Tar Sands

Although the concept of environmental refugees has been circulating for more than thirty years, not much has been written about how the displacement of people caused by environmental disasters has entered into public discourses. More specifically, within the empirical investigations into the discourses on environmental displacement, the phenomenon of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) moving inside the borders of their own countries as an effect of disasters has received little critical attention with respect to how it is framed. The present article explores the discursive constructions of IDPs in Canadian news discourse which refer to the destructive 2016 Alberta fire in Fort McMurray, the heart of the tar sands region. Thus, a corpus of news reports is analysed in a discourse-analytical perspective with the intent of identifying specific discursive strategies, frames and patterns in the representation of the social actors within newspaper narratives. The analysis shows that the representations of IDPs in the corpus under investigation are characterized by different patterns of language choice compared to those emerging from the discourses on climate refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in general, evident in previous studies. In the end, what becomes also apparent is that nomination strategies are connected to specific ideologies in discourse, on the basis of which the correlation between the tar sands and the fire is either omitted or mildly unveiled.

Edited by Toban Black, Stephen D'Arcy, Tony Weis, and Joshua Kahn Russell

"The tar sands constitute the largest industrial project on Earth, and represent the stranglehold the fossil fuel industry has over our communities and the very future of our planet. Despite the formidable political and economic power behind the project, streams of resistance have emerged, challenging the threats to Indigenous territories and sovereignty, climate change, the great hazards posed by extraction, pipelines, and refineries, abuse of workers, destruction of water, air, and land, the lack of democratic participation, and more. A tapestry of leading voices involved in the struggle, A Line in the Tar Sands is a tool for organizers and newcomers alike, offering critical analysis, strategic reflections, and visions of hope for the future."

Table of Contents
List of Contributors

xii

Foreword
Naomi Klein and Bill Mckibben

xvii

Introduction: Drawing a Line in the Tar Sands

Tony Weis, Toban Black, Stephen D’arcy, and Joshua Kahn Russell

1

Part I: Tar Sands Expansionism
1. Petro-Capitalism and the Tar Sands

Angela V. Carter

23

2. Assembling Consent in Alberta: Hegemony and the Tar Sands

Randolph Haluza-Delay

36

3. The Rise of Reactionary Environmentalism in the Tar Sands

Ryan Katz-Rosene

45

4. Canadian Diplomatic Efforts to Sell the Tar Sands

Yves Engler

55

5. The Environmental NGO Industry and Frontline Communities

Dave Vasey

64

6. Canada’s Eastward Pipelines: A Corporate Export Swindle, Confronted by Cross-Country Resistance

Martin Lukacs

76

7. Migrant Justice and the Tar Sands Industry

Harsha Walia

84

8. Responding to Chinese Investments in the Tar Sands

Harjap Grewal

91

9. New Beginnings: Tar Sands Prospecting Abroad

Macdonald Stainsby

99

Part II: Communities and Resistance
10. Awaiting Justice: The Ceaseless Struggle of the Lubicon Cree

Melina Laboucan-Massimo

113

11. Kihci Pikiskwewin—Speaking the Truth

Crystal Lameman

118

12. The Tar Sands Healing Walk

Jesse Cardinal

127

13. Petro-Chemical Legacies and Tar Sands Frontiers: Chemical Valley versus Environmental Justice

Toban Black

134

14. Beyond Token Recognition: The Growing Movement against the Enbridge Norther Gateway Project

Tyler McCreary

146

15. Culture Works

Christine Leclerc and Rex Weyler

160

16. Lessons from Direct Action at the White House to Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline

Joshua Kahn Russell, Linda Capato, Matt Leonard, and Rae Breaux

166

17. Gulf Coast Resistance and the Southern Leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline

Cherri Foytlin, Yudith Nieto, Kerry Lemon, and Will Wooten

181

18. The Enbridge Pipeline Disaster and Accidental Activism along the Kalamazoo River

Sonia Grant

195

19. Getting Europe out of the Tar Sands: The Rise of the UK Tar Sands Campaign

Jess Worth

207

20. Labour Faces the Keystone XL and Climate Change

Jeremy Brecher and the Labor Network for Sustainability

217

Part III: Future Prospects
21. Ending the Age of Fossil Fuels and Building an Economics for the Seventh Generation

Winona LaDuke

229

22. The Rise of the Native Rights-Based Strategic Framework

Clayton Thomas-Muller

23. Pipelines and Resistance Across Turtle Island

Sâkihitowin Awâsis

253

24. What Does It Mean to Be a Movement? A Proposal for a Coherent, Powerful, Indigenous-Led Movement

Emily Coats

267

25. Expanding the Fossil Fuel Resistance

Bill Mckibben

279

26. Secondary Targeting: A Strategic Approach to Tar Sands Resistance

Stephen D’arcy

286

27. From the Tar Sands to “Green Jobs”? Work and Ecological Justice

Greg Albo and Lilian Yap

298

28. Tar Sands, Extreme Energy, and the Future of the Climate Movement

Brian Tokar

311

Acknowledgements

322

Notes

323

Index

359

Although huge deposits of tar sands have been discovered in parts of south-western Nigeria, detailed geological studies of many locations are yet to be executed. Such studies would not only help in quantitative evaluation but also help in generating baseline data that would help in evolving exploitation technique that will be environmentally friendly. Vertical electrical Soundings of southwest Okitipupa were extensively carried out while core samples were studied in order to generate subsurface model of the study area. Detailed sedimentological studies of core samples were also executed. Correlations of geoelectric sections with borehole litho-logs revealed three layers from top to bottom of lateritic soil/clay, shale and sand/bituminous sand. The depth to tar sand horizon ranged from 0.5 to 50.0 m. Groundwater level of about 13 to 15m measured in dug wells occur above tar sand horizon. The most abundant mineral in the tar sand is quartz with subordinate amounts of microcline, muscovite and biotite. The medium grained and moderately sorted nature of the tar sands coupled with low amount of fine particles, indicate that the oil sand reservoir is of good quality. Open cast mining can be employed but precaution must be taken to prevent blowout that may be induced by the overlying water bearing horizon. The fairly thick impervious clayey overburden will prevent pollution of groundwater by waste likely to be associated with tar sand exploitation.

The Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA) is
pleased to publish this book, which will make publicly available useful
technical data. However, the Authority makes no warranty, express or
implied, nor assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy,
completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or
process disclosed in this publication, or represents that its use would not infringe on privately-owned rights. Reference herein to any specific
commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark,
manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its
endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by AOSTRA. The views and
opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of
AOSTRA.

The article seeks to highlight the steady process of offshorization of Albertan legislation and the general wholesale of decision-making processes to the oily hands of multinational businesses involved in the extraction of tar sands oil.

To be published in the English version of A. Deneault, Paradis fiscaux: la filière canadienne, édition Écosociété, 2014.

Summary:
This chapter presents a descriptive and illustrative account of phase behavior in the seven naturally occurring petroleum fluids and ties all the known eleven phase-transition concepts in a unified narrative. The figures and tables contained in this report are designed so that they could effectively support the discussion about molecular make-up of petroleum fluids, P- and T-effects on phase behavior and phase transition points.
      Seven naturally occurring hydrocarbon fluids are known as petroleum fluids. They include, in the order of their fluidity, natural gas, gas condensate (or NGL), light crude, intermediate crude, heavy oil, tar sand and oil shale.  In this report we present a generalized description of the various phase transitions, which may occur in petroleum fluids with emphasis on heavy organics deposition. 
      At first the nature of every petroleum fluid is presented.  Their constituents including their so-called impurities are identified and categorized. Heavy fractions in petroleum fluids are discussed and their main families of constituents are presented including petroleum wax, diamondoids, asphaltenes and petroleum resins.  Then the generalized petroleum fluids phase behavior is discussed in light of the known theory of phase transitions. The effects of variations of composition, temperature and pressure on the phase behavior of petroleum fluids are introduced.  Finally eleven distinct phase-transition points of petroleum fluids are presented and their relation with state variables and constituents of petroleum fluids are identified.  This report is to generalize and relate phase behaviors of all the seven naturally occurring petroleum fluids into a unified perspective.  This work is the basis to develop a comprehensive computational model for phase behavior prediction of all the petroleum fluids, which is of major interest in the petroleum industry

We present a coherent and unified group of general explanations for the various phase transitions, which may occur in the seven naturally occurring petroleum fluids with emphasis on their heavy organics. The seven petroleum fluids include, in the order of their fluidity, natural gas, near-critical gas-condensate, light crude, intermediate crude, heavy oil, tar sand and oil shale.

At first the nature of every petroleum fluid is presented including their constituents and their heavy fractions. Then their main families of constituents are presented.

The generalised petroleum fluid phase behaviour is introduced in light of the well-known theory of phase transitions. The effects of variations of composition, temperature and pressure on petroleum fluids phase behaviour are introduced. Their 11 distinct phase-transition points are presented and their relation with state variables and constituents are identified. This report is the basis for development of a unified phase behaviour prediction model of all the petroleum fluids.

This article focuses in on the ways in which the North American energy boom is reworking environments and livelihoods in the Great Lakes, focusing in particular on the expansion of BP's Chicago-area refinery as it has pivoted towards processing Canadian tar sands oil. In examining this 're-industrialization', the article contributes to an ongoing discussion about the relationship between fossil fuels, limits to capitalism, and the importance of frontiers in resolving capitalist crises. The first empirical section of the article looks at the early history of the Calumet's development as a hub for fossil fuel distribution and refining and, drawing from Moore's 'world-ecology framework', demonstrates the ways in the appropriation of unpaid work/energy - in particular the appropriation of the wetlands that make up the southern tip of Lake Michigan - serves as the underappreciated condition of possibility for the BP Whiting refinery's existence. Today, this combination of productivity and plunder continues in the region, illustrating urban metabolisms that are not confined to the city. In the second empirical section of the article, I argue that despite predictions of crises arising from declining ecological surpluses, in Calumet today, BP is finding new frontiers of surplus value production, both in the form of producing petcoke and in continued geographic expansion in the region. As a way of understanding the persistence and adaptive capacity of capital, even in degraded landscapes like Calumet, I consider Johnson's concept of 'accumulation by degradation' as an excellent tool for understanding dynamics in the region. The production of both petcoke and pollution – undesirable from a social and ecological perspective – sustain BP's industrial colonialism in the region because they ensure weakened competition and below market rents that allow for expansion and place-based longevity.

Cet article traite de la façon dont le boom énergétique nord-américain modifie les environnements et les moyens de subsistance dans les Grands Lacs, en particulier l’agrandissement de la raffinerie de pétrole de BP dans la région de Chicago, car elle a permis de transformer le pétrole canadien en sables bitumineux. En examinant un processus de "réindustrialisation", l'article contribue au débat en cours sur la relation entre les combustibles fossiles, les limites du capitalisme et l'importance des frontières dans la résolution des crises capitalistes. La première section empirique de l'article examine les débuts du rôle du Calumet dans la distribution et le raffinage des combustibles fossiles. Il s'inspire du "cadre d'écologie mondiale" de Moore et montre comment le travail non rémunéré et l'énergie est approprié, en particulier les zones humides qui constituent la pointe sud du lac Michigan. L'existence de la raffinerie BP Whiting repose sur des conditions sous-estimées. Aujourd'hui, cette combinaison de productivité et de pillage se poursuit dans la région, illustrant des métabolismes urbains qui ne se limitent pas à la ville. Dans la deuxième section empirique, je soutiens que, malgré les prévisions de crises découlant de la diminution des excédents écologiques, aujourd'hui à Calumet, BP trouve de nouvelles frontières en matière de production de plus-value. Ceux-ci produisent du coke de pétrole et développent leurs activités dans la région. Pour comprendre la persistance et la capacité d'adaptation du capital, même dans des paysages dégradés comme Calumet, je considère le concept de «l'accumulation par dégradation» de Johnson comme un excellent outil pour comprendre la dynamique de la région. La production à la fois de coke de pétrole et de pollution - indésirable d'un point de vue social et écologique - soutient le colonialisme industriel de BP dans la région, car elle garantit une concurrence commerciale affaiblie et des loyers inférieurs à la valeur du marché, permettant l'expansion et la longévité des activités de l'entreprise.

Este artículo se enfoca en las formas en que el auge energético está renovando entornos ambientales y medios de subsistencia en los Grandes Lagos, apuntando en particular a la expansión de la refinería de BP en el área de Chicago y su giro hacia el procesamiento de petróleo a partir de arenas bituminosas canadienses. Al examinar esta "reindustrialización", el artículo contribuye a la actual discusión sobre la relación entre los combustibles fósiles, los límites del capitalismo, y la importancia de las fronteras en la resolución de crisis capitalistas. La primera sección empírica del artículo mira a la historia temprana del desarrollo de Calumet como eje para la distribución y refinación de combustibles fósiles y, a partir del "marco de la ecología-mundo" de Moore, se demuestran las maneras en que la apropiación de trabajo/energía sin remuneración - en particular la apropiación de los humedales que conforman el extremo sur del Lago Michigan - sirve como una condición subestimada de posibilidad para la existencia de la refinería BP Whiting. Hoy, esta combinación de productividad y saqueo continúa en la región, ilustrando metabolismos urbanos que no están confinados a la ciudad. En la segunda sección empírica del artículo, argumento que a pesar de las predicciones de las crisis que surgen por el declive de los excedentes ecológicos, hoy en Calumet, BP encuentra nuevas fronteras de producción de plusvalía, tanto en la forma de producir coque de petróleo, como en la continua expansión geográfica en la región. A manera de entender la persistencia y capacidad adaptativa del capital, incluso en paisajes degradados como Calumet, considero que el concepto de Johnson de "acumulación por degradación" es una excelente herramienta para entender las dinámicas de la región. La producción de coque de petróleo y la contaminación - indeseables desde perspectivas social y ecológica - mantiene el colonialismo industrial de BP en la región ya que aseguran una competencia debilitada y rentas por debajo del mercado para permitir la expansión y longevidad en el lugar.

Among state and provincial climate-change policies in Canada and the United States, Alberta is a puzzling case. From 1992 to 2002, as it worked within the Canadian federal-provincial climate-change policy system, Alberta consistently advocated a voluntary approach. However, its policy changed in 2002, the same year Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol over the objections of Alberta and other provinces. In October 2002, Alberta published a climate change plan which announced the intention of the province to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). In 2003, the Climate Change Emissions Management Act was adopted. Provincial regulations regarding intensity of GHG emissions from large firms became effective July 1, 2007. How can we explain this dramatic change in Alberta policy, in contrast to other Canadian provinces and US states? While a number of US states have enacted climate-change legislation, those actions, unlike Alberta, have generally been consistent with their previous positions on the issue. Within Canada, prior to 2008 when British Columbia announced plans to legislate, Alberta was the only province to introduce climate-change legislation. Why did one of the most carbon-intensive sub-national jurisdictions in North America not remain committed to a purely voluntary approach? The proposed paper studies this contrast between Alberta policy and that in all other sub-national jurisdictions in the two countries. The purpose is to identify the most important factors explaining Alberta’s unique policy, and thereby cast light on the larger subject of climate-change instrument choice.

Lemkin (Axis Rule in Occupied Europe) envisaged the crime consisting of the destruction of a nation or ethnic group via two broad methods:-1) By killing its individual members, i.e.-physical genocide. 2) By undermining its way of life, i.e.-cultural genocide. Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group: the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization of the area by the oppressor's own nationals.

Edited by Toban Black, Stephen D'Arcy, Tony Weis, and Joshua Kahn Russell "The tar sands constitute the largest industrial project on Earth, and represent the stranglehold the fossil fuel industry has over our communities and the very future of our planet. Despite the formidable political and economic power behind the project, streams of resistance have emerged, challenging the threats to Indigenous territories and sovereignty, climate change, the great hazards posed by extraction, pipelines, and refineries, abuse of workers, destruction of water, air, and land, the lack of democratic participation, and more. A tapestry of leading voices involved in the struggle, A Line in the Tar Sands is a tool for organizers and newcomers alike, offering critical analysis, strategic reflections, and visions of hope for the future." Table of Contents List of Contributors xii Foreword Naomi Klein and Bill Mckibben xvii Introduction: Drawing a Line in the Tar Sands Tony Weis, Toban Bla...

This article focuses in on the ways in which the North American energy boom is reworking environments and livelihoods in the Great Lakes, focusing in particular on the expansion of BP's Chicago-area refinery as it has pivoted towards processing Canadian tar sands oil. In examining this 're-industrialization', the article contributes to an ongoing discussion about the relationship between fossil fuels, limits to capitalism, and the importance of frontiers in resolving capitalist crises. The first empirical section of the article looks at the early history of the Calumet's development as a hub for fossil fuel distribution and refining and, drawing from Moore's 'world-ecology framework', demonstrates the ways in the appropriation of unpaid work/energy - in particular the appropriation of the wetlands that make up the southern tip of Lake Michigan - serves as the underappreciated condition of possibility for the BP Whiting refinery's existence. Today, this combination of productivity and plunder continues in the region, illustrating urban metabolisms that are not confined to the city. In the second empirical section of the article, I argue that despite predictions of crises arising from declining ecological surpluses, in Calumet today, BP is finding new frontiers of surplus value production, both in the form of producing petcoke and in continued geographic expansion in the region. As a way of understanding the persistence and adaptive capacity of capital, even in degraded landscapes like Calumet, I consider Johnson's concept of 'accumulation by degradation' as an excellent tool for understanding dynamics in the region. The production of both petcoke and pollution – undesirable from a social and ecological perspective – sustain BP's industrial colonialism in the region because they ensure weakened competition and below market rents that allow for expansion and place-based longevity.

Although the concept of environmental refugees has been circulating for more than thirty years, not much has been written about how the displacement of people caused by environmental disasters has entered into public discourses. More specifically, within the empirical investigations into the discourses on environmental displacement, the phenomenon of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) moving inside the borders of their own countries as an effect of disasters has received little critical attention with respect to how it is framed. The present article explores the discursive constructions of IDPs in Canadian news discourse which refer to the destructive 2016 Alberta fire in Fort McMurray, the heart of the tar sands region. Thus, a corpus of news reports is analysed in a discourse-analytical perspective with the intent of identifying specific discursive strategies, frames and patterns in the representation of the social actors within newspaper narratives. The analysis shows that the representations of IDPs in the corpus under investigation are characterized by different patterns of language choice compared to those emerging from the discourses on climate refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in general, evident in previous studies. In the end, what becomes also apparent is that nomination strategies are connected to specific ideologies in discourse, on the basis of which the correlation between the tar sands and the fire is either omitted or mildly unveiled.

This article develops the concept of bare nature by examining the interdependent and underlying conditions that make genocidal and ecocidal processes possible. Agamben identifies states of exception as a juridical key to understanding the legitimating logic that facilitate acts of arbitrary exclusion, targeted killing, and the life and death policy decisions that affect large segments of the population. Such regulated, collective precarity constitutes bare life. I argue that bare nature
is produced through a parallel process involving ecological “sacrifice zones” that function as states of exception that regulate other-than-human life in service of extreme energy extraction, creating the conditions for ongoing ecological destruction. In the second part of the article, I argue that the local impacts of extreme energy projects like the Canadian Tar Sands contribute to the conditions of bare nature and bare life globally, presenting a “. . . general (transnational) danger threaten[ing] the interests of several states and their inhabitants.” In closing, I turn to the ascendant Indigenous politics in Canada to consider what local cultural survival, global ecological adaptation, and nonsovereign governance models involve in the era of climate change. Indigenous-led politics grounded in land-based normative ethics provide a basis for building alternative futures based on establishing and maintaining conditions of holistic interdependence. Such interdependent
conditions will be able to emerge in direct proportion to the extent that the conditions of bare
life and bare nature are delegitimated, decommodified, and rendered inoperative.

Fine tailings (with solids < 106 pm) from hot-water extraction of the Athabasca tar sands were subjected to thermal, physical, chemical and enzymatic treatments in an attempt to modify the dewatering characteristics of the solid particles. A low-speed centrifuge at circa 1500 relative centrifugal force for 15 h was used to accelerate the sedimentation of the solids, and allowed comparison of the ultimate concentration of solids after the various treatments. Fine tailings were subjected to thermal treatment, sonication and modification of the water chemistry. Although the rate of sedimentation was affected by these treatments, the ultimate volume fraction of solids after centrifuging was about 0.3 (50-55 wt% solids). Extraction of the tailings to remove bitumen, humins and other organic components also failed to change the ultimate solids concentration. Oxidation of the organic material in the tailings by hydrogen peroxide in Fenton's reagent, and enzymatic oxidation with lignin peroxidase, manganese peroxidase, cytochrome c, horseradish peroxidase and cowpea peroxidase gave no significant effect on the volume fraction of solids in the sediment after centrifugation. The observation that all of these treated samples gave an ultimate volume fraction of solids of about 0.3 indicated that bitumen, adsorbed organic matter and salts had little effect on the ultimate dewatering of tailings. (

The Alberta tar sands are examined in the context of Jacques Ellul's analysis of the technological society.  Ellul's theory of technology as a social rather than technical phenomenon illuminates the rhetoric of economic necessity and inevitability used to justify the particular case of the Alberta tar sands industry. Other social values -- including moral goods, future generations, and environmental sustainability -- are subsumed within the efficient mastery of nature. This techno-logic recognizes no logic but its own and thus assumes for itself a sacred character. Applying Ellul's hermeneutic provides grounding for the examination of tensions surrounding the Alberta tar sands.

Analysis of CSR research field regarding social and environmental challenges arising from the gargantuan Tar Sands Enterprise in Alberta, Canada. This paper concludes the controversies revolving the social and environmental performance of the involved TNCs, leading to legal action taken in order to ensure indigenous rights and environmental protection of Alberta's Boreal forest. In addition, it presents and evaluates the effectiveness of CSR practices in light of extensive regulatory and litigious activity. Finally, this paper will suggest alternative rationales to substantiate its findings.
Instructed by Prof. Ronen Shamir.

SUMMARY
Balancing peatland conservation with appropriate economic development is a significant challenge in Alberta, Canada. Wetlands are extensive in areas where the scale of industrial activity is large. This includes extraction of significant petroleum reserves in the form of oil sands. Little is known of potential cumulative impacts on peatlands, but the effects will potentially be high. This includes climate change impacts. While novel wetland restoration and construction initiatives are being developed, wetland policy and management initiatives have not kept pace with peatland loss and alteration. Peatland conservation could be enhanced through the recognition of wetlands as Alberta’s keystone ecosystem, two distinct provincial wetland zones, identification of wetland function and value, and establishment of no-net-loss policy.

Naphthenic acids (NAs) have been identified as harmful environmental contaminants that influence survival, growth and development of wildlife. Amphibian larvae are particularly susceptible to waterborne contaminants, but little information exists regarding exposure of amphibian embryos or tadpoles to NAs. Our results demonstrate that embryos of Lithobates pipiens and Silurana tropicalis exposed to 2 - 4 mg/l of a commercial NA blend suffer significant reductions (32% and 25%, respectively) in growth and development upon hatching. Increased incidences of deformities were observed in exposed individuals of both species, but were only significant in L. pipiens. Embryos suffered 100% mortality following exposure to 6 mg/l NAs, and narcosis at lower concentrations. LC50 estimates were 4.10 mg/l for 72-hrs exposure in L. pipiens and 4.13, 3.51, and 2.95 mg/l for 24-, 48-, and 72-hrs exposure in S. tropicalis. These data suggest that exposure to NAs at environmentally realized concentrations may negatively affect tadpole populations.

Balancing peatland conservation with appropriate economic development is a significant challenge in Alberta, Canada. Wetlands are extensive in areas where the scale of industrial activity is large. This includes extraction of significant petroleum reserves in the form of oil sands. Little is known of potential cumulative impacts on peatlands, but the effects will potentially be high. This includes climate change impacts. While novel wetland restoration and construction initiatives are being developed, wetland policy and management initiatives have not kept pace with peatland loss and alteration. Peatland conservation could be enhanced through the recognition of wetlands as Alberta&#39;s keystone ecosystem, two distinct provincial wetland zones, identification of wetland function and value, and establishment of no-net-loss policy.

The oil and gas mineral resources of the United Slates have been managed through public laws and administrative agencies since 1846. Administrative reorganization in 1982 within the Department of the Interior led to the establishment of two agencies for hydrocarbon reservoir management: the Minerals Management Service (MMS), responsible for offshore reservoir management and royalty accounting, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which administers the onshore reservoir management program. Continuing legislative enactments have given MMS and BLM guidance for the administration of the exploration and development of heavy crude and tar sand deposits. The Combined Hydrocarbon Leasing Act of 1981 established a means of leasing tar sands in special areas all which occur outside California. A Federal all competitive leasing System was adopted in 1987 for the offshore hydrocarbon mineral estate. This legislation applies to heavy crude oil, but not to tar sands or oil shale. In 1988 a new drainage manual was drafted to help support the Drainage Protection Program (DPP). This program has the goal of protecting federal mineral resources from loss of royalties through off-lease drainage. Federal lessees must protect the federal mineral resource from drainage by either by paying a compensatory royalty, drilling a protective well, or relinquishing their lease. There is currently no leasing program for tar sands in the United States. Heavy crude is leased under the conventional oil and gas leasing laws.

The production and transfer of knowledge are essential for producing oil. In this paper, I examine the nexus between a subnational quasi-state publicly funded hydrocarbon research program and a novel knowledge-production regime and explore how this relationship resulted in the production of oil from Alberta's oilsands. In particular, the paper highlights the significance of the Alberta Oilsands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA), a quasi-public institution credited with financing research, which among other finding, made the in-situ oilsands' mining method steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) commercially viable. SAGD proved essential in enlarging the Province's oil reserves, but this paper focuses on AOSTRA's novel intellectual property regime. Under that regime the intellectual property AOSTRA (the Provincial government) held the licensing rights to the research it funded and commanded its future revenues. In contrast to accounts of the development of the current mode of entrepreneurial knowledge production that emphasizes the new knowledge-enclosures of the biosphere, I suggest this was a novel system of knowledge-enclosure of the "necrosphere." I stress how this knowledge-production-transfer regime only emerged in Alberta because of the specific material characteristics of bitumen and the Provincial government's tripartite role as resource rentier, funder of the research, and owner of the resource.

Canada is one of the world’s largest petrostates, owing to large shale oil deposits, also known as tar sands, which can be found within its borders. In recent decades, as the price of crude oil has increased dramatically, corporations and the Canadian state have worked together to open the oil deposits in Northern Canada for extraction and transportation. Despite a stated commitment to environmental sustainability by the United States and Canadian governments, both have endorsed tar sands extraction and transport. Government and corporate entities have tried to reframe tar sands as “ethical oil,” yet all steps in the process involved pose tremendous ecological, social, economic, and cultural threats to First Nations communities in Canada, landowners in the Midwest and Texas, local ecosystems, and the global climate. This practice is part of a long-standing pattern of appropriating and using public and First Nations land for economic development. We argue that tar sands production on First Nations land is a practice of resource colonialism: the theft and appropriation of land belonging to indigenous people in order to access natural resources. By branding tar sands as “ethical oil” and labeling production companies as “sustainable,” the public and private sectors bound up in the extractive economy claim to provide an essential public service while misdirecting attention away from acts of colonialism that make these resources available. In this article, we examine the ways in which corporate and state entities use the discourse of sustainability as a cover for continued resource colonialism.

Exploitation of the tar sands in Ondo State in the Niger Delta is likely to result in some environmental contamination and adversely affect the living conditions of the farmers and fishermen in the area. Three wells were established where samples were taken at 1, 2 and 3 m depth. Although no hydrocarbon contamination was detected in the water from the surface and boreholes, saline intrusion was recorded. This study produces a baseline against which future contamination can be monitored so that preventative measures can be taken to mitigate the effects.

In the past several decades, several small geophysical contracting companies have claimed that hydrocarbons could be located and mapped using electrical geophysical methods similar to the Induced Polarization (IP) technique. In recent years, petroleum companies have come to realize the usefulness of the magnetotelluric (MT) method in the exploration for hydrocarbons, especially in areas where volcanic cover and other problems have precluded the effective use of reflection seismic techniques. Until recently, the claims for the former, direct detection approach (by the so-called "flex" contractors), have been discounted by most major oil companies. The reasons were based primarily on considerations of skin-depth attenuation vs. resolution, particularly in light of the crude data-gathering methods that had been used. The demonstrated success of conventional reflection seismic methods also contributed to the lack of serious interest in an exploration approach of the IP type. The MT method has not been used for direct detection, but only for identification of gross conductivity structures. The main MT application has been mapping sedimentary sequences beneath crystalline terranes as in the eastern and western overthrust belts of the United States where the acquisition of essential information by seismic methods is difficult. Recently, renewed interest has been shown in hydrocarbon detection using sophisticated new technology in IP type electrical methods, and several university investigators and geophysical service contractors have reported successful results over known hydrocarbon deposits in the western United States. This renewed interest has been stimulated by the increasing economic value of hydrocarbons particularly when they are located in environments difficult to· explore, and when they are in less conventional forms such as tar sand and oil shale.

What does it mean to imagine “post carbon futures”? My paper addresses this question by examining the concept of speculation, a process of projecting into (and onto) the future. The first part of my paper examines how speculation undergirds the tar sands-fueled capitalism of the Canadian “petrostate” (Nikiforuk 2008, 162). Capitalist speculation describes the “buying and selling [of] goods, land, stocks and shares […] in order to profit by the rise or fall in the market value” (“Speculation,” OED); it thus involves weighing potential risks against potential financial gains. I contend that capitalist speculation – with its etymological connection to visual spectacle – is central to what Rob Nixon (2011) calls “slow violence,” or the “delayed [environmental] destruction” that “occurs gradually and out of sight” and is therefore “not viewed as violence” (2). As Larissa Lai and Rita Wong (2014) note, such disasters are the “percolating outcomes” of “past” government policies like colonialism that “reverberate in the present” (n. pag).

Building on these critics, the second part of my paper turns to the under-studied field of Indigenous speculative fiction, which I read as a “narrative form” that makes slow violence “visible” (Nixon 10). Closely related to science fiction, speculative fiction offers the potential to examine the present through the lens of the future (Lai 2008, Bould 2009). Although science and speculative fiction have colonial legacies (Hopkinson 2004, Dillon 2012), Indigenous writers “change the perimeters of sf” (Dillon 3, original emphasis) by indigenizing speculative fiction. To test these ideas, my paper examines two short stories from Richard Van Camp’s Godless But Loyal to Heaven (2012): “On the Wings of this Prayer,” which depicts an apocalyptic future in which Indigenous survivors fight zombie-like figures awakened by tar sands development, and “The Fleshing,” which frames the preceding story as a dream that becomes reality for a present-day Tlicho teen. Ultimately, Van Camp’s speculative fiction challenges discourses of capitalist speculation that seek to defer and deny long-term risks in the name of short-term profits. His representation of the tar sands’ enduring impact thus suggests that there is no “post” when it comes to our “carbon futures.”

Can a poem be a bridge between centuries? If so, can it indicate an historical process and expose a critical disposition? The quote from Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” introduces us to a series of problematics that this presentation will address: for example, how is information transmitted and received over a century after Kipling’s?
In terms of our media environment, communications based on the image seem to sustain the belief that if an image speaks a thousand words, then a dynamic image must surely be a declaration of truth. In contrast, the stanza proposes an ambiguity that could be resolved in terms of the struggle of the colonized or, in favour of the colonizer. What does it mean, to “Take up the White Man’s Burden”: a call to arms, a brotherhood through the protestant work ethic, a celebration of Homo Faber? Is it an ironic reading of white supremacist colonizing process? One that ascribes to the white man the arching text of knowledge, work, civilization, culture, religion and ethics – all categories that pertain to the discourse that speaks for imperialism and colonization? In Kipling’s case, India is the background, and the non-white man, the brown man, the dark man, those off-white colour categories that naturalize submission is the backdrop. Further to this, whose pride are we talking about? “To veil the threat of terror / And check the show of pride.”

Is it the pride of becoming white and therefore of the process of self-erasure/self-actualization...

Publisher: New York Times
Author: Jacques Leslie
Date: Mar. 30, 2014

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