Abstract
The Canadian oil (or tar) sands is at the center of a debate over US energy policy. The oil sands, located in the province of Alberta, are a high-carbon substitute for crude oil. The continued/expanded development of the oil sands (i.e., bitumen) portends substantially higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.1 The specific focus of the debate over the Canadian oil sands has been the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have connected Alberta to the petroleum refining infrastructure in Texas (Houston). The pipeline would have presumably accelerated the extraction of the oil sands. As the New York Times notes, “even if President Obama rejects the pipeline, it might not matter much.” This is because “oil companies are already building rail terminals to deliver oil from western Canada to the United States.”2 Similarly, another observer explains that “what is often overlooked is that Keystone XL is only one of 13 pipelines completed or proposed by the [Canadian] Harper government—they would extend for 10,000 miles, not just to the [G]ulf [of Mexico—i.e., Houston], but to both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.”3 The need for greater petroleum production from the oil sands is the result of high petroleum demand in the North American (especially US) market, and broad concerns about existing supplies of conventional crude.4
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Notes
Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); David Goodstein, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil (New York: Norton, 2004); Clifford Krauss, “Tapping a Trickle In West Texas,” New York Times, November 2, 2007, C1; Michael J. Graetz, The End of Energy: The Unmaking of America’s Environment, Security, and Independence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011); Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (New York: Penguin, 2011).
Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2010).
Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Malden: Blackwell, 2001).
One historian of the Canadian Prairie West (which includes the province of Alberta) writes that the urban “elites” of this region “shared what might be called the booster spirit … The most important parts of the mental baggage of the boosters were a belief in the desirability of growth and in the importance of material success.” Alan F. J. Artibise, “In Pursuit of Growth: Municipal Boosterism and Urban Development in the Canadian Prarie West, 1871–1913,” in Shaping the Urban Landscape: Aspects of the Canadian City-Building Process, ed. Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F. J. Artibise (Ottawa, Canada: Carleton University Press, 1982), 124. Another historian of Alberta reports that both the cities of Calgary and Edmonton were “infected by a frontier boosterism that promoted frantic real estate speculation and glorified … business success.” He adds that the “two cities were also dominated by an Anglo-Canadian professional and business elite that promoted these values.” Howard Palmer, with Tamara Palmer, Alberta: A New History (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1990), 138.
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A. A. Den Otter, The Philosophy of Railways: The Transcontinental Railway Idea in British North America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); Richard J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
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Owen Temby, “Trouble in Smogville: The Politics of Toronto’s Air Pollution during the 1950s,” Journal of Urban History 39, no. 4 (2013): 669–689; also see Owen Temby and Ryan O’Connor, “Property, Technology, and Environmental Policy: The Politics of Acid Rain in Ontario, 1978–1985,” Journal of Policy History 27, no. 4 (2015): 636–669.
George A. Gonzalez, “The U.S. Politics of Water Pollution Policy: Urban Growth, Ecological Modernization, and the Vending of Technology,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 24, no. 4 (2013): 105–121.
A. A. Den Otter, Civilizing the West: The Galts and the Development of Western Canada (Edmonton: University Press of Alberta, 1982)
Peter K. Eisinger, The Rise of the Entrepreneurial State: State and Local Economic Development Policy in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); Timothy Williams, “For Toledo, Cash to Grow; for Chinese, Closer Ties,” New York Times, December 27, 2013, A16; Patrick McGeehan, “55 Million Visitors to City? Tourism Chief Seeks More,” New York Times, July 8, 2014, A19; Staci M. Zavattaro, Cities for Sale: Municipalities as Public Relations and Marketing Firms (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014).
David Harvey, The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); John Schwartz, “No Easy Way to Restrict Construction in Risky Areas,” New York Times, March 29, 2014, A12; Neena Satija, “Growth Tests San Antonio’s Conservation Culture,” New York Times, March 30, 2014, A23A.
A historian of Alberta notes that once the railroad “gave access to the Athabasca oil sands at Fort McMurray, the government took the first steps towards investigating this tremendously rich resource by creating the Alberta Research Council.” James G. MacGregor, A History of Alberta (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1972), 243.
Ena Schneider, Ribbons of Steel: The Story of the Northern Alberta Railways (Calary, Alberta: Detselig Enterprises, 1989), chap. 10 and pp. 317–318; David H. Breen, Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1993), 441; Klassen, A Business History of Alberta, 74. Historian Howard Palmer reports that “Edmonton commercial interests wanted a railway to Fort McMurray … to develop the potential of the oil sands.” Palmer, Alberta: A New History, 144.
Walter H. Johns, A History of the University of Alberta: 1908–1969 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press), 41.
Paul Chastko, Developing Alberta’s Oil Sands: From Karl Clark to Kyoto (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004), 13.
Barry Glen Ferguson, Athabasca Oil Sands: Northern Resource Exploration, 1875–1951 (Edmonton: Alberta Culture/Canadian Plains Research Center, 1985), 51–52.
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George A. Gonzalez, Energy and Empire: The Politics of Nuclear and Solar Power in the United States (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012), chap. 3.
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Proceedings: Athabasca Oil Sands Conference (Edmonton: Shnitka, King’s Printer, 1951), 367–371.
Nathan E. Tanner, “Government Policy Regarding Oil-Sands Leases and Royalties,” in Proceedings: Athabasca Oil Sands Conference (Edmonton: Shnitka, King’s Printer, 1951), 175. (emphasis in original)
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For example, Frederic Dewhurst and the Twentieth Century Fund, America’s Needs and Resources: A New Survey (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1955); Thomas Reynolds Carskadon, and George Henry Soule, USA in New Dimensions: The Measure and Promise of America’s Resources, A Twentieth Century Fund Survey (New York: Macmillan, 1957); Arnold B. Barach and the Twentieth Century Fund, USA and Its Economic Future: A Twentieth Century Fund Survey (New York: Macmillan, 1964).
Walter L. Buenger and Joseph A. Pratt, But Also Good Business: Texas Commerce Banks and the Financing of Houston and Texas, 1886–1986 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 299.
Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the International Oil Crisis, Paying for Energy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), vii–viii; Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on United States Energy Policy, Providing for Energy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), xi–xii; Robin W. Winks, Laurence S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997), 44 and 196.
W. J. Levy Consultants Corp., Emerging North American Oil Balances: Considerations Relevant to a Tar Sands Development Policy (New York: W. J. Levy Consultants, February 1973).
Ibid., iv.
Ibid.
Ibid., vi.
Ibid., iv.
Ibid., vi.
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Gonzalez, G.A. (2016). The Canadian Oil Sands Policy Network. In: American Empire and the Canadian Oil Sands. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137539564_4
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