Battle for Canada Oil

May 09, 2010 — The tar sands in the province of Alberta cover a wide area centered on the town of Fort McMurray. They lie in the heart of Canada's Boreal forests, and produce close to one-and-a-half million barrels of oil a day.

The area is the epicentre of a struggle between environmentalists and multinational energy companies, with each side painting different pictures of how oil extraction impacts the region.

Al Jazeera's Steve Chao reports from Fort McMurray, Canada

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill an Environmental disaster

Professor of Biology, Peter Ward, talked about the impact of BP's oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The estimates of how much is being leaked has varied depending on the source. "It cannot
have hit in a worse place," as we're dealing with a body of water that doesn't have a great deal of circulation on the bottom, he noted. The Gulf has already experienced 'Dead Zones,' where
oxygen is removed from the water, and bottom life has been killed off. Thus, the oil can't be broken up and destroyed by bacteria that would otherwise be growing there, he explained.

Further, the Gulf area contains thousands of streams-- the oil will go up into those streams and sink into the mud, and there's no easy way to clean it, he warned, adding that with the
increased rise of sea levels, the oil will be pushed inward.

Ecological biologist David Blume joined the program in the third hour, also discussing the oil catastrophe. There could be as much as 1 million gallons a day being spilled from BP's broken
oil pipes, he detailed. Yet, current drilling practices aren't going to change, until, perhaps "there's oil on the shores of the Potomac in Washington," and that is actually a possibility as
the oil slick could be carried along the East Coast by the Gulf Stream, he said.

Blume talked about alcohol gas as a cleaner and more plentiful alternative to oil, and how a wide network of small-scale alcohol fuel plants could be set up. Several states have requested
to have higher percentages of alcohol added to their fuel but the EPA has been balking for political reasons, he suggested.

Barratt Says Oil May Fall to $75 a Barrel on Weak Demand

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Jonathan Barratt, managing director at Commodity Broking Services Pty, talks with Bloomberg's Linzie Janis about the outlook for oil prices and demand. Speaking in Sydney, Barratt also discusses the future of U.S. offshore drilling following BP Plc's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.