies on the planet, and a federal and provincial government who are intent on extracting tar sands as quickly as possible regardless of the cost. Working in Alberta, the belly of the tar sands beast, the odds are often overwhelming but, over the past few months, something has changed. The resistance to the tar sands has not only grown in leaps and bounds, it is changing the dynamics of the entire fight. Last week’s massive People’s Climate March in New York that brought over 400,000 people to the streets of New York, led by climate impacted and Indigenous communities, was just one of many signs of hope that are starting to emerge. People are standing up to the largest carbon bullies on the planet and we are starting to win.

First Nations Pull Out Of TransCanada Hearing Citing Industry Bias

September 29, 2014 Eriel Deranger, www.linkis.com Resist! Energy, Environment, First Nations, Indigenous Rights, Tar Sands

Today the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) announced they will no longer participate in the TransCanada Grand Rapids Pipeline hearing citing impossible timelines and prejudice within the process. The First Nation is referring to the project as the “Mother of All Pipelines” feeding projects like the Energy East Pipeline and the controversial Keystone XL pipeline projects. “The AER put us in an impossible position. I am dumbfounded by this process,” stated Adam before he continued to speak about the obstacles the ACFN has faced in trying to get action from both government and industry to adequately address their concerns.

A Good Week In Fight To Stop Tar Sands

September 29, 2014 Andrea Germanos, www.commondreams.com Resist! Energy, Environment, Finance and Economy, Tar Sands

Opponents of tar sands got some good news this week. Oil and gas company Statoil announced Thursday that it was shelving its Corner tar sands project in Alberta. The Norwegian firm's decision to postpone the project "for a minimum of three years" is due to economic costs of labor and materials, according to a press statement from the company. A similar announcement was made earlier this year by French energy firm Total, which said it was shelving its Joslyn tar sands mine in Alberta because of escalating costs. In addition, Shell announced in February that it was stopping work on its Pierre River mine in the Alberta tar sands.

Faces Of The Grassroots Climate Movement: Rowdy And Rowdier

September 27, 2014 Cally Carswell, www.hcn.org Resist! Civil Disobedience, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands, Utah

The guises were defenses not against the weather, but against the cops and a security camera trained on a test pit for what could soon become the first commercial tar sands mine in the U.S. Tar sands contain an unconventional crude called bitumen, that with a great deal of water and energy can be extracted from sand and rock, and refined into fuel. The industry is big business in Alberta, Canada, and one of the most carbon-intense fossil fuels. U.S. environmentalists have fiercely opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport Canadian tar sands crude to U.S. refineries, in a bid to influence further development to the north. Less known, and less opposed nationally, is the push to develop Utah's own tar sands deposits.

Five Land Defenders Arrested At Utah Tar Sands

September 25, 2014 Utah Tar Sands Resist, www.tarsandsresist.org Resist! Environment, Tar Sands

BREAKING: Five Land defenders were arrested yesterday morning at the construction site of US Oil Sands’ tar sands strip-mine in Utah. The Canadian company’s 32,000 acre lease-holding are on state-managed land in the Book Cliffs, on the East Tavaputs Plateau, though the land is traditional Ute land, and lays within Indian country, with sections of the tar sands project straddling the boundary of the Uintah & Ouray Reservation. Currently, the land defenders (including the media team) are being held on Class A Trespassing charges, with a total bail estimated at $10,500.

Canadians Get Ready For Historic Environmental Mobilization

September 18, 2014 Carlos Tello, www.vancouverobserver.com Organize! Canada, Climate Change, Environment, Protest, Tar Sands

Hundreds of Canadians will join tens of thousands of people in the streets of New York City next weekend for one of the largest climate change mobilizations in history. Renewable energy advocates of all ages will be gathering as a part of the Tar Sands Free bloc at the march, which will coincide with the UN climate summit in New York. "While this will be one of the largest climate marches in history, it also isn't just about size. It's about showing that people are standing alongside those impacted most by climate change and extreme extraction," said Eriel Deranger, communications coordinator for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, who will be marching in New York. "People are impacted from the extraction of carbon polluting industries such as the Tar Sands and fracking, as well as the way to the extreme impacts of climate change." Travelling from Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston and Halifax, among other cities, the Canadian marchers will join communities impacted by climate disasters like Hurricane Sandy, and Indigenous peoples resisting tar sands and other extreme extraction both in Canada and abroad.

Journalist Sues Tar Sands Refinery For Illegal ‘Terrorism’ Detention

September 5, 2014 4PS, www.ut4ps.tumblr.com Resist! Journalism, Police, Tar Sands, Terrorism

n award-winning independent journalist filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Tesoro and the Salt Lake City Police Department for illegally detaining him and accusing him of terrorism for taking photographs of a refinery. Jesse Fruhwirth posted a video on the Internet (see below) of December 16, 2013, when an ice storm and power outage prompted a major pollution event at Tesoro’s tar sands refinery in the Rose Park neighborhood. "I was in bed reading and through my window suddenly I could see that the night sky was ablaze as if all of Rose Park was on fire," says Fruhwirth. "Only the refinery was on fire, but I knew that such huge flare offs were extra dangerous events for babies, old people and sick people and I thought it was important to film the fire that might severely sicken or kill some of my neighbors that night." Fruhwirth also filmed the interaction he had with a police officer who ordered him to stop filming. In the video, Salt Lake officer Yvette Zayas tells Fruhwirth that she detained him for taking pictures of “critical infrastructure,” that she would refer her report to a “Joint Terrorism Task Force” to protect “homeland security.” Zayas is simultaneously a paid employee of Tesoro and SLCPD, but that night she was working directly on Tesoro’s payroll.

Focus On Stopping Tar Sands, Not Just KXL

August 28, 2014 Tom Weis, www.ecowatch.com Resist! Energy, Environment, indigenous, Indigenous Rights, KXL, Pipelines, Tar Sands

Thanks to the courageous and indefatigable efforts of pipeline fighters everywhere, the tide has finally turned on Keystone XL. As it becomes increasingly clear that Keystone XL’s northern leg is not going through, it is time to set our sights on ending all tar sands exploitation. The Obama administration’s latest election year delay on Keystone North is not a victory, but the dominoes continue to fall. Earlier this year, a citizen lawsuit denied TransCanada a route through Nebraska. Last month, it lost its permit through South Dakota. Now it faces a gauntlet of “Cowboys & Indians” vowing to stop it in its tracks. . . .We need to heed the indictment of the tar sands industry issued by Ponca Nation matriarch and grandmother Casey Camp-Horinek of Oklahoma: “We’re suffering from environmental genocide from this extractive industry.”

Enbridge Figures Out An Easier Way To Move Tar Sands

August 27, 2014 Financial Post, www.earthfirstjournal.org Educate! Canada, Enbridge, Keystone XL, Tar Sands

Enbridge Inc. said it found a way to ship more Alberta oil [Ed note: the industry often use the terms Alberta oil, domestic oil, heavy crude for tar sands derived bitumen] to the U.S. that doesn’t require a review similar to the one faced by Keystone XL: switching crude from one pipeline to another before it crosses the border. The global oil industry is gripped with the cost-cutting fever amid shareholder pressure, but the oil sands are particularly vulnerable given their baked-in higher development costs, high wages, remote location and infrastructure challenges. The State Department, responsible for approving cross-border energy projects like the Alberta Clipper and the proposed Keystone XL line to the U.S. Gulf Coast, said in a statement that Enbridge can go forward with its plan under authority granted by previously issued permits. The plan drew criticism yesterday from environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation, opposed to new imports from Canada’s oil sands because mining and processing the fuel releases more climate-warming carbon than other types of crude. “The president’s promise to decide Keystone XL based on its climate impacts is completely meaningless if the State Department is simultaneously permitting other tar sands pipelines behind closed doors,” Sierra Club attorney Doug Hayes said in a statement.

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