Oil Spill Pollution Policy
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A Sunday tar sands protest in Burlington, Vermont turned violent when riot police shot protesters with pepper spray and rubber bullets. Hundreds of protesters march down South Winooski Avenue in Burlington, Vt., during demonstrations on Sunday, July 29, 2012, as the 36th Annual Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers set up at the hotel. (Burlington Free Press/Elliot deBruyn) Hundreds of activists demonstrating against a proposed tar sands oil pipeline that would extend across northern New England gathered at the Burlington Hilton where the 36th annual conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers was being held. Protesters created a "human oil spill" over the possibility that tar sands oil from western Canada might be shipped across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
Peaceful Protest Over Tar Sands Takes a Violent Turn in Burlington, Vt.
WASHINGTON - April 26 - After a comprehensive investigation into the impact of oil shale and tar sands development in three western states, the National Parks Conservation Association today released a report, “Avoiding a Risky Gamble with America’s National Parks,” outlining in disturbing detail the economic and environmental risks of allocating up to 2.5 million acres of public lands in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado for commercial leases for oil shale and tar sands development, which is currently being considered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This NPCA report comes as the BLM is concluding a 90-day public comment period for a new Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), revising a controversial decision made during the final weeks of the Bush administration to allow commercial-scale development of oil shale and tar sands on close to 2.5 million acres of public land.
New Report Confirms Aggressive Oil Shale, Tar Sands Development in West Poses Significant Threat to National Parks, Water Supplies, Local Economy
Despite Oil Glut, ONEOK Plans Pipeline To U.S. Oil Hub
ONEOK Partners, L.P. ( OKS ), one of the largest natural gas distributors in the U.S., announced on Monday it will invest up to $1.8 billion in the construction of a pipeline connecting the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota with an oil-transport hub in Oklahoma. The 1,300-mile pipeline is expected to have the capacity to transport 200,000 barrels of oil a day, and is being planned to handle an increased need to move crude oil to market as the Dakotan oil fields step up their production. But it will also bring additional crude where there is already an oversupply, and no available pipeline capacity to move the oil to the Gulf Coast, where it is refined. The pipeline is expected to be completed by 2015, with construction possibly starting as soon as 2013, ONEOK said. "As producers continue to aggressively develop crude oil from wells in the Bakken Shale, more crude-oil pipeline takeaway capacity will be required," said Terry K.Republican governors took to the airwaves over the weekend to take jabs at the president's and Washington's efforts to create jobs and boost the economy. In the weekly Republican address, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin again denounced the president for blocking a pipeline that would transport oil to the United States from Canada. "Millions of Americans remain out of work, but President Obama continues to propose job-killing tax hikes and obstruct the basic energy infrastructure projects that would lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs, not to mention more revenue in state budgets," she said. As Stateline has reported, the TransCanada Corporation's $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline expansion, designed to transport Canadian oil to Texas, has not been without controversy.
GOP Governors Take Aim at Obama, Washington
Florida Rep. Launches Keystone XL Petition | NACS Online – News & Media Center – News
MIAMI, Fla. – U.S. Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) launched a petition drive last week that calls for the building of the Keystone XL pipeline. The SunHerald.com writes that Mack, who is also running for Senate against current Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), said the high gasoline prices could be alleviated if the pipeline were constructed.Dear Common Dreamers, We have followed the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline from the beginning, and we'll continue to cover developments until this pipeline -- and the ones that are sure to follow -- have been soundly defeated. Today, however, we join with those at the center of this struggle and urge you to play your part in fighting off the most recent attempt to ram approval for the pipeline through the US Senate. What follows is a note from our friends at 350.org , who have led this fight from the beginning and show no signs of yielding.
24 Hours to Stop Keystone XL in the US Senate
The Alberta Oil Sands is the largest energy project on the planet, lying beneath 140,200 square kilometers of northern Alberta forest, an area almost as large as the state of Florida. This area represents 21% of Alberta and 37% of Alberta’s Boreal Forest Natural Region. As of mid-2009, there were approximately 5,012 oil sands (mineral rights) agreements with the Province and 91 active Oil Sands projects. Oil Sands development is turning once pristine stretches of forest into desolate landscapes. The scale of the Alberta Tar/Oil Sands project absolutely boggles the mind.
Archons: Tar Sands destroys Ancient Forest larger than Florida
Ohio Earthquakes Underscore Fracking Dangers
By Other Words -- (January 18, 2012) By Andrew Korfhage Add yet another new concern to the growing list of reasons to oppose hyraudlic fracturing, the natural-gas extraction process known as “fracking”: Earthquakes. That’s right, following a New Year’s Eve earthquake in Youngstown, Ohio — the town’s eleventh since D&L Energy began injecting drilling waste underground in December 2010 — state leaders put a hold on proposals for new natural-gas extraction wells within a five-mile radius. With earthquakes previously rare in this northeastern corner of Ohio, seismologists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) affirmed the likelihood that fracking activities had caused the quakes. Even with the moratorium, they predicted that the current damage would cause more earthquakes in the region for up to a year.
Tar Sands - Oil Sands - Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline | Save BioGems
Big Oil's Plan Will Destroy Songbird Habitat, Fuel Global Warming and Threaten Our Drinking Water. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would transport raw, toxic tar sands oil right through the American heartland — from Alberta, Canada to refineries in Texas — and threatens to wreak environmental havoc on both sides of the border. One glitch in the tar sands pipeline would destroy our clean water sources — possibly forever. -Kyra Sedgwick, Actress and NRDC MemberKenny Bruno Guest Blog: They Gotta Lotta Nerve | Susan Casey-Lefkowitz
Guest Blog by Kenny Bruno, Corporate Ethics International . “A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy,” said British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems determined to prove it. As the hearings on the controversial Enbridge Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline and tanker project got underway, the Canadian federal government launched a smear campaign against pipeline opponents. Listen to the rhetoric in an open letter from Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver: "Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity [the Gateway pipeline] to diversify our trade…their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth…[they] threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda."
Keystone XL: You Aren't Getting the Real Story If You Aren't Reading in Canada | Josh Mogerman
Over the long Keystone XL campaign, I have continued to be astounded at how differently the pipeline---and tar sands infrastructure projects in general---are seen in the U.S. and Canada. The narratives from binational pipeline supporters couldn’t be further apart from one side of the border to the other. Here, the media has been captured in the construct cynically put out by the oil industry and their pipeline pushing pals in Congress: that the pipeline is a wondrous job creator that will fill our gas tanks with friendlier fuels from our friends to the north, freeing us from the dastardly sheiks in the Middle East. If you are paying attention, you know that is bogus---and in fact, quite the opposite of reality:15 December 2011 Last updated at 01:23 GMT Chevron says it got the leak under control on 13 November Prosecutors in Brazil are demanding $10.6bn (£6.8bn) from US oil company Chevron for environmental damage caused when one of its oil wells leaked off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The prosecutors also asked the court to immediately suspend the operations of Chevron and its drilling contractor, Transocean, in Brazil.