Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
EthicalOil.org, which stated goal is countering inaccurate and unfair criticisms of the oil sands, this week launched their first television ad as debate about the Keystone pipeline intended to carry Canadian crude to refineries on the US Gulf coast intensifies.
The treatment of women in Saudi Arabia is the focus of the new ad running exclusively on the Oprah Winfrey Network in Canada and comes on the heels of demonstrations in front of the White House where celebrities had themselves arrested to persuade President Barack Obama, who has the final say, of oil sands’ dangers and influential environmental voice Al Gore calling oil sands the “dirtiest fuel on the planet.”
Al Gore’s blog entry from last week reads in part: “The tar sands are the dirtiest source of fuel on the planet… Gasoline made from the tar sands gives a Toyota Prius the same impact on climate as a Hummer using gasoline made from oil. This pipeline would be an enormous mistake.”
At the end of August MINING.com reported approval for Keystone took a step closer when the US State Department the proposed $7 billion extension of the Keystone pipeline to US Gulf Coast refineries would not likely boost the amount of crude produced from Alberta’s oil sands, suggesting it would have limited impact on the environment.
Last week MINING.com reported China is pouring more money into the oil sands other big pipeline project to Canada’s west coast. Slowing demand in the US is adding pressure for a go-ahead on the Northern Gateway pipeline that will stretch for more than 1,100km at a cost of $5.5 billion affording Canada world prices for its oil, currently priced against heavily discounted US crude. Regulatory hearings are scheduled to start in January.
Image of Oprah Winfrey in 2004 by Alan Light.
6 Comments
Zarneetsa
Al Gore is irrelevent
Geopornology
It may not be the cleanist source of oil but it will become the most important in North America as convential fields are drying up and new discoveries become fewer and smaller in size. Like it or not, we need it!
northofordinary
Fine if the Americans don’t want it. We’ll sell it to Asia….
FromtheMac
I say we keep the work for the for refining the oil in Canada… the hell with anyone else getting the jobs out of it… then we can sell it to the highest bidder and secure our economy… why should the US get the pipeline to create jobs and a product to sell when all they do is shoot off uninformed opinions about the oilsands!
Rfhouston
I can tell you why the President backed down on the EPA’s Ozone limit. If you have been listening to the Washington protesters there in Washington, that were all arrested for their protests, concerning President Obama signing that Permit for the Keystone Pipeline Project to go through, which will be pushed forward Albert Canada’s Oil Tar Sand clear across our country. This whole event will take place before 2011 is over!! THIS IS WHAT WILL BE NEXT!! This is what the Republicans wanted and the oil corporations whose money that talks louder than the people who live within this country. I would suggest when you throw out an email, make sure you tell your readers that you know something about the email that you send out, because this type of email gives away that you really haven’t been listening to what’s been going on.
Here’s a map that shows you the area over which this pipeline will travel over our country. The manner in which all oil companies have utilized for ‘cleaning up’ of oil spillages is archaic, and have been those cleanup methods that have been used since and before the 1900’s (which we saw on the shores of Louisiana and in Montana), so I’m not happy about any of this at all either. What the oil companies usually do BEFORE they even begin the clean up, is to send out their lawyers so as to ‘cover the asses’ legally. If Obama signs this Permit we are ‘dead in the water’ so to speak, and we have had no voice again, like in the same case as NAFTA. This action is a great deal like NAFTA, because when does a politician ‘ever look back, as to what has been left behind’ when he and the corporations with whom he is navigating forward with a ‘a multimillion/billion dollar deal’ ever think to revisit the area in which they have taken from or travel over ??? This whole method reminds me of our country’s early dealings with the Spanish, French and Scottish and English, who came over to take back home with them all the gold, wealth, slaves (who they could use for their benefit) and anything else that was worth something and never gave anything back from those they took from. That is what is NEXT!
http://www.transcanada.com/keystone_pipeline_map.html
rfhonnda houston
Chris Armstrong
The 33-year, cavalier, “wing it” development of the oil sands by BIG OIL demonstrates exactly how NOT to develop our greatest natural resources. BIG OIL justifiably is known for obscene greed/rewards/profits and POLLUTION. Check just a few little disasters: Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound (still NOT recovered after 23 years!); BP’s 2010 world famous INCOMPETENT performance in the Gulf of Mexico; Enbridge’s 2010 “biggest [pipeline] oil spill in U.S. Midwest history”, and their litany of “329 known [pipeline] defects they chose NOT to fix” (figure that one out !); etc., etc. And that is the company that wants to desecrate some of our wildest, most rugged, pristine, British Columbia mountain topography to build a virtually guaranteed DISASTEROUS OIL PIPELINE for their profit pleasure; whence to ship the oil through our treacherous fiords and island waterways to ports around the world.
The only sensible choice for British Columbia is a RESOUNDING “NO” to Big Oil’s half baked plans !