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Shell Halts Mining as Activists Protest Oil Sands
CALGARY, Alberta - Royal Dutch Shell Plc has suspended production at its Canadian oil sands mine after environmental activists blockaded a massive dump truck and mining shovel to protest the impact of oil sands development, the company said on Tuesday.
Greenpeace activists place a banner and block a tar sands mining operation at the Shell Albian Sands outside of Fort McMurray, Alberta September 15, 2009. (REUTERS/Colin O'Connor/Greenpeace/Handout) Greenpeace said 25 of its activists locked down the oil sands mining equipment at the Albian Sands Muskeg River mine in northern Alberta on Tuesday morning, a day before Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington.
Shell, which owns 60 percent of the 155,000 barrel a day operation, said it temporarily shut down mining to ensure that the activists and its staff do not get hurt.
"Shell's No. 1 concern is their safety and our preference is for a negotiated end to this demonstration," the company said in a statement. "We have invited the group into our administrative building to sit down with management to discuss their concerns."
It said Greenpeace has not tried to contact Shell to discuss the environmental initiatives it is employing in the operation.
Greenpeace said it staged the protest to highlight what it said were "the climate crimes of tar sands development -- rising energy intensity, greenhouse gas emissions, and boreal forest destruction".
The mine's other owners are Chevron Corp and Marathon Oil Corp, with 20 percent each.
Elsewhere, activists hung a 70-foot (21-meter) banner above Niagara Falls on the Canada-United States border showing arrows that point forward to a "clean energy future" and backward to "tar sands oil".
(Reporting by Jeffrey Jones; editing by Peter Galloway)
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11 Comments so far
Show AllCONGRATS to Greenpeace Activists...a success for direct action! too bad that by tomorrow it will be business as usual...
How can we start to heat our homes without oil, gas, coal, or wood? Does or does not technology now exist in solar or algae or whatever to start manufacturing our way out of fossil fuel dependence?
In the meantime we need to start conserving more and more. We had a fairly cool summer in the northeast but even at 70's and no more than 80 degrees people were running air conditioners.
Is it okay to feel a little warm or to bundle up when it's cool?
Oil sands won't do 'atall
for your consideration
http://submedia.tv/endciv/2009/09/10/star-wars/
Jay Stevens article yesterday about Colorado Rockies snow packs being pink from dust and mud and it getting so bad that the snow is actually starting to look red;just get a picture in your head of mountain top snow packs of a red color affecting the regulation of the seasons andthen they are already "discussing",no guns yet the Colorado River and just imagine it takes at least and probobly more than 2 barrels of water to process 1 barrel of oil sands.All major water ways that serve the needs of most of the mid west start up at the Canadian border if no over it.and if the aquifiers are used?It is that greed thing again.Tony
A reply for me;all them typos!I need an a finger trainer.Tony
Solar and Wind have to be made a more attractive option!
Solar and wind (and conservation) are already attractive options--especially to anyone with any human feeling and people who are emotionally and intellectually connected. Those who don't have and aren't will be unaffected by all ratonal arguments until we help them (as we help us) heal from their individual and systemic psychological ills.
Want to make solar and wind more attractive options? First, go to therapy. Second, help find a way to be heard over (or under) the overwhelming conservative megaphone of corporate media. Third, join the Green Party and help it find some decent candidates and get them elected. Fourth, make sure the Supreme Court doesn't rule that corporations are legally allowed to rule the world. Fifth, keep going to therapy.
Have any of you even see "the oil Sands" , have you figured out why they call it that ? cause mostly it's swamp over top of sand saturated with oil , and hell yes , lets shut these projects all down , acouple hundred thousand people involved can all go to work for greeen peace and we'll go back to being dependent on mid east oil , thats worked well in the past . our new jobs working for green piece on the wind generators will be fine , lord knows there is plenty of hot air there.......get in line dummies
Shell, Chevron, etc.: Albertans like to think of themselves as the energy power of the world (as does right-wing evangelical PM Harper), but the miniscule royalties the province gets and the damage that is done to the environment, Alberta is actually an OIL COLONY under the control of international corporations.
What good is all the money if we can't drink the water, eat the food or breathe the air. "Greed" is the spade digging Homo Sapiens' grave.