US senators visit their Defense Dept jet fuel in Alberta

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach will be taking a tour of the tar sands today with three American senators, all members of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

So while the good senators might be looking at this :

they will be seeing this :

That fuzzy bit in the red portion that takes up well over half the US Department of Defense Energy Consumption pie chart says : "Jet Fuel".

Tar Sands Watch :

The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s leading consumer of petroleum, sucking up about 340,000 barrels of oil every day, more than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.
The Pentagon is the single largest institutional buyer of oil in the world, consuming an estimated 85 percent of the U.S. Government’s use of oil.

Canada is the largest supplier of oil and refined products to the US at over 2 million barrels a day, nearly half of which comes from the tarsands.

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Stelmach has been busy lately with his advertising campaign to persuade the world that Alberta's oilsands are clean and secure.

Here's a jingle suggestion for you, Ed : "Supplying jet fuel to the US military to bomb Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq - it's what we do best."

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Last night future Sun TV luminary Ezra Levant was on Alberta Prime Time touting his book "Ethical Oil", in which he argues that the oilsands are a superior ethical choice to using oil from human rights violating countries. The other guest was the remarkably unflappable Mike Hudema from Greenpeace who wasn't buying Ezra's bizarre moral equivalency.

It needn't be a false choice between two bad options, said Mike, at which point Ezra, who had introduced the country comparisons in the first place, accused Mike of equating Canada with Sudan.

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Apparently undeterred at the prospect of being sued for libel by George Soros for misrepresenting Soros' Holocaust childhood to score points for Sun TV/Fox News North in his Sun editorial "George Schwartz, the Jewish Nazi", here is some of Ezrant's response to Mike last night :

"Goddamn coward ... you're a liar, a disgusting man ... bullshitter ... a con man ... a crook ... you little coward ... you bastard."

You can watch it here if you must. Personally I can hardly wait for further arguments in support of the superior ethics of the tarsands from Ezra when Fox News North hits the airwaves.

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No science, please, we're the tar sands

Remember that two year Environment Committee study on the tarsands that was ultimately shredded because the four parties at the table couldn't agree on the wording of the witnesses' testimony? The Lib members of that committee have now released their own report on the testimony and as Andrew Nikiforuk reports at The Tyee, it is "scathing".

~ Athabasca River is being polluted
~12 barrels of freshwater required to produce one barrel of crude
~world's largest man-made dams contain 170 square kilometres of toxic mining waste and they're leaking
~steam plants could affect aquifers over an area the size of Florida, using 3½ to 6 barrels of groundwater to extract one barrel of bitumen

Most alarming is the report's contention that science-based policy has been replaced by "bureaucratic compromise", with the federal government entirely abrogatiing its responsibility to monitor and protect our water supplies. The Alberta government just flat out refused to appear before the committee at all.

You're shocked I'm sure.

Wait. Did I say our water supplies?
A year ago Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle said : "The Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta."

He was referring to tarsands in northern Alberta being developed by the Chinese state investment fund in partnership with Calgary-based Penn West Energy Trust. China National Petroleum Company obtained 11 oilsands leases and the Chinese Offshore Oil Corporation invested $150 million in Calgary-based Meg Energy. Sinopec has bought into Syncrude. PetroChina, also state-owned, holds a 60% majority stake in two oilsands projects, and has also signed a memorandum with Enbridge to take up to half the space on its proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to the port of Kitimat in BC.

In comments under Nikiforuk's Tyee article, commenter Ed Deak weighs in :

The opposition can jump up and down, they won't get anywhere, because they're attacking the effects and not the causes.
Attacking other political parties, this is also true for BC, and anywhere on Earth, is a waste of time, because politicians are nothing more than pimp/executioners of and for the criminal neoclassical market economic economic theory, being taught in our universities as a "science", that's destroying the Earth and humanity.
Unless our politicians will one day get enough gumption together to attack the causes
they're part of the problem, regardless of the hot air they're blowing.
The tar sands crime wave is part of the "growth" and the "GDP", without any deductions for damages and no politician would dare to question it, as it would bring panic to the almighty stockmarkets.
Then, when the Chinese bring back the money we're paying them for killing our manufacturing infrastructure, praised by economists and the WTO, to buy the country up from under our feet with our own money, it is called "wealth creating foreign investment" that helps to pay for the billions spent on "defence".

Afterthought : An Alberta Energy spokesdude says : "The Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta" and yet back in March we were all apparently shocked shocked shocked when CSIS head Richard Fadden casually mentioned China in his remarks about "foreign interference" on "possibly unwitting" Canadian public servants and politicians here in the West.

We pretty much behaved as if we were teenagers horrified to discover that our parents have sex. I mean obviously we know they must have but we don't much like to hear about it. And given the public pillorying Fadden received for it, I don't imagine it will be brought up again.
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Rethinking Alberta : Tar Sands Disaster vs Gulf Oil Spill

Four "Rethink Alberta" billboards in Denver, Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis proclaim the "Alberta Tar Sands Oil Disaster" is worse than the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster :



There's also a vid:



Alberta Preme Ed Stelmach is pledging $268,000 to mount a public relations offensive against the ads and has settled on a most unusual strategy :

"Of 350 million Americans — 330 million of them probably don't even know where Alberta is," the premier said. "Let's not ramp this up too much because that's the kind of exposure the group wants."

Of course not all of that $268,000 in public tax money is going to be spent on strategically ignoring the ads. At the alberta.ca website, Stelmach promises to counter the ads by telling "the real Alberta story" :

"disturbed land area actually smaller than London!"

He then links to nine already previously available vids on the Gov of Alberta Oil Sands page. Some quotes from those vids :

"50% of our oil in Canada is produced from oil sands and that's going to grow in the future. We think in about 10 years it will be about 75% of Canada's oil production and a large part of our exports will be oil sands derived crude."

"Virtually no more water will be used out of the Athabasca River"

"We do extensive water monitoring quality of the Athabasca River; we take thousands and thousands of water samples. We've been monitoring since the 1960's and so far we've not been able to find any impact from the tailings ponds itself."

"Over the last 10 or 15 years the air quality has been rated good 98% of the time."

"There is the perception out there that it's the largest industrial footprint on the planet. Actually it's one-tenth of 1% of global GHG emissions."

And so on and so on.
Stelmach's vids include footage of scientists gathering snow samples along a river and that reminded me of the testimony given to the Environment Committee on March 30 by Dr. David Schindler from the University of Alberta. He said he had conducted the first independent research done since 1983 on airborne tar sands contaminants found in the snow pack along the Athabasca River. Testing at 31 locations he found :

"Mercury emitted from these plants has increased three-fold in seven years, lead has increased four-fold in six years, and arsenic three-fold in six years as well."

Further, he said that although Environment Canada tests at only one location on the Athabasca, it has come up with the same numbers, as have the oil companies in their own research. Schindler contends the oil companies' reports on contaminants are duly submitted to Environment Canada, who used to do that research themselves before handing that responsibility over to Alberta and the oil companies, but he believes EC is being muzzled and prevented from making the findings public. The oil companies, whose first allegiance is to their stockholders, are of course not obliged to do so on their own.

And then the Environment Committee scuttled its own tar sands report.

Andrew Nikiforuk has an excellent article at The Tyee on what else the Environment Committee heard that it subsequently decided not to tell us about :
What Those Who Killed the Tar Sands Report Don't Want You to Know
and takes on the many claims made by the scientists and spokesies in Stelmach's vids :
Alberta Hides Dirty Truth as US Demands Tar Sands Facts

One thing's for sure in the Tar Sands vs Gulf Oil Spill Disasters comparison : our government, Environment Canada, and the Environment Committee are doing no better job at regulating the tar sands than the US Minerals Management Services did in overseeing the oil rigs in the Gulf.
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Oil sands : "Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta"

says Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle.

PetroChina, the world's second largest oil company, is buying a 60% majority stake in Athabasca Oil Sands Corp (AOSC) to develop two tar sands projects. The $1.9 billion deal will provide Chinese capital for Athabasca which controls about 1.3 million acres of oil sands properties containing as many as five billion barrels of reserves in Alberta.

"Sveinung Svarte, chief executive of Athabasca, said the company would likely ship its initial output to U.S. refiners, but would consider other export routes if they open up."

In 2005 the state-owned PetroChina signed a memorandum with Enbridge to take up to half the space on its proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to the port of Kitimat in BC.
Enbridge is applying to build the pipeline this year, so presumably PetroChina will eventually be able to ship its newly acquired share of Alberta oilsands straight home to China.

Athabasca does not foresee any "issues" from Investment Canada.

Oilweek :

"Such a takeover would be subject to a new provision recently incorporated into the Investment Canada Act, under which the federal government could block a deal from a foreign firm if it was deemed to pose a threat to national security. But Ottawa will likely wave through the deal.
Geopolitics Central economist Vince Lauerman : "Given the environmental factor down in the states, it only makes sense to diversify our customers, especially to customers that are somewhat less concerned about the environment in general and greenhouse gas emissions in particular."
The Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta, said Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle."

Just in case this :

August 2009 : Washington approves oil sands pipeline
"The Obama administration yesterday approved [an Enbridge]pipeline to carry oil-sands fuel from Canada into the US, saying its action was designed to send "a positive economic signal in a difficult economic period"

reverts back to this :

June 2008 : Obama's fight against 'dirty oil' could hurt oil sands
"Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed he would break America's addiction to "dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive" oil if he is elected U.S. president -- and one of his first targets might well be Canada's oil sands."

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Good to know the Cons' criticism of China's crappy environment record - their stated reason for blowing off the Kyoto Accord - doesn't stand in the way of selling China the product of our crappy environment record.

And how will the US react to this possible threat to 'North American energy security'?

Oh wait - we're already obligated under NAFTA to send 70% of our oil south regardless.

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Related : Support divided for Enbridge Northern Pipeline

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Oil bidness you can believe in

Then - June 2008 :

Obama's fight against 'dirty oil' :

"Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed he would break America's addiction to "dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive" oil if he is elected U.S. president -- and one of his first targets might well be Canada's oil sands.

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"The amount of energy that you have to use to get that oil out of the ground is such that it actually creates a much greater impact on climate change, as well as using much more energy than even traditional petroleum," he said."

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The extraction of a barrel of crude from oil sands is estimated to generate as much as five times more greenhouse gas emissions as from a barrel of conventional crude.

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Now : Aug 21, 2009 :

Washington approves oil-sands pipeline :

"The Obama administration yesterday approved a pipeline to carry oil-sands fuel from Canada into the US, saying its action was designed to send "a positive economic signal in a difficult economic period".

Many environmentalists had expressed hopes that Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, would reject a permit to build the Alberta Clipper, a 1,000-mile pipeline designed to carry up to 800,000 barrels a day of fuel from Canada's vast oil sands. But the State Department said greenhouse-gas emissions are best addressed through each country's domestic policies and a strong international agreement.

After undertaking what it said was considerable evaluation, the US said it would permit Enbridge Energy to build the pipeline to advance a number of US strategic interests."

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Bonus oil bidness from Rabble :

Alberta to cut acid-rain tests in oilsands region

"To reduce costs, Alberta will do less testing for acid rain in the northern oilsands region, Alberta Environment said Monday. The program has been in place since 1978, and the sampling and testing had previously been done once a week."

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Laila Yuile : Support divided for Enbridge Northern Pipeline and the resulting oil tanker traffic along sensitive BC coastline

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Laila Yuile : The column Enbridge responded to but wouldn't post on the Northern Gateway site

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The Tyee : Environmental groups demand public inquiry into Enbridge Pipeline

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