Tar Sands

The author argues the pipeline to B.C. is folly and Canada risks being ‘a great source of destruction’

…and two-track economy. View this and more in our encyclopedia of the oil crash

John Podesta returns to the White House

Lobby groups tend to oppose major engineering employers

Canada’s largest transporter of crude oil allies with the capital, whether it wants it or not

The NDP and the Tories are more than happy to spar over the Alberta oil sands boom

Thomas Mulcair worries that we’re suffering from Dutch Disease.

The Globe and Reuters note one of the seemingly major changes in the Harper government’s “plan for responsible resource development.”

The industry-approved lingo for Alberta’s hydrocarbon gunk is ‘oil sands’

Why even Obama can’t hurry approval for the long-delayed oil pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast

Much like “Jurist”, I had to laugh at the headlines conjured up in the wake of the most interesting Wikileaks revelation so far concerning Canada. The Globe, summarizing the leaked minute of a private meeting between former Environment Minister Jim Prentice and U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson, says “[Prentice] threatened to impose new rules on oil sands”. Okayyy, but it’s not really a threat if you make it only in the presence of a third party, is it? We’ve all met fake tough guys who are full of stories about how they really told so-and-so off, but who are really just imagining what they would have said if their spine weren’t made of marmalade. Similarly, the CBC has it “Prentice was ready to curb oilsands”, mysteriously failing to add “…but he didn’t really get around to it, and then one day he just cleaned out his desk and left.”

Having stuck up for Syncrude in the early stages of the blind, agonizing struggle over the Case of the Bitumen-Bathed Birds, I ought to express my disapproval of the high-pitched political threats made yesterday by the consortium’s lawyer, Robert White. White told the press that “If… Syncrude is guilty of this crime, the government is complicit and the industry is doomed… If by having a tailings pond we’re guilty of this charge, we have to stop having tailings ponds.”