The age of extreme oil: ‘This used to be a forest?' One grey Thursday at the end of April, a plane touched down in Fort McMurray, Alta., carrying four Achuar Indians from the Peruvian Amazon. They had flown 8,000 kilometres from the rain forest to beseech Talisman Energy Inc., the Calgary-based oil and gas conglomerate, to stop drilling in their territory. Talisman's annual general meeting was coming up, and the Achuar were invited to state their case to chief executive officer John Manzoni in front of the company's shareholders.
But first, they wanted to see a Canadian oil patch for themselves, and meet the aboriginal people who lived there. Their host in Fort McMurray was Gitzikomin Deranger, Gitz to his friends – a 6-foot-4 Dene-Blackfoot activist who lives in a comfortably cluttered duplex with his parents and a revolving assortment of relatives. “Did you kill the bird to get it?” “No,” Mr. “Condor feathers are sacred for us too, but we never pick them off the ground,” Mr. Canadian Oil Sands Flyover. The true cost of oil: Garth Lenz @ TEDxVictoria. Keystone XL: Pipeline to the Apocalypse - November/December 2011 - Sierra Magazine. As deadline nears, friends and foes of Keystone XL pipeline step up campaigns. The pipeline, which requires a federal permit from the State Department because it crosses an international border, has been under review for more than three years.
In early November, the administration delayed making a national interest determination on the pipeline on the grounds that it needed to avoid crossing sensitive terrain in Nebraska’s Sandhills region. At the time, officials predicted that the process of rerouting the pipeline and the subsequent environmental review would extend the permitting process into early 2013. But language inserted in last month’s payroll tax extension forces President Obama to make a decision by Feb. 21. Administration officials have said that the truncated timeline makes it difficult to complete a review of whether the pipeline is in the national interest, given the fact TransCanada has yet to outline an alternate route.
“I think the timing is just unfortunate, because we’re close to an election,” Engler said. In the meantime, House Speaker John A. An open letter on the proposed Enbridge pipeline. Hello friends, We are under attack. By our own government, flanked by the oil industry. I don't know how else to describe it. The logic of the Harper government -- and the "ethical oil" lobbyists our prime minister himself is parroting -- is so twisted, their arguments so convoluted, it makes the head spin. I am a writer, and words are failing me. Let me try to explain. Like so many other Canadian families, my parents were born elsewhere and moved to Canada at a young age. I grew up watching forests on Vancouver Island be clear-cut, mountains seemingly shaved from top to bottom.
And I've been speaking out, ever since I was 14 years old, for the kind of future I want to live in. Harper twisted logic No. 2 is that while foreign funding of environmental organizations is a bad thing, foreign investment in the Enbridge pipeline and in the Alberta tar sands is unequivocally a good thing. Harper twisted logic No. 6 is that he represents the interests of Canadians. So here's what I think. Matt Price: Canadian Jobs Lost to the Tar Sands. Just because something is a bit complicated, it doesn't mean you can ignore it, especially when it's hurting you. And yet, this appears to be the case with the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the past several years -- 627,000 by one measure -- mostly in Ontario and Quebec where these jobs have historically existed.
The phenomenon even has a name already: "Dutch Disease. " Canada now has a bad case of it, yet you won't hear the government in Ottawa talk about it, since that would run counter to its blinkered agenda of accelerating the strip mining of Northern Alberta to push more oil through pipelines to China and America. The term "Dutch Disease" was coined in the 1970s after the Netherlands discovered a large natural gas field. The country's exchange rate became tied to the rising price of natural gas, pricing its manufacturing goods out of international markets and leading to job losses. How many? Harper government “sidestepping” FNs opposed to pipeline in PR war: chief. By Jorge BarreraAPTN National NewsThe Harper government is “sidestepping” the country’s most potent opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline by instead targeting a “boogeyman” in hopes of scaring up public support, says a First Nation chief who is part of a coalition that has pledged to stop the project at all cost.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver have both publicly claimed that American interests opposing the $5.5 billion pipeline project are trying to “hijack” the project in Canada by funding environmental groups in the country. Oliver released an open letter this week claiming these foreign funded environmental and “radical groups” threatened to undermine Canada’s national interest in their quest to stop Enbridge’s proposed 1,172 kilometre pipeline.
Oliver said in the letter that Canada faced a “historic choice” of either opening up a new outlet for Alberta bitumen in Asia, or continue to only supply the U.S. jbarrera@aptn.ca.