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Some are calling it a "smear job", while others are applauding the National Geographic's rather sobering 20-page publication on the Alberta tar sands, titled "Scraping Bottom." Either way, the timing is brilliant. Dubbed by some as the "most destructive project on Earth" - scarring it visibly from space - there's no doubt that the tar sands extraction industry has a huge environmental footprint, which even President Obama could not help but acknowledge during his visit to Ottawa last week, to the chagrin of some Canadian officials. Many of them, from Prime Minister Stephen Harper on down, are attempting to control the potential damage in the lead up to the ministerial visit to the U.S. next week - but it's almost like watching the frantic efforts of a doctor as the patient is hemorraging to death. "I'm proud of the oil sands. It's a world leader. National Geographic is not going to teach me any lessons about the oil sands," said Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff in a defensive response to the article. Canada's Environment Minister Jim Prentice went on to dismiss the feature as "just one article."

According to a new report, the cumulative impact of developing Canadian tar sands over the next 30-50 years could be as high as 166 million birds lost, including future generations. Written by scientists from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Boreal Songbird Initiative, and Pembina Institute, the peer-reviewed paper suggests that avian mortality from continued development of Canada's tar sands would provide a serious blow to migratory bird populations in North America. 10 votesBuzz up! "This report is yet another wake up call to the government in Alberta, as it confirms that the cumulative impact of oil sands development is on an unsustainable trajectory," said Pembina Institute's Simon Dyer, a contributing author to the report.

Energy Bulletin's Bart Anderson has an interview in, of all places, a French cyberpunk journal - The future is Amish, not Mad Max: interview with Bart Anderson of EB. Laurent Courau: Your site puts forward the concept of "peak oil." Could you begin by reviewing this essential point for the readers of La Spirale? Bart Anderson: There is a limited amount of petroleum in the earth. After the easy deposits have been exploited, we go after deposits that are more difficult and expensive to develop (e.g. tar sands, deepwater and arctic oil). At a certain point - peak oil - the amount of oil produced reaches a maximum. Afterwards, less and less oil is produced. In this way oil production follows a more-or-less bell-shaped curve, Hubbert's Curve. The curve takes its name from the Shell Oil geoscientist, M. King Hubbert, who presented the idea in 1956 and predicted the peaking of U.S. oil production, which occurred in 1970.

Because of their sheer scale, all Canadians are affected by the Tar Sands, no matter where they live. If you live downstream, your water is being polluted and your fish and wildlife may be dangerous to eat. If you live in Saskatchewan you are a victim of acid rain. If you live in BC, "supertankers" may soon be plying your shoreline carrying Tar Sands oil to Asia. If you live in Ontario, you are exposed to harmful emissions from the refining of Tar Sands Oil. And the impacts do not stop at Canada's border - US refineries are re-tooling to handle the dirty oil from Alberta.

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - U.S. regulators should weigh the environmental impact of oil sands extraction in Canada before granting permits for pipelines that will carry the rising flood of Canadian crude to refineries in the United States, a green group said on Wednesday. The recommendation was one of several in a report by the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project on massive expansions and retoolings of U.S. refineries aimed at running more oil derived from the oil sands of northern Alberta.

Next month's edition of National Geographic has an article on the tar sands of Canada - The Canadian Oil Boom. How long the boom lasts if the current downturn continues is questionable of course. In the same issue is an article on Energy Conservation. In Boucher's memory, though, the change begins that day in 1963, on the long trail his grandfather used to set his traps, near a place called Mildred Lake. Generations of his ancestors had worked that trapline. "These trails had been here thousands of years," Boucher said one day last summer, sitting in his spacious and tasteful corner office in Fort McKay. His golf putter stood in one corner; Mozart played softly on the stereo. "And that day, all of a sudden, we came upon this clearing. A huge clearing. There had been no notice. In the 1970s they went in and tore down my grandfather's cabin-with no notice or discussion." That was Boucher's first encounter with the oil sands industry. It's an industry that has utterly transformed this part of northeastern Alberta in just the past few years, with astonishing speed. Boucher is surrounded by it now and immersed in it himself.

The relentless search for oil has led explorers to the boreal forest of northeastern Alberta, among the jack pines and black spruce trees an hour's drive from the boom town of Fort McMurray. Kelly Hansen, operations manager at ConocoPhillips's $1 billion Surmont oil-sands plant, holds up the prize: a beaker of sticky black "synbit,"� a 50-50 blend of bitumen (a viscous, tarlike petroleum) and synthetic oil.

As the U.S. election campaign kicks into overdrive, Canadian politicians and oil executives are stepping up lobbying efforts to make sure whoever controls the White House keeps purchasing notoriously dirty oil from the Alberta tar sands. Executives from Nexen energy, which has major investments in northern Alberta's heavy oil industry, and Tony Clement, chair of a Canadian cabinet committee on energy security, met with Democratic candidate Barack Obama's top energy advisor Jason Grumet late last week to cement the "energy partnership" during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

# The United States purchases more oil, natural gas, uranium and electricity from Canada than any other country. # Canada's proven oil reserves total 179 billion barrels, of which 173 billion barrels are in oil sands reserves, making Canada second only to Saudi Arabia in global oil reserves. # 99% of Canada's crude oil exports are to U.S. markets. # Energy flows in both directions between the United States and Canada. Our pipeline and transmission systems are highly integrated and our cross-border trade operates nearly seamlessly.

Canada's oil sands pose a significant investment risk as their development may be hampered by a government attempt to curtail the industry's rising carbon dioxide emissions, a report published Tuesday said.

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute ... There is a veritable cottage industry of economists and statisticians (including Daniel Yergin, Bjorn Lomborg, Peter Huber, and Michael Lynch) who tirelessly implore their readers not to panic over oil prices because The Market will always come to the rescue. As easy conventional oil depletes, tar sands, oil shale, and biofuels become more economic to produce. Even coal-to-liquids becomes feasible on a large scale. And, as everyone knows, there is an endless amount of coal.

The U.S. government said Thursday Canada holds the world's second-largest oil reserves, taking into account Alberta oil sands previously considered too expensive to develop.

Support for Canada's oil sands is coming from an unexpected American group--an anti-poverty coalition led by African-American civil rights and faith leaders.

"A quick update on the slow motion oil spill that is the Alberta Tar Sands and how the death of birds is just one of the huge environmental problems here: The Winnipeg Free Press reports that the long-running trial of Syncrude over the death of some 1,600 ducks in one of its toxic tailing ponds has concluded, with Syncrude found guilty. Syncrude Failed to Deploy Duck Deterrent Systems in Snow Storm Judge Ken Tjosvold: It should have been obvious to Syncrude that deterrence should have been in place in the spring as soon as reasonably possible. Syncrude dud not deploy deterrence early enough or quickly enough. I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Syncrude could have acted lawfully by using due diligence to deter birds from the basin...and it did not do so. The crux of the case was whether or not Syncrude deployed noise-producing duck deterrent systems early enough in the season. Defending its actions, Syncrude maintained that a snowstorm had delayed their deployment. In the snowstorm, with no other place to land, other bodies of water being ice-covered, the birds landed in the toxic tailing pond. There, soaked with toxic sludge, they became unable to fly and either were eaten by ravens or sank to the bottom dead. "

Here's a general list of Obama's energy platform, courtesy of Robert Rapier a good source for expertise these issues. The initiatives on "clean" coal and ethanol will raise hackles. Canadians should take note of the "low-carbon fuel standard". If such a standard is implemented, it would affect importation of oil from extracted carbon-intensive oil sands. And that's one reason the Canadian Government has been quick to call for cooperation on a joint North American climate change strategy. The list is after the bump:

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL completed its withdrawal from the UK wind-energy sector after quietly selling out of the last project it had in this country. The oil giant recently agreed to sell its stake in the £800m Cirrus Shell Flat Array, a 270MW project off the Blackpool coast, to partners Scottish Power and Dong Energy. Its exit, three months after it walked away from the world's largest proposed offshore wind farm, the London Array, will raise questions about the government's ambitious wind-energy targets. The decision will also anger environmentalists already critical of Shell's push into dirty-fuel sources such as Canada's tar sands.

WASHINGTON -- Two years ago, the Alberta government parked a huge dump truck on the National Mall in Washington, announcing to U.S. lawmakers Canada was about to become the next big thing in global energy. It was an ostentatious display -- the yellow behemoth used in oilsands extraction stood five metres tall, with four-metre-high tires -- that helped put Alberta's oilsands on the map for a Congress deeply worried after 9/11 about the security of the U.S. energy supply.