Tar Sands Newsroom

Texan Takes Fight Against Tar Sands Pipeline to Citigroup

Release Date: 
Thursday, April 21, 2011

NEW YORK, April 20—David Daniel is traveling 1,500 miles from the Piney Woods of East Texas to midtown Manhattan this week with a message for Citigroup, the nation’s third-largest bank: Don’t help a Canadian oil pipeline company endanger my community.

Royal Bank of Canada Steps Away from Tar Sands With Support for First Nation Rights

Release Date: 
Wednesday, December 22, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO—The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) today made public its new environmental and social standards, which will govern financing of clients in high-impact sectors including Canada’s tar sands. The announcement marks a significant about face on tar sands by one of the sectors biggest financiers. The policy is the first by a major international bank to document whether bank clients have received consent from Indigenous communities.

Protesters tell Canadian Consulate: "Stop poisoning us with toxic tar sands oil"

Release Date: 
Tuesday, September 14, 2010

CHICAGO- Concerned with what has been an incessant string of oil spills and leaks, and with the health of the drinking water supply for millions of people on the Great Lakes at risk, activists of Rainforest Action Network Chicago (RAN-C) rallied in front of the Canadian Consulate in Chicago with a strong message:  Stop poisoning us with toxic tar sands oil!
 

Banks Make a Shift Toward Greener Lending

Blasting off mountaintops to reach coal in Appalachia or churning out millions of tons of carbon dioxide to extract oil from sand in Alberta are among environmentalists’ biggest industrial irritants. But they are also legal and lucrative.

Banks Make a Shift Toward Greener Lending
New York Times
Tuesday, August 31, 2010

RBS under pressure as oil funding scrutinised

Hundreds of protesters across the country have demanded that the taxpayer-backed Royal Bank of Scotland stop using public money to extract tar sands.

Anti-poverty, human rights and environmental protesters hit out on the day of RBS's annual general meeting to highlight the negative impact of tar sands extraction on climate change and indigenous communities.

Simultaneous protests were organised by the World Development Movement and People and Planet in over 15 locations including London, Cardiff, Sheffield, Cambridge and Edinburgh.

RBS under pressure as oil funding scrutinised
Morning Star Online
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Aboriginal Groups Chastise Royal Bank Canada For Oil-Sands Role

TORONTO (Dow Jones)--Canada's First Nations peoples chastised Royal Bank of Canada (RY) for not doing enough to prevent "an environmental holocaust," at the bank's annual meeting in Toronto Wednesday.

Four aboriginal groups appealed to Canada's biggest bank to use its corporate heft and political influence to stop Enbridge Inc. (ENB) from building a 725-mile pipeline to carry oil from Alberta's tar sands through northern British Columbia to Kitimat, where it would be loaded on tankers for shipment to the U.S. west coast or Asia.

Aboriginal Groups Chastise Royal Bank Canada For Oil-Sands Role
Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, March 3, 2010

More than 150 People Call on RBC to End Tar Sands Financing at Shareholder Meeting

Release Date: 
Wednesday, March 3, 2010

TORONTO—More than 150 people gathered outside the RBC Annual General Shareholder Meeting today to protest the bank’s leading role in funding the contentious Alberta tar sands. People concerned with the impact of tar sands projects on First Nations, water quality and the climate came from every corner of Canada to ensure that the bank heard the message: ‘stop bankrolling the tar sands.’

Rainforest Action Network Releases Seventy-Foot Banner Over Niagara Falls to 'Welcome' Prime Minister Harper to the U.S.

Release Date: 
Tuesday, September 15, 2009

CONTACTS: Nell Greenberg, 510.847.9777; Eriel Deranger, 587.785.1558

Hi-res photos, video and interviews with climbers available

Banner: Canadian Tar Sands Oil Undermines North America's Clean Energy Future

Unlikely Appeal to RBC First Lady, Mrs. Janet Nixon, Highlights Bank’s Involvement in Tar Sands

Release Date: 
Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Toronto- A weeklong buzz around mysterious "please help us Mrs. Nixon" posters in downtown Toronto culminated today at the Royal Bank of Canada's (RBC) headquarters, where Rainforest Action Network (RAN) dropped a 15' x 30' banner appealing to Janet Nixon, the wife of CEO Gordon Nixon. Protestors scaled the 50' flagpole at the main entrance to the RBC headquarters on Bay and Wellington, replacing the flags with the 15' banner, which hung for 2.5 hours as employees, including Gordon Nixon, arrived for work at the bank. The banner and the posters asked for Mrs.

California’s Low Carbon Fuels Standard Could Impact Tar Sands Imports

Release Date: 
Tuesday, April 21, 2009

CALIFORNIA (April 22, 2009) –Today, the California Air Resources Board is in the final stages of considering the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), the biggest step yet in the state's campaign to slash global warming emissions. California regulators are poised to order sweeping changes to regulate the fuel sold within the state. The LCFS discourages the use of tar sands oil and encourages low-carbon transportation fuels as a way to fight global warming.

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