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LEAN: Don’t Frack St. Tammany!

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E-ALERT – July 21, 2014
Don’t FRACK St. Tammany!

HAVE YOU SEEN THE SIGNS?
We hope you have noticed the billboard in Convington on Hwy 190 and on Interstate 10 near Slidell. LEAN, with the support of Sassafrass, has been able to amplify the community message of many concerned residents of St. Tammany Parish. If we are working to build healthy and sustainable communities, the communities must be allowed to have a say in what goes on in their community. Residents must be able to have a say in what their precious water resources can be used for; in what is allowed in the air they breath and what is inflicted upon the ground under their feet. We are proud to support the residents of St. Tammany in their efforts to protect their community.
Please lend your voice to this effort by contacting the St. Tammany Parish Council and letting them know you support the rights of residents to dictate what risks they will tolerate in their own community.
Contact the Parish Council and tell them: Don’t FRACK St. Tammany!
Send an email to:
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or send a letter:
St Tammany Parish Council Chambers and Offices
21490 Koop Dr.
Mandeville, LA 70471
 
Hydraulic fracturing poses real, documented impacts to health, environment and quality of life. LEAN supports the residents of St. Tammany in saying NO to hydraulic fracturing in their community.

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RTCC.org: EU to step up fracking and efficiency in response to Ukraine crisis

http://www.rtcc.org/2014/05/21/eu-may-step-up-shale-gas-efficiency-in-response-to-ukraine-crisis/

Last updated on 21 May 2014, 4:23 pm
Draft European Commission briefing note shows jitters over dependence on Russian gas

By Gerard Wynn
The European Union aims decisively to shift away from dependence on Russian gas imports, following previous failed attempts, according to a draft European Commission document on energy security.

The Ukraine crisis has deepened European jitters over gas imports, where Russia is its single biggest supplier.

The European Commission note mentioned the word “solidarity” seven times, in a draft note whose final version would be published in June, titled “European Energy Security Strategy – Comprehensive plan for the reduction of EU energy dependence.”

“The EU and its Member States have an overriding priority: ensure that best possible preparation and planning improve resilience to sudden disruptions in energy supplies, that strategic infrastructures are protected and that the most vulnerable Member States are collectively supported,” it said.

The EU relies on imports for 70% of its gas consumption. Six member states depended on Russia as their single external supplier for their entire gas imports, the Commission said.

It called for increased gas storage in the short-term, to prepare for possible disruption in the coming winter to Russian gas transiting through Ukraine, and the development of reverse flows through gas pipelines to allow a more flexible routing of gas to where it was most needed.

It also underlined the need for a diversification of gas supplies. That included exploitation of domestic shale gas, and imports from alternative suppliers, with more imports of liquefied natural gas, for example from Qatar and in future the United States.

“Producing oil and gas from unconventional sources in Europe, and especially shale gas, could partially compensate for declining conventional production, providing issues of public acceptance and environmental impact are adequately addressed.”

It also emphasised a greater role for energy efficiency, especially in buildings and industry.

It said that the Commission would prepare efficiency goals for 2030, in a sign that it would propose a concrete EU energy saving target as already agreed for 2020.

“Energy demand in the building sector, responsible for about 40% of energy consumption in the EU and a third of natural gas use9 could be cut by up to three quarters if the renovation of buildings is speeded up.”

Shifting energy politics were visible also on the Russian side, as it signed on Wednesday a major gas supply contract with China, reducing its dependence on sales to Europe.

Priority
The Commission saw closer ties between EU member states as the critical factor for improving energy security.

It showed impatience with resistance from Russian gas supplier, Gazprom, to EU competition legislation which limits ownership of both energy and transmission assets. Gazprom sees such rules as a threat to its new proposed gas pipeline through southern Europe.

“The recent experience of certain non-EU operators challenging the application of EU legislation on EU territory might call for a stricter approach and a reinforcement of the applicable (competition) rules at EU and Member states level,” the Commission said.

“Antitrust and merger control rules must continue to be vigorously enforced since they ensure that the EU security of supply and industry bargaining position is not weakened through anticompetitive behaviour from and/or excessive consolidation or vertical integration of non-EU energy companies.”

The Commission detailed a long list of “key actions”, and said that the bloc had done too little to improve its security since previous disruptions of Russian gas, in 2006 and 2009, following gas price disputes between Russia and Ukraine.

“The EU needs, therefore, a hard-headed strategy for energy security which promotes resilience to these shocks and disruptions to energy supplies.”

DRAFT European Commission – Energy Security Communication

– See more at: http://www.rtcc.org/2014/05/21/eu-may-step-up-shale-gas-efficiency-in-response-to-ukraine-crisis/#sthash.SatW47Bt.0gDCwRjw.dpuf

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Thinkprogress.org: ‘A Government Of Thugs’: How Canada Treats Environmental Journalists by Emily Atkin

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/23/3428984/canada-war-on-environmentalists/

May 23, 2014 at 10:04 am Updated: May 23, 2014 at 11:18 am

I attempted to enter Canada on a Tuesday, flying into the small airport at Fort McMurray, Alberta, waiting for my turn to pass through customs.

“What brings you to Fort Mac?” a Canada Border Services Agency official asked. “I’m a journalist,” I said. “I’m here to see the tar sands.” He pointed me to border security. Another official, a tall, clean-shaven man, asked the same question. “I’m here to see the tar sands.” he frowned. “You mean oil sands. We don’t have tar here.”

Up until the 1960s, the common name for Canada’s massive reserves of heavy bitumen mixed with sand was “tar sands.” Now, the phrase is officially considered a colloquialism, with “oil sands” being the accurate name, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. But “tar sands” is not really an informal phrase in Canada as much as it is a symbol of your views. If you say tar sands, you’re an environmentalist. If you say tar sands, you’re the enemy.

“We might have to send you back to the States,” the official said, after asking if I had working papers. I didn’t, so I phoned a colleague staying at a nearby hotel. “This guy at border security says I need working papers or something and that he’s gonna send me back to the States,” I said.

“Why did you say I was going to send you back to the States? I didn’t say that,” the official said after I hung up. “See, you’re already misrepresenting what’s going on here.”

My interrogation included details about where I was going, who I was meeting with, why I wanted to see the sands. The official had me open my bag so he could see if I was carrying cameras. Then he let me into Canada. “Because I’m being nice,” he said, and gave me a certificate stating that I must leave the country by Friday.

Can’t Criticize If You Don’t Know

In all, I was delayed for about 45 minutes – a relatively painless experience – but I did get the feeling I wasn’t the only one being hassled in Canada for an association with environmentalism. Indeed, as interviews with multiple reporters and activists show, the federal government places numerous obstacles in the way of those who try to disseminate information about the Canadian tar sands. Many believe this has amounted to a full-on war.

There are logical reasons why impeding environmental journalists could be in Canada’s interest. The tar sands are the third largest oil reserve in the world, and production is currently accelerating so quickly that the government predicts capital investments will reach $218 billion over the next 25 years. Part of that investment could come from the Keystone XL pipeline, the controversial proposal that, if approved, would bring up to 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil per day down to refineries in the U.S.

So it makes sense that Canadian officials may want to prevent environmental perspectives on Fort McMurray’s vast tar sands reserves, which have replaced thousands of acres of boreal forest with massive refineries and sprawling mining sites – shiny, black excavated deserts that sit next to glowing white ponds of chemical waste. A small portion of boreal forest remains, but it doesn’t do much to cover the scars.

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An aerial view of tar sands mining in Fort McMurray.

CREDIT: NextGen Climate Action

From the air, you can see enormous white smokestacks 50 miles away. And from the ground, you can talk to those who have been physically harmed by accidental releases from the white ponds of tar sands chemical waste, called tailings ponds, which leech into the Athabasca river and flow downstream to First Nations communities like Fort Chip, where cancer rates have skyrocketed in the last 30 years.

Stories that describe the detrimental effects of Canada’s fossil fuel boom – not to mention the high carbon-intensity of tar sands oil extraction or unlikelihood that mining sites will ever be adequately reclaimed – threaten public support for projects like Keystone XL, and by extension, speedy and lucrative development.

‘A Culture Of Secrecy’

According to Tom Henheffer, executive director of the non-profit Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), the Canadian federal government has been actively working for the last decade to prevent journalists’ access to information, particularly in science-related fields. The trend only got worse, he said, when current Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a fierce supporter of tar sands development, took office in 2006.

“It’s specifically very bad in science-related fields, but it extends into every other field,” Henheffer said. “This government has a culture of secrecy that is extremely harmful to Canadian society.”

This government has a culture of secrecy that is extremely harmful to Canadian society.

Henheffer, whose group in April released its annual Review of Free Expression in Canada Report Card, noted two main issues at play. One, he said, is an increase in the amount of bureaucracy journalists must go through to get information. The other is a gradual de-funding of research, so the information journalists want isn’t even created in the first place.

The CJFE’s report card gave a failing grade to Canada’s access-to-information (ATI) system, which saw delays beyond the legal time limit affecting almost 45 percent of information requests, and more than 80 percent of responses partially or mostly censored. That report card also slammed the government for cutting scientific research, dismissing more than 2,000 scientists and cutting 165 research programs affecting “almost every federal scientific and monitoring institution.”

The report also noted a nationwide “muzzling” of federal scientists, citing government efforts to ensure its scientists limit discussions with the media on their work – much of which includes the environmental and climate impacts of tar sands development. This was confirmed in 2007, when a leaked PowerPoint presentation from Environment Canada revealed that government scientists were told to refer all media queries to communications officers who would help them respond with “approved lines.”

The current climate, Henheffer said, is frustrating journalistic efforts throughout the country.

“They’ve essentially dismantled our access to information system,” he said. “It makes investigative journalism impossible.”

The ‘Extremist Threat’ Of Environmentalists

Along with access to information for journalists, Stephen Harper’s government has also been working to dismantle environmental groups, a fact that has been revealed, ironically, by document requests from journalists. Those documents show unprecedented attempts from agencies across the federal government to spy on, de-fund, and otherwise disrupt the efforts of environmental groups.

[Environmental] groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.

The most recent example of this has been a rigorous effort by the Canada Revenue Agency to target environmental groups for possible abuse of their nonprofit charity statuses, alleging they may be violating the limits on how much political advocacy work they can do. The CRA’s $8 million effort was launched in 2012, shortly after the pro-tar sands group Ethical Oil kicked off a public campaign to “expose the radical foreign funded environmental groups” criticizing the oil industry.

“There are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade,” Joe Oliver, then-Natural Resources Minister, wrote at the time. “These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects.”

One of the original groups targeted was ForestEthics, a British Columbia-based nonprofit with branches in Vancouver and San Francisco. One of the fiercest and more outspoken opponents of the tar sands and the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the group responded by giving up its charitable status (thereby giving up tax breaks to its donors) so it could focus more on combating what it refers to as “attacks on the environment.”

“Ever since we formed the advocacy group we’ve been under further Š ‘intense scrutiny’ I guess is the nicest way to put it, because the advocacy group is set up explicitly for the sake of taking on the Harper government,” ForestEthics tar sands campaigner Ben West said.

West said that since his group founded its advocacy arm, it has been a target of a recently-revealed spying effort by the Canadian federal government. That effort, revealed in November by a public records request from the Vancouver Observer, showed that officials had been sending spies to meetings of anti-tar sands groups, relaying their plans for rallies and strategies for public meetings.

What’s more, documents obtained in February by the Guardian revealed that both Canada’s national police force and intelligence agency view environmental activist protest activities as “forms of attack,” and depict those involved as national security threats. Greenpeace, for example, is officially regarded as an “extremist” threat.

refinery-479×319.jpg 2

A tar sands refinery in Fort McMurray.

CREDIT: Emily Atkin

West said the revelations have had a “chilling” effect on the groups’ volunteer and donor base.

“The word is out that ForestEthics is one of the groups that the federal government is paying close attention to, and that has an impact on people’s comfort levels and their desire to get involved,” West said. “If you look at the pieces of the documents we were able to get our hands on, they explain what was happening at meetings where you would have had to have been in the room to have known the content of that meeting.”

‘A Government Of Thugs’

In addition to the more-calculated attempts to prevent environmental criticism, multiple reporters and activists say they experience an egregious amount of defensiveness, spitefulness, and intimidation from the federal government that prevents them from doing their jobs effectively.

“We have a government of thugs in Ottawa these days who are absolutely ruthless,” said Andrew Nikiforuk, an award-winning journalist who has been reporting critically on Canada’s oil and gas industry for more than 20 years. “It’s a hostility and thuggery, is the way I would describe it. That’s exactly what it is.”

We have a government of thugs in Ottawa these days who are absolutely ruthless.

Nikiforuk says he’s been shut out of government events, “slandered and libeled” by a member of the government’s conservative party, and repeatedly contacted by government flacks who criticize his reporting.

The most blatant example of government intimidation Nikiforuk can recall was when members of Canada’s Energy Resources Conservation Board actively tried to prevent the publication of his 2010 book, Tar Sands, claiming he made numerous factual errors and posting a long letter about it on its website. Nikifourk rebutted the claims, eventually winning the Society of Environmental Journalist’s Rachel Carson Book Award for his reporting.

Documentary and satire filmmakers Andy Cobb and Mike Damanskis also said they experienced government intimidation when, like me, they were detained at the Fort McMurray airport in October 2013. Unlike me, however, they were deported.

“He basically told us that the tar sands weren’t news, that he wasn’t recognizing us as journalists, and that if we wanted to come to Canada, we weren’t going to be able to do it today,” Damanskis said.

Though it seemed like at first they would be able to enter the country without working papers, Damanskis and Cobb said the border official had an “immediate change of heart” after watching a clip of their previous work – a video satirizing the infamous Mayflower, Arkansas tar sands pipeline spill.

Border spokesperson Lisa White said she was not authorized to speak on specific cases, and declined to specify whether officers were allowed to make entry decisions based on the content of journalists’ work. She did say, however, that documentary filmmakers required working papers to enter Canada, and that all entry decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

“All decisions are made in accordance with Canadian law,” she said.

Swift And Snarky Push-Back

Of course, it’s important to note that journalists like Nikiforuk, Damaskis, and Cobb are more likely to get negative feedback from Canadian government officials because they are not, and don’t claim to be, completely objective. All three are openly and fiercely opposed to the speed of tar sands development.

But even reporters who are seemingly more objective toward development have been subject to government push-back. For example, Economist correspondent Madelaine Drohan said via e-mail that Alberta’s provincial government once posted a “defensive” response on its website to an article she wrote that mentioned leaks from tailings ponds, which are large lakes of tar sands waste. That response has since been removed, but Drohan said she remembers it happening.

“It made me think that the government was even more sensitive than the industry,” she said.

As for hostility from the Alberta provincial government, one journalist pointed specifically to David Sands, a director at Alberta’s Public Affairs Bureau, whose Twitter account is made up largely of rebuttals to journalism critical of Alberta government. In recent tweets, Sands compared two newspapers’ coverage of Parliament to “jihad,” among other critical responses.

“Yeah, I’m the mean guy,” Sands told ThinkProgress. “It’s definitely my personal style, but nobody told me to be mean.”

Sands said part of his job is tracking down stories that include inaccuracies about Alberta government policies. He said he’s the only one in his department with the specific mandate to do so.

tailings-479×319.jpg 2

Waste ponds at a tar sands mining site in Fort McMurray.

CREDIT: NextGen Climate Action

Still, many have criticized Alberta for the number of people they’ve employed to hunt down stories. According to documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation in April, Alberta employs 214 communications professionals at a cost of $21 million per year, a number that the National Post noted “far outstrips” the number of reporters who cover government.

Sands rebutted that story too, saying communications staff span a range of departments – healthcare, education, law enforcement – that are not all dedicated to attacking journalists.

“It’s sort of an enjoyment of the media to say we have 214 communications people who are all dealing with the media,” he said. “When reporting is challenged, people take it very personally.”

The Strategy Is Working – Or Is It?

Thus far, government push-back against environmental journalism seems to be working. As a recent survey of Canadian journalists showed, many environmental and climate stories about the tar sands often go unreported. That survey, titled “The Alberta Oil Sands, Journalists, and Their Sources,” questioned 20 reporters with extensive daily experience reporting on the tar sands.

Of the 20, 14 said stories about the tar sands were not being told, and seven of those 14 said environmental issues were the main ones untouched. Environmental damage done by leaking tailings ponds and bitumen waste; toxic contaminants leeching into the water; the impact of excess sulfur produced in the mining process – all of those were included in the issues journalists perceive as under-reported.

“I hate this story,” one reporter who participated in the study said. “It’s important, but there’s no direction or progression.”

As for activist groups, Ben West of ForestEthics said the hostility has actually been helping his group’s efforts. And it’s not just the group itself. As the government’s attacks have become more and more public, West says his and other environmental advocacy groups have been obtaining record-breaking donations from individuals – what he calls a “clear sign” that Canadians want to protect their environment from the tar sands.

“I actually kind of welcome these attacks from the federal government in a sense, because they are a great opportunity to highlight how crazy our government’s acting, and use it as a reason to ask people for more support,” he said. “Many Canadians feel strongly about this. Let the government create their own disincentives.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

The Downstream Project 2014: The Year of Living Dangerously

2014: The Year of Living Dangerously

MAY 8, 2014 BY AMY MATHEWS AMOS

Winter brought us the MCHM spill in the Elk River near Charleston, West Virginia and the coal ash release into North Carolina’s Dan River. Suddenly, spring seems just as frightening. Last week, a CSX train carrying crude oil derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia, shooting flames into the air and releasing an estimated 30,000 gallons of crude oil into the adjacent James River. Just a day later, another CSX train derailed near Bowie, Maryland dumping several containers of coal onto the ground.

Thankfully, the James River derailment didn’t affect Lynchburg’s drinking water, according to news reports, and officials were able to warn Richmond and other communities directly downstream to shift to other sources if necessary until the pulse of oil flowed past on the fast moving river. The Bowie derailment doesn’t seem to have affected drinking water either (although few details have emerged in the media about this accident, perhaps because the Lynchburg spill offered a much more dramatic story) and no one was killed in either incident. But it does kind of make you wonder: Why are all these accidents happening now? And, for those of us who live in the Mid-Atlantic: Why are they happening in my back yard?

It’s hard to find a specific common denominator in this winter’s regional disasters. Commentators and advocates blame West Virginia’s MCHM spill in large part on lax environmental rules that allowed a chemical storage facility to sit upstream from the capital city’s water intake and avoid tank inspections by state and federal regulators. Many also blame an impotent Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – the federal law covering industrial chemicals like MCHM – for the confusion among public health officials about when it was safe to drink the water. In North Carolina, the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources recently charged Duke Energy with violating state and federal stormwater and wastewater requirements after facing public criticism for being too lax on polluters.
Yet a quick read through recent news reports shows that last week’s James River disaster reflects a dangerous national (even continental) trend: Other trains carrying oil have derailed in recent months, including into Philadelphia’s Schuykill River in January and in western Pennsylvania in February.

Just one week before the Lynchburg derailment, railroad representatives testified before the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that current standards for carrying oil are inadequate. The industry itself adopted stronger tank standards in 2011, after realizing that the older models could puncture too easily. But with a recent surge in Bakken oil production, some companies still rely on older tanks to meet the growing demand for North Dakota crude. And railroads and safety officials acknowledge that even the post-2011 cars are inadequate. According to news reports, 14 of the 17 rail cars that released oil into the James River were newer models.

Two other fiery train accidents – including a December derailment in North Dakota and a deadly disaster that killed 47 people last July in the town of Lac Megantic in Quebec – prompted the NTSB to call for greater precautions in conjunction with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. In doing so, it noted that crude oil transport by rail has increased 400 percent since 2005 but safety measures haven’t kept pace. The Department of Transportation reportedly submitted proposed new rail car standards to the White House for review soon after the James River accident.
NTSB and others worry about crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale deposit for two reasons: One, it’s more flammable than many other kinds of oil and, two, the hydraulic fracking boom in North Dakota has rapidly increased the amount of Bakken oil traveling in rail cars across the country to coastal ports – from 10,000 carloads in 2009 to 400,000 in 2013 according to National Public Radio. The train passing through Lynchburg was on its way to an oil transfer terminal in Yorktown, Virginia that has become a regional hub for shipping North Dakota oil to East Coast refineries. In fact, in a March letter to Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr. of the U.S. Coast Guard, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation expressed concern about the estimated 800 trains, each expected to carry 60,000 to 65,000 gallons of oil, traveling into Yorktown annually in coming years. It urged the Coast Guard to evaluate the risk of oil spills and its readiness to deal with them.

As reporter Curtis Tate of McClatchy news service notes, rivers are particularly vulnerable to rail accidents because so many major lines were built along gentle river grades to ease transport. Rail lines along the James River, New York’s Hudson River and the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River serve as major routes for shipping interior crude to coastal facilities and opposition along these routes is now growing.

Safety and drinking water are major concerns, of course, but there’s also river life itself and the health of ecosystems downstream. The spring rush of high water in the James River might have flushed most of the 30,000 gallons of spilled oil downriver, but pollution like that doesn’t just disappear. It lingers on the banks, smothers vegetation and enters the food web. As Pat Calvert of the James River Association told Tate, his organization measured an oil slick 17 miles long on the river after the accident. They’ll keep monitoring the river in coming weeks and months to track environmental impacts – particularly on vulnerable shad and herring – long after the flames have died, the tracks repaired, and hundreds of other trains start speeding along the James once again.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Common Dreams: Green Groups Banned From Hearings on Alberta Tar Sands

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/07-3

Published on Wednesday, May 7, 2014
‘Instead of addressing concerns, they are excluding concerned groups that are science-based and principled’
– Sarah Lazare, staff writer

tar_sands_cropped
Aerial view of Syncrude Aurora tar sands mine in the Boreal Forest north of Fort McMurray in Alberta (Photo: Greenpeace / Jiri Rezac)The Canadian province that is ground zero for tar sands oil extraction has prohibited a coalition of environmental organizations from participating in regulatory hearings on a controversial new oil industry development, claiming that the green groups are not directly impacted by the project.

The decision infuriated environmental campaigners who say Alberta’s regulatory system is rigged to favor an oil industry that is wreaking havoc on the environment.

“Instead of addressing concerns about unchecked tar sands development, they are excluding concerned groups that are science-based and principled,” said Carolyn Campbell, conservation specialist for the Alberta Wilderness Association, in an interview with Common Dreams.

Oilsands Environmental Coalition—comprised of several green groups—is seeking a voice in a proposed new Alberta development by Southern Pacific Resource Corporation.

The project at issue is an in situ development, which “is where bitumen is too deep to strip mine and you drill and steam it out,” according to Campbell.

In a March 27 letter, Environment Alberta official Kevin Wilkinson denied the coalition standing to participate in provincial regulatory hearings regarding the project on the grounds that the coalition is not directly impacted, according to Bob Weber writing for The Canadian Press.

The coalition says such claims are false, especially given that their members have a recreation lease in the area of the proposed project.

This is not the first time that the coalition has been banned from such hearings: a similar prohibition in 2012 excluded the coalition from stating concerns about a development on the MacKay River in northern Alberta, The Canadian Press reports. However, that prohibition was later overturned by a judge.

Furthermore, indigenous communities have been excluded from federal government panels reviewing tar sands developments that directly impact their environment and public health.

“There are so many exploration leases that are sold, without any public scrutiny,” said Campbell. “The regulatory system is very tipped towards approving application after application to then develop these leases.”

“We’re surprised by this decision to deny standing to the Oilsands Environmental Coalition again, especially since it was ruled that Alberta had wrongly excluded us before,” Simon Dyer, Regional Director of Alberta and the North for the Pembina Institute, told Common Dreams. “We will be challenging the decision and are confident we will be able to present our evidence at a hearing.”