Oil by Rail

Alberta’s slowing economy and climate change were at the top of the agenda as Premier Rachel Notley met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the first sit-down between the two leaders.

Some federal Conservatives have been openly critical of initial moves taken by the NDP government, including the elimination of the provincial flat tax on income, but Ms. Notley said both leaders stuck to areas of common ground.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Canada's Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt announced new harmonized guidelines for rail tanker cars Friday morning in Washington, in part to deal with the lessons learned from the Lac-Mégantic tragedy of July 2013 and to deal with the 4,000 per cent increase in crude oil shipments by rail in recent years.

'Oil, tar sands, coal, natural gas: What's behind the expansion drive of Canada's and North America's fossil fuel industries?' talk by Roger Annis of Vancouver Ecosocialist Group, at University of California Santa Barbara, April 11, 2014

The company seeking to build the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has had a massive explosion on its decades-old natural gas pipeline in southern Manitoba. The rupture of the TransCanada PipeLines (TCPL) gas line occurred in the middle of the night on Saturday, January 25 near the village of Otterburne. A massive fireball erupted into the night sky and burned for many hours.

By Roger Annis, October 24, 2013

Another oil train derailment and explosion in Canada has sent nearby residents fleeing from their homes in the middle of the night. It happened at 1 am on Saturday, October 19 on a CN Rail line outside the hamlet of Gainford, Alberta, 85 km west of Edmonton. The accident coincides with new steps by the Canadian government to extend oil and other resource extraction into the Arctic.

By Roger Annis

By Roger Annis, special to Green Left Weekly

September 18, 2013--For the second time in three months, a CP Rail train carrying toxic and flammable hydrocarbons has derailed in the city of Calgary. On September 11, eight railway wagons carrying close to one million liters of a highly flammable gasoline product (diluent) used in the pipeline transport of tar sands bitumen derailed in the Inglewood neighbourhood.