Huge Canadian Oil Development
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OVERVIEW & SOURCE by EE
The Taiga Forest Network reports in econet's taiga.news conference (email
contact is taiga@nn.apc.org) on oil development slated for Alberta, Canada,
which will significantly impact large areas of ecologically significant
boreal forest. Fully 65% of intact boreal forest in Canada is under
threat. "The Alberta oil sands occupy a vast area in the boreal forest
zone about the size of New Brunswick. The oil sands contain approximately
one third of the world's oil resources; it is estimated that some 300
billion barrels of oil are ultimately recoverable, equal to or greater than
the reserves of Saudi Arabia." In Alberta, in addition to this huge oil
development, the "transnational forest destroyers, Mitsubishi and Daishow"
recently were given 15 percent of Alberta's land base to log.
Must all the world's forests fall before alternatives are found to oil and
virgin timbers? Whether the world's forests persist through the current
worldwide resource binge will have a major impact on future quality of
life. The Canadian government, despite a squeaky clean environmental
image, is party to the clearing of its own forest heritage, as well as
involvement in proposed industrial rainforest logging in Guyana, South
America. Shame on Canada.
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OIL SANDS MEGA-PROJECT THREATENS BOREAL FOREST IN ALBERTA
/From Taiga News no 17/
THE BIGGEST OIL DEVELOPMENT SCHEME in the history of North America is about
to commence in northern Alberta. An array of oil company consortiums and
corporate investors are planning to invest $25 billion over the next twenty
years into the mining of the Alberta oil sands.
The oil sands project is the latest industrial attack on the boreal forest,
which has been under siege by transnational corporate clearcutters such as
Mitsubishi, Daishowa, Weyerhauser, Louisiana Pacific, Repap and others.
Over 65 percent of Canada's boreal forest is under long term tenure to
timber companies for the purpose of logging. The boreal forest, with its
shallow soils, harsh climate and slow growing season, is especially
vulnerable to the ravages of massive clearcutting and industrial
development. As oil sands development accelerates, enormous areas of boreal
forest will be stripped bare, excavated and turned into moonscapes,
destroying carbon sinks, damaging biodiversity and substantially increasing
the emission of greenhouse gases.
Alberta environmentalists are calling on the federal government to include
assessments of oil and gas export projects in the Canadian Environmental
Assessment Act.
ANOTHER SWEETHEART DEAL
The boosterism of the Alberta media, spurred on by a public relations
onslaught by the oil industry, touting the myriad of benefits Albertan
society will reap from the oil sands has created a climate of near
hysteria. If one is to believe all the "Happy Days Are Here Again" hype
coming out of Wild Rose Country, the miraculous oil sands are going to
bring about everything from world peace to a cure for the common cold.
The oil industry demanded and were given major tax breaks and sweetheart
royalty regimes by the Alberta provincial government and the Canadian
federal government for oil sands development. Under a new royalty regime
recently announced by the province, companies will pay a one percent
royalty on all oil sands production in yet another larger-than-life Alberta
style natural resource give-away. Remember, this is the same province where
two of the most infamous transnational forest destroyers, Mitsubishi and
Daishowa, were basically handed over an area of boreal forest amounting to
15 percent of the entire land base of Alberta.
One dissenting voice of reason in the federal government has been Charles
Caccia, Member of Parliament (MP) from Toronto. Caccia has recommended in
the Report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable
Development that "the federal government refrain from injecting any
additional tax assistance into oil sands development." The report further
states that oil sands development is a highly polluting industry that is
already the beneficiary of significant tax largesse. Caccia accurately
summarizes the oil sands issue vis-a-vis government subsidies with the
comment that "...government assistance continues to be biased towards a
polluting energy industry at the expense of energy efficiency and renewable
natural resources." Caccia's call for environmental sanity has been drowned
out at the federal level by Minister of Natural Resources Anne McClellan.
THIRD OF THE WORLD RESOURCES
The Alberta oil sands occupy a vast area in the boreal forest zone about
the size of New Brunswick. The oil sands contain approximately one third of
the world's oil resources; it is estimated that some 300 billion barrels of
oil are ultimately recoverable, equal to or greater than the reserves of
Saudi Arabia. The oil industry claims that the oil sands reserves hold
enough recoverable oil to supply Canada for 200 years. Industry estimates
also claim that by the year 2020, the oil sands will be producing as much
as 1.2 million barrels a day, a significant amount of which will be
exported to the U.S. market.
The profligate consumption of natural resources by the U.S., Japan and
western Europe continues to drive the destruction of Canadian
wilderness. International trade agreements such as the FTA, NAFTA and
GATT will force Canada to feed the seemingly insatiable American,
Japanese and European appetites for pulp, timber, oil, natural gas,
etc. For example, Article 409 of the FTA states that with regard to
natural resources, if Canada for whatever reason declares a shortage,
it cannot impose restrictions on exports to the United States.
Not surprisingly, the development of additional pipeline capacity to the
U.S. market is in the works. Alberta environmentalists have raised
questions about the environmental impacts of the proposed "Express
Pipeline," as it is planned to be routed through native prairie grasslands,
a highly threatened ecosystem supporting more than 100 endangered species
in Alberta. The company behind the pipeline project, the Alberta Energy
Company, says the Express Pipeline is needed to provide an impetus for
further oil sands development.
SEVERE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
A report by conservation biologist Brian Horejsi of Western Wildlife
Environments Consulting details the staggering scope of habitat
fragmentation currently in Alberta from oil and gas development: in
total over 225,000 wells have been drilled to date; 1.5 million kilometers
of seismic road access have been cut; 750,000 kilometers of all-weather
road access built; and 500,000 kilometers of pipeline right-of-way cut,
none of it subjected to provincial or federal environmental impact
assessment. The existing threats to ecosystem integrity and the ecology of
wildlife populations from widespread oil and gas development will only be
exacerbated by the oil sands mega-projects.
The oil sands are located at various depths, from surface outcroppings to
several hundred meters below the ground. Reserves at or near the surface
are recovered using large scale strip mining techniques. Huge mounds of oil
sand are excavated and moved by gargantuan trucks to extractors, where the
material is heated until the sand separates from the oil. About 85 percent
of the oil sand is sand and the rest is oil. It takes two tons of sand to
produce one barrel of oil.
Since opening its operation in 1978 one company, Syncrude, has excavated
1.5 billion tons of so-called overburden, the 20 meters deep layer of
muskeg, gravel and shale that sit atop the actual oil sands. More soil has
been excavated by Syncrude than from the construction of the Great Pyramid
of Cheops, the Great Wall of China, the Suez Canal and the 10 biggest dams
in the world combined. Syncrude has possibly created the largest surface
mine in the world.
DRYING UP THE BOREAL
The deeper oil sands reserves are recovered by drilling horizontal wells
and injecting massive amounts of steam far into the ground. Using this
method of extraction, it takes nine barrels of water to produce one barrel
of oil. Alberta environmentalists report that a Shell Canada oil sands
plant has dried up one lake and has lowered the level of another lake so
low that it froze solid, killing all the fish. Shell is currently taking
enormous amounts of water from the Peace River for its oil sands
production. There is serious concern as to what the long term adverse
environmental impacts of the steam injection process (with its immense
water requirements) will be on boreal hydrology. "The drying up of the
boreal from oil sands development and processing, combined with global
warming and increased fire patterns, will transform the boreal forest into
a huge carbon bomb," says Gray Jones, Executive Director of the Western
Canada Wilderness Committee's Alberta Branch.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AFFECTED
Oil sands development will directly affect indigenous peoples in the boreal
forest, overlapping upon much of the 10,000 square kilometer unceded
traditional territory of the Lubicon Cree. The Lubicons are already
struggling to preserve their boreal forest homeland from industrial
forestry, conventional oil and gas development and the underhanded
political machinations of the provincial government. In the rush to
accelerate the mass exploitation of the oil sands, the potentially
devastating impacts on the Lubicon Cree people and their traditional lands
aren't even an after thought.
INCREASING GLOBAL WARMING
The aforementioned examples of Syncrude and Shell are just the tip of the
iceberg in terms of what is to come. Oil sands development produces four
times more upstream greenhouse gas emissions than does conventional oil
reserves. The oil sands are already the biggest single emitter in Alberta
of sulphur dioxide, a component of acid rain and greenhouse gases. Alberta
emits 500,000 tons of sulphur dioxide annually . Petroleum operations in
Alberta and nearby parts of British Columbia constitute the second largest
source of sulphur emissions in North America, next to the industrial
regions of Eastern Canada and the United States. A draft report by the
province's environmental research center disclosing the harm being caused
to domestic livestock from prolonged sulphur dioxide exposure is being
suppressed by the Alberta government because of oil industry pressure and a
fear that it could affect beef exports. The controversial report also
reveals that the oil industry practice of spreading drilling wastes on land
used to grow cattle feed can expose the animals to toxic heavy metals such
as cadmium and mercury. The report goes on to state that "humans who eat
beef may then be exposed to high concentrations of toxic substances."
SLASHING THE ENVIRONMENTAL BUDGET
So what has been the response of the far right Alberta provincial
government? Premier Ralph Klein's solution has been to slash the budget
for the provincial Environment Department. In the next three years the
Klein government will cut 500 jobs from the department and reduce the
department's budget by $164 million. The Environment Department's staff
has been cut 1,360 positions since 1992. In addition, Klein has announced
that the oil industry will essentially be handed over responsibility for
the monitoring of emission levels in water and the atmosphere. Sounding
like Big Brother in Orwell's 1984, Klein says that as a result of his
budget cuts and deregulation, Alberta will see more environmental
protection, not less. This is an integral part of the "Alberta Advantage,"
Klein's ongoing strategy of rolling out the red carpet to big business.
FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN
Aside from being important carbon sinks, it is believed that boreal forests
also store vast amounts of frozen methane in the permafrost zone, a
greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. When boreal
forests are clearcut, the micro climate is affected. Changes in micro
climate can affect regional climate. Loss of forest cover and higher
temperatures have the potential to thaw and cause retreat of the boreal's
frozen peat lands, releasing methane. The more methane released, the warmer
the climate becomes, and the more northward shift of the permafrost zone.
Even a warming of one degree celsius has the potential to eradicate 25
percent of the boreal forest. Climatologists forecast the boreal forest
will be reduced by 50 to 90 percent in the next century, being widely
eliminated west of James Bay. Given this scenario, one has to wonder if the
development of the oil sands will be the final nail in the coffin of
Alberta's great boreal forest.
CHRIS GENOVALI
PACIFIC ENVIRONMENT AND RESOURCES CENTER
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