In this guest blog post, Professor Anna Zalik of York University Canada explores how governments and multinationals criminalise protest and gloss over the environmental injustices of oil extraction.
Q: What does the Canadian Government’s fury at opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline have to do with the Nigerian ‘legaloil’ campaign?
A: Both positions are about justifying private profits and criminalizing protest. Continue reading
The global oil price wavers around $100 a barrel as traders are split over whether Brent Crude is about to plummet due to the Eurozone disaster getting worse, or about the spike due to a renewed Middle East crisis. It is snowing in Fort McKay, in Nothern Alberta, and the temperature of -6 feels like -11 with the strong north westerly wind. The long winter of the boreal forests has settled in. Production continues at Shell’s open cast Albion tar sands mine on the lands of the Athabascan Cree around Fort McKay, for with the world price at one hundred dollars, it’s a profitable exercise. But questions are being raised over Shell’s longterm prospects in the province.
Platform, in collaboration with Greenpeace UK and Oil Change International, have just published ‘Getting to Market – Emerging Investor Risks in the Tar Sands’, written by Lorne Stockman. The industry plans to increase production by 138% from todays level in the next fifteen years. But the report shows that this growth in the extraction from Alberta is being put at risk by the inability of producers to get the resources, dug or steamed from beneath the forests, out to the world markets. With the Canadian province entirely land locked, and the market for oil products in the US Mid-West becoming saturated, projects in Alberta will increasingly depend on being able to get tar sands derived crudes out to the oceans of the world. Expanding projects along the steep growth curve that producers have planned depends on being able to transport the bitumen from the tar sands to the refineries of US coast of the Gulf of Mexico or the refineries of East Asia via the tanker terminals on the Canadian West Coast. Continue reading
When the pro-tar sands lobby group pounced on Platform’s new research on Nigeria to justify Canada’s “blood oil”, we were disgusted. Here is my blog response in The Huffington Post Canada. (Note they changed the title from ‘tar sands’ to the more innocuous ‘oil sands’).
Canada’s Dirty and Dangerous Oil Sands
EthicalOil.org has a reputation for using just about anything to promote Canada’s tar sands. The local mayor, Aboriginals and environmentalists have all been thrust into EthicalOil.org’s narrative, some against their will. This Monday it was my turn to get ‘tarred’ as the website’s spokesperson Kathryn Marshall declared herself to be on “the very same page” as me. The assertion could not be further from the truth.
I work for Platform, a UK based charity that is opposed to the exploitation of tar sands in Canada. We focus our campaigning efforts on key UK companies that are heavily invested in the tar sands, including BP, Shell and the Royal Bank of Scotland. We work with global allies such as Indigenous Environmental Network and Rainforest Action Network. We also oppose the ongoing human rights abuses and environmental devastation caused by Shell and its partners in Nigeria and beyond.
Continue reading here.
Tar sands extraction in Canada is devastating Indigenous communities, wildlife and vast areas of boreal forests, as well as being many times more carbon-intensive to produce than ‘conventional’ oil.
“We are seeing a terrifyingly high rate of cancer in Fort Chipewyan where I live. We are convinced that these cancers are linked to the Tar Sands development on our doorstep. It is shortening our lives. That’s why we no longer call it ‘dirty oil’ but ‘bloody oil’. The blood of Fort Chipewyan people is on these companies’ hands.” – George Poitras, former chief of Mikisew Cree First Nation
The higher oil prices in recent years have meant that it’s become a more attractive prospect for oil companies to expand their operations in the costly process of obtaining and processing the thick bitumen into a usable form. It’s estimated that the industry is looking for a capital investment of $120-$220 billion over the next 20 years to build the new pipelines, mines, refineries and upgraders that are necessary to sustain the boom.
This report looks at the role that UK banks are playing in providing the necessary capital, and how RBS, which is 84% owned by the UK public, has been the bank the most heavily involved in underwriting loans to companies engaging in tar sands extraction.
Download the full report now. (2.2MB PDF)
Most of my news from this year’s Camp for Climate Action arrived by twitter:
“climatecamp: Balcony of Shell building occupied, big ‘Shell’ sign now reads ‘hell’…”
“climatecamp: Tarsands activists are now giving speeches at bp headqrtrs having stopped by at national portrait gallery in Trafalgar square”
“climatecamp: Bp is one of the biggest players in the extracion of oil from Alberta tarsands. It is utter madness to destroy this vast part of Canada”
By various (non-twitter) accounts, the four folks from Indigenous Environment Network from Alberta stole the show at the Camp, running workshops and performing hiphop on how tar sands are destroying their communities. On Tuesday a roving demo of over 300 protestors visited various tar sands locations in London, including BP, the National Portrait Gallery and Shell.
An affinity group had earlier scaled the side of the Shell building and occupied a balcony – removing the large metal “S”, leaving the sign reading “hell”. The missing “S” was revealed to loud cheers at an action round-up in the camp days later – here’s hoping somebody smuggles it to the Solidarity Camp at Rossport.
This summer’s camp focused on building skills within the climate justice movement while affinity groups and a roving random rabble targeted London companies to challenge the connections between free market economics and climate change.
The camp was located at Blackheath Common, where 60,000 peasants gathered during the 1381 Peasants Revolt before attacking political targets across the City and almost bringing down the king.
The folk from IEN came to London on a tour organised by New Internationalist.
During the Q&A session following the presentation of BP’s 2009 Statistical Review of World Energy, Tony Hayward was asked whether the volatility seen in the oil market in 2008 was a signal of the much-anticipated peak in global oil supply. His answer was probably not what the questioner was expecting to hear: ”BP is unlikely to sell more gasoline ever in the United States […] than it sold in the first half of 2008. The energy efficiency drive that is going to come through over the next few years will mean that demand in the mature markets of the OECD will continue to decline. I think the real question is what is the projection of future demand?”
PLATFORM’s report “Shifting Sands: How a changing economy could bury the tar sands industry” produced with Greenpeace and Oil Change International argues that different forces including climate change, concerns over security of supply and the undesirability of price volatility are aligning to create a peak in demand for oil. It argues that while much attention in recent years has focused on a predicted peak in oil supply, we have probably inadvertently hit a peak in oil demand that will force a fundamental restructuring of the oil industry.
While risk is nothing new to the oil industry, the kind of structural change being signalled today is unprecedented. Significantly, the implications are particularly salient not only for tar sands projects but also for other ’frontier’ oil projects championed by the IOCs. Ultra-deepwater and offshore arctic resources face a similar challenge as, like tar sands oil, they also represent the ‘marginal barrel’. […] The expense of bringing much of this oil to market means that the sustained oil price needed to do so is dangerously close to a ‘break point’ price beyond which oil demand is constrained via changes in consumer behaviour and reduced economic growth. [...] But surely as economic growth picks up so will demand, and supply constraints caused by depletion and underinvestment will ensure high oil prices in the future? Won’t people just have to pay the price for oil? It would appear that there are a number of shifts on the horizon that seriously challenge that thinking. […] This update highlights the increasingly recognised contention that high oil prices have a short shelf life. The recovery period following the current recession is likely to show that oil demand has been affected not only by recession-induced suppression but also by policy and consumer-driven destruction. […] We have also highlighted the growing reliance of the IOCs on marginal resources, which require high oil prices over sustained periods to be profitable. […] When an oil company talks about acquiring new resources in the Arctic, or its plans for developing tar sands projects with their complex infrastructure requirements and extended construction periods, it is with a view to a market environment far beyond 2020 that investors will need to judge viability.
Read the full report here. Shfting Sands is the second update to our Sept 2008 Rising Risks report. The first update was published in March 2009.