Names In The News
With all the publicity, most of it bad, regarding Canada’s tar sands project, it’s amusing to see - in a pathetic sort of way - the marketing forces behind this project cranking things up a bit. Funding must have finally made its way into their bank account.
Syncrude, operator of one of Canada’s largest mines in man’s newest venture into the environmental disaster arena, now prefers that we refer to the tar sands as “oil sands”, the reason being that it sounds more positive. Forget the visuals associated with the ecological disaster of tar sands mining, let’s prioritize things here by emphasizing the sound quality of a name. On a side note (pardon the pun), this does question the proper spelling of their company name.
Even Wikipedia, that fountain of almost accurate wisdom, now refers to the tar sands as oil sands. Everywhere one looks in the corporate world, tar sands money is growing on those evergreen corporate trees.
Boom Town, Tar Sands Style
Fort McMurray, 270 miles northeast of Edmonton, is surrounded by boreal forest and sits at the confluence of the Clearwater River and the Athabasca River. Hint: forests and rivers. In 1966, the town’s population was estimated at just over 2,000 residents. Population projections for the year 2012 come in at 100,000.
The town’s economy is based, unnaturally, on the tar sands of Alberta. Specifically, on the Athabasca tar sands project. This tar sands deposit is the largest of three tar sands projects in Canada, and the single largest tar sands deposit in the world. Combined with the other two Alberta deposits, the Peace River deposit and the Cold Lake deposit, a 54,000 square mile section of this boreal forest and muskeg continues to be under extreme attack by the oil industry.
Forgive me, I digress. Fort McMurray’s other driving forces in its economy are natural gas, oil pipelines, and forestry. Oh yes, and tourism. It’s probably a safe bet to say that the recent spike in their tourism numbers comes from carbon energy executives flocking to the area just to see what the recent Greenpeace fuss is all about.
Oil Sands Jobs
Oil sands employment, not tar sands employment, is booming these days, as the mental thought process seems to diminish. Jean Fournier, a 64 year old scaffolder recently earned $64,000.00 Canadian dollars (approximately $60,000.00 USD) over the last four months. His take on the recent Greenpeace activities at the tar sands plants was simply “ Greenpeace will make people starve by killing the economy.” He obviously believes the Greenpeace economic policy is equivalent to the Bush-Cheney economic policy.
The oil industry has, over it’s storied history, created strong employee alliances the same way they create strong corporate alliances. The money grows on a different tree in the same orchard.
Losing Money
During the roller coaster oil price years of the Bush Jr.’s presidency, tar sands projects went along for the ride. However, once oil prices dropped below or at $60.00 per barrel, tar sands became sand castles. In today’s economy, prices must be above $60.00 per barrel in order to justify the extreme expenses associated with tar sands mining, otherwise its a losing money proposition. If there’s one thing oil companies care very little for, other than a positive environmental plan, it’s losing money.
As peak oil production across the planet becomes ever more distant in our rear view mirrors, expect today’s major disaster in Canada to become a global disaster.
Oh, Canada.
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