Geology News
Canada Current Events

Why Natural Gas Cars are Selling Slowly

What is Sunstone?

Natural Gas Could Kill Fuel Diversity

Large Hurricane on Saturn

Who Becomes Dominant After a Mass Extinction?

Diamond Dust over Saskatoon

The Bone Worm

The Canadian government is spending millions of dollars to rally support for the Keystone XL pipeline from US lawmakers.

A natural gas pipeline between the Utica Shale in Ohio and natural gas consumers in Ontario, Canada has been proposed by a group of transmission companies.

The government of Alberta is looking into the possibility of shipping tar sand crude to foreign markets on tankers through the increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean.

The Earth Science Picture of the Day for April 29th was “diamond dust” glowing from reflected natural light and city lights outside of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

The amount of natural gas being imported from eastern Canada into the United States has dropped to about 1/2 of the average of the previous five years.

“A 2011 record-breaking algae bloom in Lake Erie was triggered by long-term agricultural practices coupled with extreme precipitation, followed by weak lake circulation and warm temperatures, scientists have discovered.” Quoted from the National Science Foundation press release.

The Canadian Space Agency has launched their Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite that will look for near-Earth asteroids in a region of space where Earth-based telescopes are unable to monitor.

Royal Dutch Shell received a license to export LNG from a plant in British Columbia and in the United States Pangea LNG received permission to export LNG from a planned location in Texas.

Japan Petroleum Exploration Company plans to produce 20,000 barrels per day of bitumen from their Hangingstone oil sands project in Alberta Province, Canada. The project will use the steam-assisted gravity drainage method and will be increased to 30,000 barrels per day based upon performance.

Water levels on the Great Lakes were at December record lows last month, causing problems at some ports and requiring some cargo ships to lighten their loads.

Are major acquisitions of North American oil and gas assets by a Chinese state-owned company a threat to the energy security of the United States and Canada? Some members of Congress and the energy industry do not like the potential transaction.

Valero Energy is going to ship crude oil produced from the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas to a refinery in Canada. Why? They will save $2/barrel.

Charles Fipke and Stewart Blusson discovered the diamond deposit that was developed into Canada’s famous Ekati Mine. Now BHP Billiton wants to sell and the geologists have first refusal rights.

Coal exports from the United States to Canada have fallen sharply since 2008. The decline is a response to Canada moving their electric generating capacity to other fuels and methods.

Suffering diamond prices has prompted BHP Billiton to sell their stake in the Ekati Mine and their diamond marketing business.

The Alberta Geological Survey has published: What is Shale Gas? An Introduction to Shale-Gas Geology in Alberta. This is a stratigraphic and geographic summary with lots of references.

An article on the ESRI website looks back to the establishment of the Canadian Land Inventory, an event that might be considered the start of the GIS concept and the first published use of “geographic information system” that appeared in 1968.

An article in the Alaska Dispatch reports on the first crew to sail from Greenland to Alaska through the Northwest Passage in a 31-foot sailboat with an unreinforced fiberglass hull.

The Alberta Geological Survey released estimates of unconventional oil and gas resources held in the Duvernay, Muskwa, Montney, Banff/Exshaw, Wilrich, Nordegg, and Rierdon shale and siltstone formations. Total P50 estimates of resources in place for Alberta, were 3,424 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 58.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, and 423.6 billion barrels of oil.

Google Map: Hurricane Sandy

Canadian Earthquake Sends Tsunami Towards Hawaii

Hurricane Sandy Impact Photos

Huge Storm on Saturn

California Volcano Observatory

The Salt Marsh Mystery

Melting Glaciers Threaten Bolivia’s Water Supply

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake beneath the Queen Charlotte Islands region, off the west coast of British Columbia, Canada triggered a tsunami heading across the Pacific Ocean. Evacuation warnings were issued for coastal areas of Hawaii and for shoreline communities in British Columbia.

Canada evacuations from The Globe and Mail

USGS earthquake summary.

The Landslide Blog has an update on the Johnsons Landing landslide that killed four people in July in British Columbia, Canada.

“Canada is a net exporter of most energy commodities and is an especially significant producer of conventional and unconventional oil, natural gas, and hydroelectricity. It stands out as the largest foreign supplier of energy to the United States [...]. Just as the United States depends on Canada for much of its energy needs, so is Canada profoundly dependent on the United States as an export market. Quoted from the Energy Information Administration country report.

USGS image

Jessica Ball has four very interesting posts with lots of great photos featuring the metamorphic rocks in the Bancroft area (and lots of other topics). 1   2   3   4

One of the primary criticisms of extracting the oil from oil sands is the amount of carbon dioxide that is produced. Royal Dutch Shell is planning to spend $1.35 billion on a project that captures the carbon dioxide and store it in subsurface rock units.

TransCanada submitted environmental impact documents related to a new route for the Keystone XL pipeline that relocate it it away from sensitive areas in Nebraska.

“While paleontologists have already discovered many Triceratops specimens from the United States, Canadian paleontologists made headlines last week when they found what appears to be an especially big representative of this famous dinosaur in Alberta.” Quoted from the Smithsonian Blog.

Warm summer temperatures have been melting the ice pack on the Northwest Passage (a sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Canadian Archipelago).

NASA’s Earth Observatory has a satellite image pair showing the Passage on July 17 with heavy ice cover and the Passage on August 3 with significantly reduced ice cover.

Related: What is the Northwest Passage?

“The subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath North America changes markedly along the length of the subduction zone, notably in the angle of subduction, distribution of earthquakes, volcanism, geologic and seismic structure of the upper plate, and regional horizontal stress.” Quoted from the USGS article.