Tar sands

A flurry of new mainstream media articles telling people not to worry about Peak Oil and hydrocarbon depletion have begun appearing on financial sites like Bloomberg, Forbes or The Wall Street Journal. I though it would be worthwhile to analyze some of their arguments. At least some media outlets are willing to even discuss peak oil at all—most remain completely silent.

In a detailed analysis submitted to the National Energy Board, Robyn Allan, the former president and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, concludes that "Northern Gateway is neither needed nor is in the public interest." Moreover the project, if built, would raise the price of every oil barrel by $2 to $3 dollars in Canada over the next 30 years, and thereby create an inflationary price shock that would have "a negative and prolonged impact... by reducing output, employment, labour income and government revenues."

As long as we allow proponents of unconventional oil and gas to claim a false choice between energy and economic security and the environment, and as long as we allow them to vilify opponents as being somehow unpatriotic or radical, we run the very real risk of losing a battle where the future of our planet and species is at stake. Ok, so maybe I am being a little bombastic. But am I wrong?

Caring about the air, water, and land that give us life. Exploring ways to ensure Canada’s natural resources serve the national interest. Knowing that sacrificing our environment to a corporate-controlled economy is suicide. If those qualities make us radicals, as federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently claimed in an open letter, then I and many others will wear the label proudly.

Few debates illustrate the messy nature of North America's energy politics better than the postponement of the Keystone XL pipeline.

- Boston Globe on McKibben: The man who crushed the Keystone XL pipeline
- David Suzuki: What’s So Radical About Caring for the Earth and Opposing Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline?
- After Keystone XL Decision, Don't Believe GOP Hype on Energy

This Wednesday afternoon, the Obama administration rejected the permit for Keystone XL, a 1,700 mile oil pipeline that would have run from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. The announcement is a huge victory for the grassroots climate movement. While the fight to stop the Keystone XL pipeline is over for now, the political battle over the consequences of Obama's decision is just beginning. Big Oil front groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are already spending millions of dollars on TV ads to bash the President over Keystone XL.

An peak oil report for the Australian government has just surfaced. Although the report was finished in 2009, it apparently was never released to the public and does not appear on a government website.

Conclusion: "the prospects for the potential supply of world conventional petroleum liquids can be summarised as ‘flattish to slightly up for another eight years or longer (depending on the duration of the global economic slowdown) and then down’. Such a finding poses challenges for global transport and more generally, given the magnitude of the downturn foreseen for the rest of the century, and given the inertias inherent in our energy systems and transport vehicle fleets"

(Excerpts. Link to complete report.)

The Northern Gateway Pipeline will explosively increase the scale of oil sands production at a level not in the national interest, says David Hughes, one of Canada's foremost energy analysts.

Richard Heinberg joins James Howard Kunstler, Nicole Foss, Dmitri Orlov and Noam Chomsky in a panel discussion. Reviewer: "These extraordinary clearseers analyse precisely the catastrophic crises which -- amongst many other things -- are bringing on the steady, relentless collapse of the US empire. "

- Iran Threatens to Block Oil if West Sets New Sanctions
- Fracking Opens Fissures Among States as Drillers Face Many Rules
- 'Secret' Environment Canada Presentation Warns of Oilsands' Impact on Habitat
- Nickel-hydrogen low energy nuclear reaction (links)

- Protests seen as stand against fossil fuels
- U.S. Congress hands energy industry historic victory
- Oil lobby lagging reality
- The politics of pipe: Keystone's troubled route
- If You Care About Keystone and Climate Change, Occupy Exxon
- Official White House Response to Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline

As I type this, Big Oil’s representatives in the House and Senate are pushing legislation that would rush approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Up until now, President Barack Obama has stood strong, threatening to reject any bill that includes the pipeline.

But in the last hour, some terrible news has begun to leak from Washington, D.C.—President Obama seems to be on the verge of caving on Keystone.

- Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas (methane)
- Lundberg to McKibben: Combatting the "jobs" argument for the XL pipeline
- Guardian on climate conference: sometimes inching forward looks like progress
- Thoughts on Bruce Sterling: It gets boring being a Cassandra (Bardi)