› › Developing Alberta S Oil Sands

Developing Alberta's Oil Sands

Author : Paul Anthony Chastko

Publisher : University of Calgary Press

Page : 339 pages

File Size : 33,7 MB

Release : 2004

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1552381242

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Book Description

Alberta's oil sands represent a vast and untapped oil reserve that could reasonably supply all of Canada's energy needs for the next 475 years. With an estimated 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil at stake, the quest to develop this natural resource has been undertaken by many powerful actors, both nationally and internationally. Using research that integrates the economic, political, scientific, and business factors that have been influential in discovering and developing the sands, this book provides a comprehensive history of the oil sands project and a window on the nature of the complex relationships between industry, government, and transnational players. This book is the first comprehensive volume that examines the origins and development of the oil sands industry over the last century.



Tar Sands

Author : Andrew Nikiforuk

Publisher : Greystone Books Ltd

Page : 280 pages

File Size : 22,95 MB

Release : 2010-08-01

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 155365627X

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Book Description

Tar Sands critically examines the frenzied development in the Canadian tar sands and the far-reaching implications for all of North America. Bitumen, the sticky stuff that ancients used to glue the Tower of Babel together, is the world’s most expensive hydrocarbon. This difficult-to-find resource has made Canada the number-one supplier of oil to the United States, and every major oil company now owns a lease in the Alberta tar sands. The region has become a global Deadwood, complete with rapturous engineers, cut-throat cocaine dealers, Muslim extremists, and a huge population of homeless individuals. In this award-winning book, a Canadian bestseller, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands, arguing forcefully for change. This updated edition includes new chapters on the most energy-inefficient tar sands projects (the steam plants), as well as new material on the controversial carbon cemeteries and nuclear proposals to accelerate bitumen production.



Alberta Oil Sands

Author : Kevin E Percy

Publisher : Newnes

Page : 570 pages

File Size : 45,69 MB

Release : 2012-11-29

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 008097760X

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Book Description

At 170 billion barrels, Canada's Oil Sands are the third largest reserves of developable oil in the world. The Oil Sands now produce about 1.6 million barrels per day, with production expected to double by 2025 to about 3.7 million barrels per day. The Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) in northeastern Alberta is the largest of the three oil sands deposits. Bitumen in the oil sands is recovered through one of two primary methods - mining and drilling. About 20 per cent of the reserves are close to the surface and can be mined using large shovels and trucks. Of concern are the effects of the industrial development on the environment. Both human-made and natural sources emit oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, trace elements and persistent organic compounds. Of additional concern are ground level ozone and greenhouse gases. Because of the requirement on operators to comply with the air quality regulatory policies, and to address public concerns, the not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA) has since 1997 been closely monitoring air quality in AOSR. In 2008, WBEA assembled a distinguished group of international scientists who have been conducting measurements and practical research on various aspects of air emissions and their potential effects on terrestrial receptors. This book is a synthesis of the concepts and results of those on-going studies. It contains 19 chapters ranging from a global perspective of energy production, measurement methodologies and behavior of various air pollutants during fossil fuel production in a boreal forest ecosystem, towards designing and deploying a multi-disciplinary, proactive, and long-term environmental monitoring system that will also meet regulatory expectations. Covers measurement of emissions from very large industrial sources in a region with huge international media profile Validation of measurement technologies can be applied globally The new approaches to ecological monitoring described can be applied in other forested regions



Ethical Oil

Author : Ezra Levant

Publisher : McClelland & Stewart

Page : 270 pages

File Size : 27,17 MB

Release : 2011-05-03

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 077104643X

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Book Description

Canada's "no. 1 defender of freedom of speech" and the bestselling author of Shakedown makes the timely and provocative case that when it comes to oil, ethics matter just as much as the economy and the environment. In 2009, Ezra Levant's bestselling book Shakedown revealed the corruption of Canada's human rights commissions and was declared the "most important public affairs book of the year." In Ethical Oil, Levant turns his attention to another hot-button topic: the ethical cost of our addiction to oil. While many North Americans may be aware of the financial and environmental price we pay for a gallon of gas or a barrel of oil, Levant argues that it is time we consider ethical factors as well. With his trademark candor, Levant asks hard-hitting questions: With the oil sands at our disposal, is it ethically responsible to import our oil from the Sudan, Russia, and Mexico? How should we weigh carbon emissions with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia? And assuming that we can't live without oil, can the development of energy be made more environmentally sustainable? In Ethical Oil, Levant exposes the hypocrisy of the West's dealings with the reprehensible regimes from which we purchase the oil that sustains our lifestyles, and offers solutions to this dilemma. Readers at all points on the political spectrum will want to read this timely and provocative new book, which is sure to spark debate.





Sustainable Development as Environmental Harm

Author : James Heydon

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 342 pages

File Size : 41,94 MB

Release : 2019-04-01

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0429752288

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Book Description

In this in-depth analysis of First Nations opposition to the oil sands industry, James Heydon offers detailed empirical insight into Canadian oil sands regulation. The environmental consequences of the oil sands industry have been thoroughly explored by scholars from a variety of disciplines. However, less well understood is how and why the provincial energy regulator has repeatedly sanctioned such a harmful pattern of production for almost two decades. This research monograph addresses that shortcoming. Drawing from interviews with government, industry, and First Nation personnel, along with an analysis of almost 20 years of policy, strategy, and regulatory approval documents, Sustainable Development as Environmental Harm offers detailed empirical insight into Canadian oil sands regulation. Providing a thorough account of the ways in which the regulatory process has prioritised economic interests over the land-based cultural interests of First Nations, it addresses a gap in the literature by explaining how environmental harm has been systematically produced over time by a regulatory process tasked with the pursuit of ‘sustainable development’. With an approach emphasizing the importance of understanding how and why the regulatory process has been able to circumvent various protections for the entire duration in which the contemporary oil sands industry has existed, this work complements existing literature and provides a platform from which future investigations into environmental harm may be conducted. It is essential reading for those with an interest in green criminology, environmental harm, indigenous rights, and regulatory controls relating to fossil fuel production.



Oil Shale and Tar Sands

Author : John Ward Smith

Publisher :

Page : 100 pages

File Size : 39,63 MB

Release : 1976

Category : Nature

ISBN :

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First World Petro-Politics

Author : Laurie Adkin

Publisher : University of Toronto Press

Page : 691 pages

File Size : 32,71 MB

Release : 2016-08-04

Category : Nature

ISBN : 1442699426

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Book Description

First World Petro-Politics examines the vital yet understudied case of a first world petro-state facing related social, ecological, and economic crises in the context of recent critical work on fossil capitalism. A wide-ranging and richly documented study of Alberta’s political ecology – the relationship between the province’s political and economic institutions and its natural environment – the volume tackles questions about the nature of the political regime, how it has governed, and where its primary fractures have emerged. Its authors examine Alberta’s neo-liberal environmental regulation, institutional adaptation to petro-state imperatives, social movement organizing, Indigenous responses to extractive development, media framing of issues, and corporate strategies to secure social license to operate. Importantly, they also discuss policy alternatives for political democratization and for a transition to a low-carbon economy. The volume’s conclusions offer a critical examination of petro-state theory, arguing for a comparative and contextual approach to understanding the relationships between dependence on carbon extraction and the nature of political regimes.



Oil's Deep State

Author : Kevin Taft

Publisher : James Lorimer & Company

Page : 258 pages

File Size : 23,48 MB

Release : 2017-10-06

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1459409973

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Book Description

Why have democratic governments failed to take serious steps to reduce carbon emissions despite dire warnings and compelling evidence of the profound and growing threat posed by global warming? Most of the writing on global warming is by scientists, academics, environmentalists, and journalists. Kevin Taft, a former leader of the opposition in Alberta, brings a fresh perspective through the insight he gained as an elected politician who had an insider's eyewitness view of the role of the oil industry. His answer, in brief: The oil industry has captured key democratic institutions in both Alberta and Ottawa. Taft begins his book with a perceptive observer's account of a recent court casein Ottawa which laid bare the tactics and techniques of the industry, its insiders and lobbyists. He casts dramatic new light on exactly how corporate lobbyists, politicians, bureaucrats, universities, and other organizations are working together to pursue the oil industry's agenda. He offers a brisk tour of the recent work of scholars who have developed the concepts of the deep state and institutional capture to understand how one rich industry can override the public interest. Taft views global warming and weakened democracy as two symptoms of the same problem — the loss of democratic institutions to corporate influence and control. He sees citizen engagement and direct action by the public as the only response that can unravel big oil's deep state.



The Values of Working in the Alberta Oil Sands

Author : Matthew E. McLaren

Publisher : Author House

Page : 131 pages

File Size : 29,21 MB

Release : 2014-10-25

Category : Family & Relationships

ISBN : 1496947150

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Book Description

This book is an open house that will allow the world to view my experience working in the Alberta oil sand industry. I am a retired senior, who has been working in this phenomenal industry for many years and who has seen and experienced the technological changes that have been engineered to provide a safer and more productive environment for the exploration of Northern Alberta buried treasure. Distribution of wealth is a loaded statement in our democratic society. In the Alberta oil sand, I can safely use this statement because I have experienced the distribution of wealth in this remarkable industry. Oil sand companies are developing the oil sand industry, providing opportunity, where seniors like me and others, can become a member of the industries' working family and share in the distribution of health and wealth. Equal opportunity does not mean equal pay. However, we are all given the opportunity to work and share in the development and distribution of this industry's most valuable buried treasure.