Get your environmental concerns off Joe Oliver’s lawn

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 9, 2012 at 12:51 PM - 0 Comments

The Natural Resources Minister takes on the environmental regulatory system, environmentalists, celebrity, air travel, foreigners, America and civil law.

Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade. Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams.

These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources. Finally, if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.

This is perhaps reminiscent of the rhetoric directed at the NDP in the House last month—see here, here and here.

‘Dirty oil’ vs. ‘blood bananas’ slugfest

By Nicholas Köhler - Friday, January 6, 2012 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

On the surface it’s a silly affair, no more serious than a banana peel pratfall. It began in November, when Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International—the banana company—wrote a letter committing to avoid “fuels from tar sands refineries” while vowing to work toward the “elimination of those fuels.” That pledge was in response to an anti-oil-sands campaign mounted by ForestEthics, an activist group based in San Francisco’s fabled Haight-Ashbury, the one-time hippie district, against Chiquita and Dole, another fruit giant. “Say no to rotten tar sands bananas,” reads the campaign’s website, rottenbananas.org, part of a broader campaign drawing attention to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would funnel Alberta crude to Texas, but which has now been put on hold over environmental concerns.

What ensued was a fight between environmentalists on the one hand and pro-oil-sands lobbyists on the other, over who can claim to be “ethical.” ForestEthics often wins these battles. Ten years ago, to cite one example, similar persuasion forced the U.S. office supply chain Staples Inc. to sell more recycled paper, a commitment that required it to introduce fundamental changes to its procurement practices. “When we find that wild places and forests are being destroyed, we determine which corporations are purchasing the products of that destruction,” ForestEthics says on its website. “If a corporation refuses to change its practices, we hold that company publicly accountable—with protests, websites, email campaigns, national advertisements, and more.” In other words, the group goes on to boast, “we turn our corporate adversaries into allies.”

With Chiquita it’s been tougher going. That’s in large part due to a counterattack engineered by the Alberta-based Ethical Oil Institute, a pro-industry group that touts Canada’s oil sands as more “ethical” than oil sourced from human rights basket cases like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In response to Chiquita’s promise to forgo oil sands crude “where possible,” Ethical Oil launched a campaign to boycott its bananas. The gambit spawned what the group calls a “grassroots” movement among Canadians, who began voicing their disapproval of Chiquita via Facebook and Twitter (one handle that appeared: @BloodBananas). “Canadians should be fighting back,” Ethical Oil spokeswoman Kathryn Marshall says. “We’re proud of our record when it comes to the environment and human rights, and we’re sick of being picked on—we’re the good guys, not the bad guys.”

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Iran threatens to choke key global oil route

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 28, 2011 at 11:39 AM - 0 Comments

The chief of Iran’s navy has warned that Iran could easily close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in response to western sanctions, according to the Globe and Mail. Admiral Habibollah Sayyari announced on Iranian state-run Press TV on Wednesday, “closing the Strait of Hormuz is very easy for Iranian naval forces,” echoing similar remarks made on Tuesday by Vice President Mohamed Reza Rahimi. The comments come as the Iranian navy conducts a ten-day military exercise in the region. The West has shown increasing concern over Iran’s nuclear program, accusing the regime of attempting to develop weapons under the guise of civilian nuclear energy and medical research. Meanwhile, Saudi officials have said Gulf countries can step up oil production to make up for any potential shortfalls in Iranian oil. The nation currently produces about four billion barrels daily, and depends on oil exports for 80 per cent of its revenues.

Globe and Mail

Harper shrugs off Keystone stall

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 1:35 PM - 0 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he’s serious about selling Canadian oil to Asia, and cast doubts on a U.S. approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in an interview with CTV National News to be aired on Boxing Day. The comments were made a day after the Obama administration signalled it could reject the $7-billion project linking the Alberta tar sands to Texas, following approval by the U.S. Senate of a bill that could force his government to make a decision on the project within 60 days. Although approval of the project is still possible, pending a U.S. State Department review of alternate pipeline routes, Harper seemed skeptical it would actually go forward. When asked about the likelihood of selling oil to China at the expense of angering Washington, the prime minister said he was recently told in the U.S. that Keystone would get done, but added that Canada is now on a different track.

Postmedia

Alberta’s oil for Alaska’s natural gas?

By macleans.ca - Monday, December 12, 2011 at 10:22 AM - 0 Comments

The Obama administration’s move earlier this year to delay approval—or rejection—of the proposed Keytone XL pipeline, which would link Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the American Gulf Coast, rocked the Canadian energy industry. The decision on Keystone won’t now be made until after next year’s U.S. presidential election. Into the policy void steps Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom: A Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the New Global Economy, with a proposal for an entirely new pipeline strategy. In this New York Times commentary, Easterbrook argues Washington’s strategic priority should be shifting its energy economy from heavy reliance on imported oil to more consumption of American natural gas. That includes huge Alaskan natural gas reserves. His proposition: “American consent for moving Canadian oil-sand products across the Midwest should be tied to Canadian consent for an Alaskan natural gas pipeline across British Columbia.” This “package deal” would satisfy the Alberta oil patch and the growing U.S. lobby for a made-in-America energy strategy. As well, Easterbrook points out that natural gas contributes considerably less to global warming than oil or coal.

The New York Times

It’s time for Canada to seek other friends besides the U.S.

By the editors - Monday, November 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

From no-brainer to brainless in just a few weeks—Canada’s best interests have once again been trumped by American politics.

Just a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was calling the approval by the United States of TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico a “complete no-brainer.” The benefits to both countries in terms of employment, energy security and trade from the $7-billion project were so obvious and manifest that U.S. President Barack Obama’s consent seemed a sure thing.

Then Hollywood got involved. Superannuated stars such as Robert Redford and Daryl Hannah added their names to over-the-top civil disobedience protests against a “tar sands” pipeline from Alberta. Among the few coherent complaints expressed by green groups was concern the pipeline would cross the Ogallala aquifer that provides several Midwest states with drinking water. The project quickly became a test of Obama’s environmental credentials.

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Tony Hayward’s comeback

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

He became infamous during the Gulf of Mexico spill. Now he’s drilling for oil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Drilling for oil has become an increasingly risky business. Most unexploited reservoirs are either far below the ocean, or in parts of the world where extracting the fossil fuel is either exceedingly expensive (like Alberta’s oil sands), or too dangerous. And Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP, doesn’t seem fazed by any of it.

After leaving BP last year in the wake of the disastrous Gulf of Mexico spill, Hayward recently re-emerged at the helm of a London-based energy investment company that, far from playing it safe, is hoping to strike it rich in one of the most geopolitically challenging places on earth: Iraqi Kurdistan. With Americans still furious about his now infamous Gulf crisis remark, “I want my life back,” Hayward earlier this year joined forces with financier Nat Rothschild, ex-Goldman Sachs banker Julian Metherell and entrepreneur Tom Daniels to create a so-called “blank cheque” investment company. Called Valleres PLC, it promised to buy and run an oil company somewhere in the world—and raised US$2.2 billion. “He is one of the most talented oil executives in the world,” says Karl Moore, a business professor at McGill University. “And some rich people saw that and said, ‘Hey, now we can get this guy to work for us.’ ”

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Chevron reports possible oil leak off Louisiana coast

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:46 PM - 0 Comments

A Chevron oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico may be leaking, the company reported Tuesday. Parts of two pipelines connected to the facility were closed to help cope with the possible spill. Chevron has not said how much crude may have leaked from the installation, which sits off the coast of Louisiana. Meanwhile, oil prices slipped below US$90 a barrel Wednesday amidst falling consumer demand.

Reuters

Canadian Press

 

Choking the oil sands

By Chris Sorensen and Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:21 AM - 18 Comments

Over the next few weeks, as many as 2,000 climate change protesters are expected to descend on Washington in an effort to draw more Americans into the debate over Alberta’s oil sands—one of the most carbon-intensive sources of fossil fuel on the planet. But this time, anti-oil sands groups aren’t focusing on the vast open pit mines near Fort McMurray, which one activist memorably compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s fire-spewing and charcoal-covered realm of Mordor, but on a major pipeline project that the industry needs to move forward with its expansion plans.

Supported by such high-profile environmentalists and left-leaning luminaries as David Suzuki and Naomi Klein, the protesters, who will risk arrest during their White House sit-in, hope to stop President Barack Obama’s administration from approving the proposed 2,673-km Keystone XL pipeline that is being built by TransCanada Corp. and would move crude oil from northern Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, north of the border, anti-pipeline rallies are scheduled to take place over the next few months in Vancouver and Ottawa. In addition to the Keystone XL project, the Canadian rallies will also focus on a proposed 1,170-km pipeline, built by Enbridge Inc., that would connect northern Alberta to an oil-shipping terminal in Kitimat, B.C., running through an area that opponents claim is pristine wilderness and the habitat of a sacred species of bear.
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What's blocking up the Keystone XL pipeline?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Stephen Harper has urged Barack Obama to approve it. Alberta’s energy minister demanded that the President “sign the bloody order,” already. But the soft-spoken diplomat leading the American government’s review of TransCanada Pipelines Ltd.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline, Daniel Clune, is keeping his cards close to his chest. The approval of the US$7-billion, 2,700-km pipeline that would bring oil sands crude from Canada, through the U.S. heartland down to the Gulf Coast, has become one of the biggest issues between Canada and the U.S., a hot environmental cause south of the border—and a tug of war between two departments of the Obama administration.

To the pipeline’s backers, the approval process is dragging on longer than any before it—but for critics who oppose building infrastructure to tie the U.S. to even more carbon fuels, and oil sands in particular, it’s whipping by too fast. The State Department has said it will made a decision by the end of the year, and its every move is being scrutinized on both sides for evidence that oil interests have captured the Obama administration—or that federal bureaucrats are about to sabotage the national interest by scuttling a golden opportunity to create jobs and help wean America off Middle Eastern oil.

Congress is watching closely. House Republicans, who tout the pipeline as a “no-brainer,” have introduced legislation to try to fast-track a decision by Nov. 1. Meanwhile, in the Senate, a Republican and a Democrat, both from Nebraska, have expressed concern about the safety of the pipeline, which would traverse their state’s important agricultural aquifer. Several recent leaks in the existing Keystone pipeline that runs from Alberta to the Midwest have heightened those worries.

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A world of 10 billion

By Charlie Gillis and Kate Lunau. - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 10 Comments

For the world, as for his family, the birth of Adnan Nevic was cause for celebration. No less an eminence than the secretary-general of the United Nations attended his arrival, posing with the swaddled child as camera strobes lit a maternity room in central Sarajevo. He was born four minutes past midnight on October 12, 1999, and Kofi Annan had made his way to the hospital like a wise man following a star. There were 5.999999999 billion people on the face of the planet, depending on whose “population clock” you went by. The time had come to designate a six billionth.

The challenges that lay before this infant reflected those of human populations around the globe. His parents, Jasmin and Fatima, were poor. The family lived cheek by jowl in a bleak apartment. His father needed work. Ethnic conflict remained a dormant but ever-present threat to their country. The UN chief offered words of hope, saying this “beautiful boy in a city returning to life should light a path of tolerance and understanding for all people.” But a long and happy life? For that, Adnan Nevic would need a few breaks.

Today, as demographers look ahead to a 10-billion-strong global population, the future of No. 6,000,000,000 is no less clouded. By day, he is an apple-cheeked sixth-grader who loves dogs and cheers on the fabled Spanish soccer team, Real Madrid. At night, he watches over a father stricken by bowel cancer, and sleeps in the same bedroom as his parents in their two-room flat in Visoko, a run-down town 28 km outside Sarajevo. Adnan’s plight could never really stand in for that of all humanity. But it does, to borrow the UN boss’s trope, illuminate the road we will travel over the course of his life.

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Big pain at the gas pumps

By Jason Kirby with Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 12 Comments

When gasoline prices in Central Canada hit record highs in early May, Industry Minister Tony Clement did what he always does when consumer rage boils over: he donned his populist cape and channelled citizens’ fury against a shadowy adversary—in this case, Big Oil. Standing in the driveway of a Toronto home, flanked by black and white Volkswagens and facing a wall of TV cameras, Clement bemoaned the lack of transparency in how pump prices are set. He then vowed to summon executives from the refining, distribution and retail industries to Ottawa for hearings. “All I know is that prices are going up and down and sideways and no one really knows why,” he said.

He was partly right, in that prices are zig-zagging wildly. At the start of May, oil and gasoline prices reached punishingly high levels, rekindling dark memories of the spike in energy costs that tipped the global economy into recession in 2008. Then, in the span of just a few days, oil prices, along with most other commodities, went into free fall. Gas prices have begun to drift down too, though not nearly as fast. But by the time MPs actually get around to holding hearings several months from now, the price of crude may well have fallen to the point that this most recent bout of pain at the pumps will have been forgotten—or it may have soared so high that the only affordable way anybody will be getting to Parliament Hill is by bicycle.

But where Clement was wrong was in his contention that nobody can explain what’s behind the extreme price movements. On the contrary, a growing number of experts in the industry as well as academia have come to the conclusion that excessive speculation by traders and investors, aided by ultra-low interest rates and easy money, is severely distorting the market. “You simply can’t explain these levels of volatility by supply and demand because market fundamentals don’t shift that quickly over such a short period of time,” says Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland who, in the 1990s, was in charge of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. government agency that regulates commodity futures. “Most observers now believe speculators are actively manipulating oil prices.”

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Oil and water: Libya's potent mixture

By Ruth Sherlock - Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 7 Comments

As the Libyan revolution appears to be mired in deadlock in the east, a guerrilla war has sprung up in the deep desert of the south. Home to Libya’s strategic oil and water reserves, this is the crucial forgotten front of the war.

The beautiful expanse of desert around the oasis town of Jalu, held by rebels, lies 225 km south of the front line between Brega and Ajdabiya. Here, the sand dunes have the eerie, silent calm of an abandoned landscape. But on the long, exposed road through the region—the only route north—there are the dangers of an unseen enemy. The area is ringed by forces loyal to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who have reoccupied many of the nearby oil fields after rebel forces initially seized them. Travelling in small groups, in pickups that hide them from NATO strikes, they launch sabotage and kidnap missions on the roads around the rebel town.

“If you travel in the area there is no guarantee that you won’t meet a Gadhafi man. They roam, maybe 300 cars around, waiting to attack,” says Jalu resident Khaled Qais, 22. Qais was recently stopped on the road by Gadhafi soldiers. “I told them I support Gadhafi, and I raised the green flag. I was terrified.” The soldiers didn’t believe him. He and his three friends were dragged from their car, beaten and thrown into a Gadhafi prison. “I was captured for 21 days,” says Qais.

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Rockets and feathers

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 11 Comments

Mike Moffatt explains why another investigation into gas prices isn’t likely to solve anything.

No greasing these wheels

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 3 Comments

Asked his views about “tar sands” at a town hall in Pennsylvania last week, U.S. President Barack Obama said that importing from Canada is a “good thing,” but added there are “some environmental questions about how destructive” the oil sands are. That comment, along with the prolonged permit process for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, has raised hackles in Canada and on Capitol Hill, where Republicans held a hearing on March 31 to proclaim the “Urgent Case for Canadian Oil.”

The $7-billion pipeline, which would increase by 50 per cent the exports of oil sands crude to the U.S., was raised by Prime Minister Stephen Harper during his meeting with Obama in January. The Obama administration has been studying the project since December 2008. Alberta’s energy minister, Ron Liepert, let it be known he’s fed up with the delays. “I just wish he’d sign the bloody order and get on with it,” Liepert told the Calgary Herald last week. Yet that’s the last thing Alberta should want Obama to do.

It was the U.S. Congress that passed a law requiring a multi-step review process by the State Department before the permit can be issued. Under the Environmental Protection Act, the State Department, which is in charge of international pipelines, must issue an “environmental impact statement” and then a “national interest determination” of all pipelines crossing the U.S. border. Last July, the Environmental Protection Agency said State’s draft environmental impact statement on Keystone XL was inadequate, and asked State to study potential impacts on everything from greenhouse gas emissions, spill response and impacts on wetlands and birds. If State had refused, “they would open themselves to litigation,” says Danielle Droitsch, director of U.S. policy for the Pembina Institute, an Alberta environmental think tank. Such lawsuits, she adds, happen “a lot.”

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This week: Good news, bad news

By macleans.ca - Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 9:47 AM - 2 Comments

GOOD NEWS

 

Undefending the border

Prime Minister Stephen Harper emerged from a meeting with Barack Obama last week with an agreement in principle on a common security perimeter. The pair are turning bureaucrats loose on a bilateral search for ways to protect the world’s largest international trading relationship from 10 years’ worth of accumulated border obstacles. Ideas range from shared cargo inspections to a second Detroit-Windsor bridge, but the mere will to restore the Canada-U.S. friendship to its old, friendly terms may be more valuable than any particular tech or law measure.

Yes, it is ethical oil

Meanwhile, a U.S. Department of Energy report issued on the eve of the Harper-Obama announcement provided hope for Transcanada Pipelines in its quest to nab U.S. regulatory clearance for the Keystone XL project connecting Alberta oil markets with the Gulf of Mexico. The report confirms the pipeline would be unlikely to affect net global carbon emissions, but would relieve the dependency of U.S. refiners and end-users on Middle Eastern and other oil—shifting profits to Canada without significant greenhouse consequences.

One last ride

Mark Kelly, astronaut husband of wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, displayed an impressive, old-school devotion to duty in resuming preparations to command April’s final mission of the space shuttle Endeavour. With Giffords stable and undergoing rehab, Kelly passed a special round of tests of his ability to concentrate on critical tasks. A NASA spokesman said that the three-time space traveller’s presence would “reduce the overall mission risk.”

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Why BP is one slick investment

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:48 PM - 1 Comment

It’s been nine months since the blowout at BP’s Macondo well sunk a US$350-million drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and creating an unprecedented U.S. environmental catastrophe. At the height of the crisis, oil gushed uncontrollably from the sea floor and fears mounted that BP would ultimately become a casualty of the spill’s spiralling costs, so far pegged at US$40 billion.

But as a new year dawns, it looks unlikely that any of the corporate doomsday scenarios will come to pass. With coastlines returning to normal and underwater oil apparently dissolving away, BP’s U.S.-traded shares have climbed by 60 per cent over the past six months, from a low of US$26.75 last June to around US$43 as investors grow more confident the company’s darkest days are behind it. “It’s a recovery story,” says Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James Financial. For investors, that means the possibility of more big returns down the road—some are speculating BP’s shares could reach US$60 later this year, about where they were before the blowout—but there are also still risks.

The biggest question mark is a recent lawsuit filed by the Obama administration against BP and its partners that accuses them of failing to adhere to U.S. environmental laws and safety regulations in the Gulf, where BP is the biggest operator. BP could also face criminal charges under the country’s Clean Water Act, with some estimates of damages as high as US$20 billion if BP is found to be “grossly negligent” in the run-up to the disaster.

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Dictatorship oil

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 2:07 PM - 64 Comments

First, a correction. The list of oil sources posted here should have read: Algeria, the United Kingdom, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola, Iraq, Mexico, Venezuela, Russia and the United States. You’ll note that, in the original post, Iran was listed where Angola should have been. My apologies to to the good people of Angola.

Meanwhile, Ezra Levant, seemingly the inspiration for the government’s new rhetoric, continues to draw a line between good oil and bad oil: the former including our crude, the latter including crude from suppliers such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Algeria. In total, those four nations account for about 40% of our oil imports.

'It's bait and switch'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 10, 2011 at 10:25 AM - 73 Comments

Steven Chase looks at the government’s rhetorical turn towards “ethical oil.”

Environmental activists say the Harper government is adopting a classic diversionary tactic to redirect attention away from the oil sands’ poor environmental record. “It’s a rhetorical device; it’s bait and switch,” said Ed Whittingham, executive director of the Pembina Institute. “It’s designed to make us forget about the negative environmental impacts we have in Canada because you are comparing to a completely lower standard in other countries.”

Laura Payton has more.

How ethical is your oil?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 7, 2011 at 5:32 PM - 188 Comments

The Environment Minister observed yesterday (around the 12-minute mark of that interview) that Canada is a supplier of ethical oil—a phrase recently employed by Ezra Levant—because the revenues derived from that oil are not used to “fund terrorism or the destabilization of other governments.” This may or may not beg questions about the origins of our own oil imports.

The latest release of Statistics Canada’s Energy Statistics Handbook lists our sources of crude oil and equivalents going back to 1989. Our noted individual sources in 2010 (through September) were, in order: Algeria, the United Kingdom, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Mexico, Venezuela, Russia and the United States.

Where did all the oil go?

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 8:20 AM - 1 Comment

The National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a chunk of the state about twice the size of Nova Scotia, has less than one-tenth of the oil than it was previously thought to have. The NPRA, created by president Warren Harding in 1923, was thought to contain 10.6 billion barrels of liquid gold when it was last studied in 2002. However, recent surveys with new 3-D technology revealed that the deposit is more like 896 million barrels, says the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). (Estimates of natural gas deposits in the NPRA are also down 13 per cent.) The much lower figure was a surprise for Philip Weiss, a senior energy analyst with Argus Research in New York. “Estimates change from time to time,” he says. “That one seemed a little extreme.”

It isn’t the first time 3-D seismology has caused such a surprise. In 2008, the USGS announced that the Bakken shale formation (which runs through North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan) may contain 25 times more than was estimated in 1995. In Alaska’s case, though, less is bad news for almost all of the state’s 700,000 residents. Each Alaskan receives an annual “dividend” payout funded by royalties charged on oil, gas and minerals (it’s been as much as $3,000; in 2010, it’s $1,281 each). Now that the NPRA is smaller, future cheques could shrink, too.

An oligarch's last stand

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once one of the richest men in Russia, has found out what the consequences of crossing the Kremlin can be. The businessman, who made his fortune as an oil tycoon, was first arrested at gunpoint for tax evasion in 2003. Two years later, he was convicted. In 2005, state prosecutors brought new charges against him: they alleged he stole $25 billion of the very oil he was accused of underpaying taxes on. If Khodorkovsky is found guilty on these second charges in mid-December, when a verdict is due to be released, he’ll remain in prison for six more years—after his current sentence ends in 2011.

The case against Khodorkovsky is now widely seen as a response to his financial support of political parties that oppose the Kremlin. This current trial, analysts believe, is a ploy to keep him in jail until after the 2012 elections, when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is expected to take another run at the presidency. Until then, from behind a glass cage in a packed Moscow courtroom, he’s made no secret of his views on Russian justice. His arrest, he noted, was a display of the Kremlin’s power above the law. But, “so far, they have achieved the opposite: they turned us, ordinary people, into symbols of a struggle against lawlessness.”

Out of the red

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

The Danube River is famously blue, but after a recent toxic waste spill in Hungary, parts of it were flooded with a sickly red slurry. On Oct. 4, a reservoir wall had collapsed at an alumina plant near the village of Kolontar, releasing over 750 million litres of red mud—a byproduct of turning bauxite to alumina, which is needed for aluminum production. The disaster forced hundreds from their homes and left nine dead. The red mud was waist-deep in some places, locals reported; one witness said it smelled like blood.

A chemical soup of heavy metals and minerals (including iron oxide, hence its colour), red mud is highly corrosive; workers in Hungary measured the pH level and found that, in some places, it was as caustic as bleach. It can even be slightly radioactive. (Rio Tinto Alcan’s alumina processing plant in Quebec is the only one in Canada; it has withstood flooding and an earthquake without incident, a spokesman noted, adding that it’s “highly unlikely” such a spill could occur here.) We end up creating 63 million tonnes of red mud each year worldwide, but we still don’t know what to do with it: red mud is typically stored in reservoirs, dried out and buried, but it’s so chemically stable it won’t really break down. Marcel Schlaf, a chemistry professor at the University of Guelph, has a better idea. Red mud, he believes, could help transform bio oil derived from plant waste into fuel.

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Never heard of the oil sands? Really?!?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: While three-quarters of Canadians admit to being distracted while driving, British Columbians are some of the most responsible. Just eight per cent of West Coast drivers talk on the phone without a hands-free device, compared to 15 per cent in the country overall. B.C. drivers do lead in one category: six per cent coif their hair and apply makeup while behind the wheel.

Alberta: Eighty-six per cent of Albertans have heard, seen or read something about the oil sands. That means one in six Albertans know nothing about their province’s most valuable resource. In Quebec, the land of abundant hydro power, only 66 per cent have heard about the oil sands.

Saskatchewan and Manitoba: Eighty per cent of women between the ages of 45 and 64 in Saskatchewan and Manitoba believe  that they are smarter investors than their mothers were at their age. And while 29 per cent of Canadian females have a financial plan, that number climbs sharply to 38 per cent of the women in those two Prairie provinces.

Quebec: If NHL players have their way, then La Belle Province should be next in line to get a hockey franchise. In a survey of 90 pro players, Quebec City earned the most support, with the backing of 37 per cent. Other top Canadian cities included Winnipeg, which finished second with 20 per cent of the vote, and Hamilton, a distant fourth, with 12 per cent.

Atlantic provinces: When it comes to entrepreneurship, the East Coast lags behind most of Canada. Only 3.1 per cent of individuals in the region took steps to create or take over a business. And just 7.4 per cent own a business, compared to Alberta and British Columbia, where 13.2 per cent of the population are owners. (Quebec was lowest with 5.1 per cent.)
SOURCES: Léger, Ipsos Reid, The Hockey News, Léger, Environics