Oil - Pipelines

Canada must consider how Alberta’s oilsands contribute to global climate change and make moves to cut its carbon emissions before it's too late, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu told reporters in Fort McMurray. “Only those who don’t want to listen, only those who want to be blind can’t see that we are sitting on a powderkeg,” he said Friday. “If we don’t do something urgently, quickly, we won’t have a world.” Tutu is in the northern Alberta city for a two-day conference on oilsands development and aboriginal treaties, was hosted by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.

Live Update: Scroll to the bottom of this page for an on-the-scene interview with an activist chained to the gates of the Chevron facility in British Columbia. 

Christy Clark loves to do photo-ops wearing a hard hat. That was basically her uniform on the campaign trail last year. It was meant to symbolize her commitment to jobs, as she touted the “trillion dollar” bonanza that B.C. would reap from expanding Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exports. If only Premier Clark were as committed to and respectful of actual workers in this province as she is to imaginary future workers in this one sector of the economy.

CALGARY - Ottawa wants the Commission for Environmental Co-operation to drop its investigation into whether laws are being properly enforced when it comes to oilsands pollution.

The CEC asked the federal government in December to respond to allegations that it has failed to enforce provisions in the Fisheries Act by allowing harmful substances to leak from tailings ponds into water sources downstream of mines in northeastern Alberta.

EDMONTON - Critics say Albertans are in danger of being shut out of discussions on how the province's natural resources are developed.

Expert observers and opposition politicians worry Alberta's new energy regulator is drawing the circle of who can speak so tightly that one hearing on a proposed energy project had to be cancelled because no one was allowed to appear.

The area in Northern Alberta known as the Tar sands has been the subject of a raging debate over the past years. On the one hand, the business community claims the exploitation of the region's unconventional oil reserves to be Canada's most effective engine of economic growth and job creation; that further exploitation will allow for the country to become self-reliant in energy and end its dependence on foreign oil. The other side of the debate is often dismissed as being made up of environmentalists who care more for nature than their fellow human beings.

After persistently prodding the National Energy Board, pipeline critic David Ellis finally got a report on Kinder Morgan's two oil spills along the Trans Mountain pipeline route. The spills happened last June, and had temporarily shut the pipeline down for investigation. What he saw on page two of Kinder Morgan's Engineering Assessment floored him.

Conservative political activist and Sun News broadcaster Ezra Levant stirred a hornet’s nest of attention at a Vancouver “No Enbridge” rally on Saturday -- perhaps the largest ever such gathering. The author of Ethical Oil and host of The Source worked his way through a crowd of an estimated 5,000 with his cameraman, putting his microphone to citizens opposed to oil pipelines – first asking questions, then making accusations. “You guys are hypocrites,” said Levant.  “China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.  And you don’t care.”

The Harper government must ensure there is “free, prior and informed consent" from First Nations before giving the go-ahead to major resource projects – including two proposed pipeline megaprojects to the B.C. coast, the United Nations said Monday. A report by James Anaya, the UN’s outgoing Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, said there is a “crisis” in Canada and that the level of mistrust has perhaps worsened since the last visit by a UN representative just over a decade ago.

Local chapters of four labour unions that recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Enbridge - the energy company behind the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline - have also thrown their support behind the expansion of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline, pending the National Energy Board's approval of the project...The Construction and Specialized Worker's Union Local 1611 (under the Laborers' International Union of North America), the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 213 and the United Association of Journeym