Shell Oil and The Calgary Herald lead Oilsands Greenwashing campaign
From PR Watch

The UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a Shell ad describing Canada’s oilsands as “sustainable” was “misleading.” The advertising regulator noted the “considerable social and environmental impacts” of oilsands development, adding that Shell has not explained how it will manage “carbon emissions from its oilsands projects in order to limit climate change.”

The World Wildlife Fund filed a complaint accusing Shell of “greenwashing,” after the ad appeared in the Financial Times. Shell agreed not to run the ad again.

The UK Ad watchdog pointed out that oilsands development “uses enormous amounts of fresh water and natural gas and produces about three times as much greenhouse gas emissions as conventional oil output.” Read the complete Post.

By John Ryan for NPR
8/17/08

Juneau, Alaska, was forced into radical electricity conservation earlier this year when electrical transmission lines were destroyed in an avalanche. Residents managed to cut their electrical consumption by more than 30 percent. Now that the repairs have been completed, usage has crept back up. Click here for audio link.

By Michael Riley
The Denver Post
8/17/08
Original article

VPO note - this article is a perfect example of the colossal ignorance involved in most reporting on energy. See in particular this one paragraph:

While critics charge that extracting oil shale may use as much energy as it produces, analysts point out that the key in the debate over liquid fuels is not how much energy is used but how much oil — a lot of oil is used to produce one barrel of ethanol, for instance; very little is used to produce a barrel of shale oil.

There is no difference between whether oil or something else is used to provide the energy to produce more oil. EROI is EROI, and if the EROI is below even 5:1, the energy source will be useless in continuing the complexity of civilization as we’ve known it. This article admits that the EROI of oil shale probably 1:1 or even negative, as it is for ethanol. So why pursue it? Private profit…at taxpayer expense, and at the cost of the health and even lives of the people who live above and around this oil shale deposit. For a brief video discussion of EROI, see here.”

GARFIELD COUNTY — The ramshackle collection of wellheads and electric cables hidden in a pine-covered draw west of Rifle doesn’t look like much now, but until three years ago it was the home of the oil industry’s equivalent of the Manhattan Project.

Over five years here, Shell Oil conducted a series of secretive experiments that have the potential to blow open the status quo of North American oil production, unlocking the vast reserves of oil shale that underlie Colorado’s Western Slope.

Early attempts failed miserably. Read the complete Post.

Click here for a 3:34 slideshow about Eileen Ailert’s campaign to kick-start urban agriculture.

Also: click here to order a used copy of Heather Flores’ book “Food Not Lawns”, a practical guide to home food growing. And click here to check out VPO resources on how to start growing your own food.

It’s a way to get back in touch with this Nature we keep hearing so much about, a way to start eating healthy organic food for practically nothing, and a political act - all rolled into one. Join in!

August 19, 2008
By JAD MOUAWAD
NY Times
Original article

VPO Note - while this article perpetuates the misleading frame of peak oil “theorists” — as if petroleum geologists, oil company CEO’s and investment bankers weren’t simply responding to hard data — it does report on former peak oil deniers admitting to “geopolitical peak oil” and “resource nationalism” (aka peak exports), which have long been part of rational thinking about peak oil — see our FAQ entry.

Oil production has begun falling at all of the major Western oil companies, and they are finding it harder than ever to find new prospects even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand.

Part of the reason is political. From the Caspian Sea to South America, Western oil companies are being squeezed out of resource-rich provinces. They are being forced to renegotiate contracts on less-favorable terms and are fighting losing battles with assertive state-owned oil companies.

And much of their production is in mature regions that are declining, like the North Sea.

The reality, experts say, is that the oil giants that once dominated the global market have lost much of their influence — and with it, their ability to increase supplies. Read the complete Post.

Up to 90 gas stations in Alberta alone could be out of gas soon, following problems at a Petro-Canada oil refinery.
Alexandra Zabjek, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, August 15, 2008
Original article

VPO thinknote - this is just a single mechanical problem at one refinery. Notice how quickly existing supplies ran out. What would happen in the event of a large-scale shortage?

EDMONTON - Up to 90 stations in the interior of British Columbia and Alberta could run dry over the course of the shutdown of local Petro-Canada’s refinery, said company spokeswoman Kelli Stevens.

She would not comment on whether individual store owners would be compensated for revenues lost while regular gas supplies are curtailed. Diesel supplies have not been interrupted. Read the complete Post.

Innovative development will house 45 families, a farm, businesses
Brian Lewis, The Province
Published: Sunday, August 17, 2008
Original article

One of the Fraser Valley’s better kept secrets is the picturesque village of Yarrow, where even today it feels more appropriate to drive down its main street in nothing newer than a ‘56 Chevy.

However, just across from “Hank the Barber” on Yarrow Central Road, you’ll find a unique development project that’s capturing attention from as far away as Kansas and California. Read the complete Post.

Oil-pipeline routes, market leverage make struggle a ‘battle for energy.

By David R. Francis
from the August 18, 2008 edition
The Christian Science Monitor

Original Article

In both geopolitical and economic terms, the United States appears a loser in the Russia-Georgia conflict.

If the pipeline crossing Georgia, bringing approximately a million barrels of Caspian oil a day to the West, remains shut down for much longer, it could result in higher oil prices.

“We could see $4 a gallon gasoline again,” warns Edward Yardeni, an American consulting economist.

The 1,100-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline provides only about 1 percent of the global demand for oil. But, as Prof. Michael Klare of Amherst College notes: “There’s not a lot of spare [crude oil] capacity” in the world.

In the long-running struggle for control of Caspian oil and gas and influence in the ex-Soviet states of that region, the clash has been a blow to US clout.

“The Russians come out of this as winning this round,” says Professor Klare. “They are the power brokers in this part of the world…. But there will be more skirmishes to come.”

Klare, author of “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy,” sees the conflict as “not a battle for democracy,” as portrayed by Washington. “It was a battle for energy,” he says.

Oil reserves underneath the Caspian Sea are believed to be huge, perhaps as much as 200 billion barrels. That compares with the estimated 260 billion barrels in Saudi Arabia. Read the complete Post.

Fraser River works as transport route
Environmental impact less when containers put on barges
Brian Lewis, The Province
Published: Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Original article

VPO note - the NDP under Glen Clark ended up wasting millions of BC taxpayer dollars in the 1990’s on the FastCat ferries, and took heat for it from the Liberals. But now those same Liberals are about to waste BILLIONS of BC taxpayer dollars on the Gateway project just when people are finally starting to drive less, and cheaper alternatives like barges & rail - that are better for our future - are available. See our FAQ on VPO’s Gateway 2.0 proposal.

VPO considers this a scandal, if there’s any meaning to the word.

A report commissioned by local port authorities but virtually ignored by the B.C. government for more than three years now raises serious doubts about the economic viability of building the $1-billion South Fraser Perimeter Road.

In fact, the holes it opens in the so-called rationale for this 40-kilometre, four-lane truck freeway through Delta farmland and Burns Bog are large enough to drive an 18-wheel container truck through. Read the complete Post.

Traditional Energy’s Modern Boom
High Prices Are Driving Increased Extraction of Oil and Other Fossil Fuels
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 15, 2008; A01
Original article

AMWELL, Pa. — The guys on the derrick, filthy with mud and grease, have the best view in the county. Their drilling rig rises from a bulldozed, flattened patch of meadow near the top of a hill. To the south is an old farmhouse and a white barn. Hay bales dry in the sun.

It’s classically pastoral as far as the eye can see, which makes all the more dramatic the presence of this derrick, 160 feet high, and the construction trailers, and the mud gushing into a holding pond, and all the roaring machinery.

Heavy industry has invaded the countryside because of something called the Marcellus Shale. It’s a layer of hard, black rock, more than a mile down. Trapped in tiny pores of that rock is a huge quantity of natural gas. The Marcellus Shale could become what people in the natural gas business call a big play.

“It’s a gold rush, really. It’s a boom,” said Steve Rupert, an executive with Range Resources, which is drilling aggressively in the rolling farmland southwest of Pittsburgh.

This is the world of 21st-century energy, which around here looks surprisingly like 19th-century energy. There is little evidence that the old, conventional sources of energy are about to disappear, or that the free market by itself is going to drive a transition to clean, renewable power. Read the complete Post.