General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPhotos Taken By Pulitzer Center Journalists Flying Over the Oilsands This Week
more photos at link:
http://desmog.ca/2014/04/07/look-these-incredible-photos-by-pulitzer-center-journalists-flying-over-oilsands
Journalist Dan Grossman and photographer Alex MacLean are in the middle of their week long tour of the Alberta oilsands. Their on-the-scene reporting is meant to bring greater public attention to the scale and the stakes of developing oil from the worlds largest deposit of carbon-intensive bitumen.
As Grossman puts it on the Pulitzer Center website, We know the ground beneath Albertas boreal forestsaturated with an estimated 150 billion barrels of oilrivals all other troves of oil apart from those of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. We know Albertas rich deposits underlie a territory of 54,000 square miles, as large as Iowa. But we can barely comprehend numbers this big. Alex will help us. Hell show us waste ponds nearly the size of Manhattan and dump trucks that could swallow a McMansion whole.
Grossman has been tweeting about his experience in the oilsands region prolifically since April 4th. Below you can see some of the duos photojournalist coverage of their trip so far.
How to describe Frt McMurray from air?
Journalists not permitted to visit. We appealed. Here's photo Alex shot of gooey #tarsands ooze up. At 1 of 4 site
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Destroying the environment for profit. What I don't understand is, they could probably profit from development of alternative energy.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Alberta Federation of Labor
Friday, 22 April 2011
Foreign corporations, some controlled by national governments, have been using their economic clout to buy into Alberta's oil sands and take control of our natural resources.
U.S., French, British, Chinese, Thai, Korean and Norwegian interests have all bought stakes in oil-sands projects. According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), international companies have invested nearly $20 billion in the last three years through mergers, partnerships and outright purchases of projects.
This increased foreign investment raises questions. Who has the right to develop our natural resources? Who sets the rules for how these resources are developed? Who controls where the resources are processed and sold?
One of the most recent major international investments came in November 2010, when Thailand's state-owned PTTEP bought a 40-per-cent stake in Statoil's Kai Kos Dehseh project for $2.3 billion. Statoil is a Norwegian company whose largest owner is the government of Norway, with 67 per cent of the shares. Under the terms of the deal, Statoil remained the majority owner and operator of the project, which ends up being a Norwegian-Thai, public-private enterprise developing Albertan energy resources.
In 2009, Korean National Oil Company took over Calgary's Harvest Energy Trust for $4.1 billion ($1.8 billion in cash and $2.3 billion in assumed debt). The deal allowed the Korean state-run company to grab an estimated oil production of 50,000 barrels per day (b/d) and 154 million barrels of oil-equivalent reserves. At that time, the Korean companies were reportedly looking to acquire about 300,000 b/d of production by 2012 to offset South Korea's dependence on foreign oil 97 per cent of which was imported.
This wasn't the first time the Korean National Oil Company came to Alberta. In 2006, the Korean firm set up an office in Calgary and purchased the Black Gold Oil Sands leases near Conklin. These leases gave the company 10,000 b/d of bitumen for about 25 years.
China is now the world's largest consumer of energy. Perhaps not surprisingly, this energy-hungry nation has significantly increased its presence in the oil sands in the last two years. In 2009, PetroChina struck a deal to buy a 60-per-cent share of Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.'s MacKay River and Dover projects for $1.9 billion plus other financing arrangements. This gave PetroChina a majority share in a company with access to more than five million barrels of oil.
In April 2010, the Chinese company Sinopec, a majority-owned subsidiary of a national company, paid $4.65 billion for Houston-based ConocoPhillips' stake in Syncrude. What makes this deal significant is that under the terms of the deal, the state-controlled Sinopec has a veto on the critical decision of whether the company should upgrade bitumen here or export it in raw form overseas.
Questions around Sinopec's motives on bitumen processing whether here in Alberta or overseas were raised to a fever pitch in January this year when Enbridge announced the Chinese company's funding of the $5.5-billion Northern Gateway Pipeline. Though still in the early stages of development, the Northern Gateway Pipeline is designed to carry 525,000 barrels of diluted raw bitumen day from Alberta to a tanker port at Kitimat, B.C., where oil tankers would transport it overseas for upgrading and processing.
Most oil-sands producers are thought to be looking to upgrade and refine here or in the U.S., rather than ship raw bitumen overseas, and then sell their oil to whatever market that offers the most money. Sinopec's investment in the Northern Gateway Pipeline, however, is seen as a strategy to ship massive amounts of bitumen out of North America to Asia for upgrading, refining and finally consumption in mainland China.
CONTINUED...
http://www.afl.org/index.php/May-2011/who-owns-our-oil-sands-foreign-corporations-stake-their-claims-to-our-resources.html
it's the name of the game!
Dirty Socialist
(3,252 posts)What they failed to do in Iraq.
2naSalit
(86,765 posts)pragmatic_dem
(410 posts)and will create a grand total of 50 jobs in the USA while making the Koch Bros billions.
?1
hunter
(38,325 posts)Soon after the civilization dies.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)And, we have 11 Democrats who want Obama to okay the rest of the pipeline for THIS? So they can get re-elected?
G_j
(40,367 posts)but these operations are huge!