Share this Post:

unEARTHED. The Earthjustice Blog

A Rose By Its Real Name: Tar Sands


    SIGN-UP for our latest news and action alerts:
   Please leave this field empty

Facebook Fans

Related Blog Entries

by Doug Pflugh:
Drillers Make a Play for Thompson Divide
Drillers Make a Play for Thompson Divide

There is no dispute that the Thompson Divide—a 220,000-acre forested wildland in western Colorado—is a special place. It comprises some o...

by Doug Pflugh:
Driller Seeks to Overturn Roan Plateau Victory
Driller Seeks to Overturn Roan Plateau Victory

The Roan Plateau stands proudly above the Colorado River, an island of refuge in the sea of energy development that threatens to industrialize much of...

by Terry Winckler:
A Reason to Celebrate Earth Day: No Arctic Ocean Drilling
A Reason to Celebrate Earth Day: No Arctic Ocean Drilling

Perhaps you’ve already read the good news by our crackerjack Alaska attorney Holly Harris, who reported that ConocoPhillips is the latest Big Oi...

Earthjustice on Twitter

View Terry Winckler's blog posts
13 November 2009, 12:29 PM
Terry Winckler

A Rose By Its Real Name: Tar Sands

Companies "enhance" destructive oil method with name change

"Putting lipstick on a pig" describes a PR tactic of making something bad look good. But, two Canadian companies have added a new twist to this old ploy—they've changed the name of the pig.

We're referring to the oil mining practices of EnCana Corp. and Cenovus Energy Inc. The companies employ a form of mining oil from Canadian tar sands that has a bad reputation for being highly destructive to the environment. To counter this, they are no longer using the phrases "tar sands" and "oil sands" in referring to their work. Now they describe themselves as conducting "enhanced oil projects."

Extracting oil from tar sands is one of the dirtiest, most polluting methods—and Earthjustice is challenging a pipeline that would daily bring nearly half a million barrels of oil obtained this way into the United States from Canada. No matter what you call it, there's no disguising its harmful impacts: the excessive greenhouse gas emissions, the vast amounts of water employed in mining, the multitude of toxins released into our air and water.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on August 25, 2010.

Very informative and trustworthy blog. Please keep updating with great posts like this one. I have booked marked your site and am about to email it to a few friends of mine that I know would enjoy reading
omegle sohbet

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <p> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <blockquote>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options