Tar Sands

10/04/16
Author: 
Mike Hudema

Dear Premier Notley,

I support your government on a lot of things.

I was there the day it was sworn in, when thousands of people filled the legislative grounds. I was there when the first cabinet with full gender parity in Alberta’s history was sworn in. I cheered when - after years of an unfair tax system creating unequal burdens – the government raised corporate taxes. I cheered again when your government helped get the money out of politics.

04/04/16
Author: 
Kai Nagata

Beijing has high hopes for the new Trudeau government.

On October 20th, 2015, Prime Minister-elect Justin Trudeau received a congratulatory call from China’s ambassador Luo Zhaohui. The next day, the state-run China Daily newspaper celebrated “improved prospects for a Free Trade Agreement with China” under Canada’s new Liberal government. A week later Premier Li Keqiang himself picked up the phone.

18/03/16
Author: 
Mychaylo Prystupa
Former CIBC world markets economist Jeff Rubin at SFU's 'Carbon Talks' panel. On the right is Vancity's mutual fund manager Dermot Foley. Photo by Mychaylo Prystupa.

The oil sands are downsizing. Alberta's Big Oil CEOs are talking to environmentalists. And proposed oil pipelines are in serious trouble.

Those were the takeaways from a trio of experts who spoke in Vancouver Wednesday at a "Carbon Talks" event hosted by Simon Fraser University with the David Suzuki Foundation and the Centre for International Governance.

And the reasons for them have a lot less to do with vocal activist opposition or the Trudeau government's climate commitments than they do with the brute forces of the global marketplace for oil.

14/03/16
Author: 
JEFF RUBIN
Oil at the first phase of separation from the sand is seen at the Suncor tar sands processing plant near Fort McMurray, Alberta, in this Sept. 17, 2014 file photo.
(Todd Korol/Reuters)

Oil sands producers may have collectively breathed a sigh of relief on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent failure to get the premiers signing on to a national price for carbon emissions. However, domestic measures to reduce carbon emissions are the least of oil sands producers’ concerns when it comes to how actions to mitigate climate change will challenge their industry’s survival.

12/03/16
Author: 
Geoffrey Morgan
Photo: Larry Wong/Edmonton Journal/Postmedia News

CALGARY – Imperial Oil Ltd. has revealed plans for a new $2-billion oilsands plant at a time its competitors have cancelled or deferred new projects to survive the oil price collapse.

Imperial, one of the largest oil and gas companies in Canada, announced Friday it had filed an application with the Alberta Energy Regulator to build a 50,000 barrel per day oilsands facility, which would extract oil using a new technique the company says would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent compared with existing projects.

21/02/16
Author: 
Ross Belot

We saw the delegates hugging each other as they walked out of the COP21 climate change talks in Paris back in December — but we had no idea what the agreement they reached meant for Canada.

Now we do. And it turns out Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall was quite right to be anxious about the future of our fossil fuel industry and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley may have been quite wrong in her assertion that Alberta will prosper — if she was talking about the oil and gas industry, at any rate.

09/12/15
Author: 
Macdonald Stainsby
Tar Sands

A friend sent me an email note two days ago, with the intro line “The NGO’s finally did it!” which caused a moment of terrorized confusion. I didn’t realize it would relate to this, but for the first time ever last November, the province of Alberta has instituted a potential cap on tar sands development. However, this is not the achievement my colleague was referencing. It was more a statement of alarm than laudatory glee.

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