[R-G] Alberta's heavy oil burden

[Anthony Fenton]

Alberta's heavy oil burden  	 	

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E14E80D7-D3E0-492D-BD0C-07B27668C117.htm

Alberta's oil reserves are seen as a long-term supply option for the  
United States

Al Jazeera's People & Power programme recently visited the Candian  
province of Alberta where the region's vast oil reserves are provoking  
both prosperity and opposition.

Much of the terrain is blanketed in trees but underneath the forests  
of the remote north of the Canadian province of Alberta are an  
estimated 174 billion barrels of heavy crude oil.

While much of the world's attention has been focused on Iraq and what  
is going to happen to the country’s vast reserves of oil, the oil  
industry has been investing massively in the sparsely-populated region  
around the small city of Fort McMurray.

Indeed it is believed there could be as much as two trillion barrel's  
worth of oil in the tar sands here with 1.5 million barrels currently  
produced a day, a figure that is expected to double in just a few years.

Like many parts of the world Alberta is running short of light crude  
oil and the global is turning it attention to so-called heavy oil that  
is trapped in thick gooey tar sands.

The reserves around Fort McMurray represent the largest pool of heavy  
oil in the world.

In depth


Find out more about the latest programme

Watch Alberta's Oil Fields

"It moved from being just an interesting experiment in northern Canada  
to really this is the future source of oil supply," Greg Stringham,  
from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says.

"China, Korea, Taiwan have come over and are interested but also  
European countries, the French through Total, the Italians, looking  
over here, the Germans, the Brits have been here with their companies  
as well."

However although the economic benefits are evident for all concerned,  
the development of the reserves has prompted environmental concerns  
from local groups.

Power drain

Extracting fuel from the oil sands requires massive clear-cutting of  
forests, strip-mining the land, digging up two tonnes of soil for  
every barrel of oil produced and then steaming the gooey tar to  
separate the oil – a process that requires huge amounts of water and  
power.

The process results in lakes and rivers being polluted and thousands  
of acres of trees being cut down to make way for pits more than 60  
metres deep.

George Poitras comes from the Native Indian community of Fort  
Chipewyan, a town of 1,200 people downriver from the oil sands  
projects and he is growing alarmed at the decimation of traditional  
hunting grounds used by his Mikisew Cree band.

"You see a lot of the land dug up, a lot of the boreal forest struck  
down and it's upsetting, it fills me with rage," he says.

Poitras says the sands development is
threatening native indian livelihoods
"We feel that the animal's health is already affected, not to mention  
the fish in the water, the moose and all the other animals. As  
indigenous people, all we are trying to protect is land and the water  
that is very sacred to us."

The Mikisew Cree see oil sands exploitation as a direct threat to  
their way of life but many in Alberta prefer to ignore the negative  
impacts of extracting oil from sand - particularly in Fort McMurray, a  
booming town of 70,000 people.

Alberta is currently the biggest foreign supplier of oil to the United  
States and soaring oil prices and growing energy needs have  
precipitated an economic boom in the region.

Oil jobs are plentiful and almost everyone in the town owns a big  
house and drives a big pickup truck.

Big salaries

Salaries are the magnet drawing people to Fort McMurray and one woman  
tells Al Jazeera that mechanics are known to earn upwards of $70 or  
$80 an hour and the salary to drive a forklift is as much as $100,000.

Consequently she says people "think more of the money aspect of it,  
they don't necessarily think of the environmental damage."

However that environmental damage can already be seen from the moon  
according to Diana Gibson from the Parkland Institute environmental  
advocacy group.

"What we are going to be having is incredible destruction of very,  
very valuable ecosystems, and permanent pollution," she says.

Fort McMurray is booming
thanks to oil industry jobs
To separate the oil from the sand, great quantities of water are  
needed – much of which is polluted and lies in vast tailing ponds the  
size of lakes that combine cover  55 square kilometres.

"There are metals and contaminants in that water that aren't being  
removed and there is no requirement to clean that water up," Gibson says

The process also requires about one barrel of natural gas for every  
two barrels of oil retrieved - a procedure that undermines any chance  
Canada has fulfilling its agreement to reduce global-warming emissions  
under the Kyoto Treaty

Pressure is mounting on the Alberta government to ensure the  
environment is protected.

"Our legislation, if you look at it Canada-wide, US-wide or worldwide,  
is some of the most progressive. We have public input, we have appeal  
processes we have environmental impact assessments," Jay Nagendran, a  
spokesman for the province's environment ministry, says

However, opponents of the oil sands say they do not have a lot of  
faith in the provincial government citing the fact that Alberta has  
been ruled by a conservative party for nearly four decades and the  
government derives nearly 40 per cent its revenues from the oil sector.

Close ties

"Look at the facts of the ministry of environment and the tar sands  
over the last 40 years the tailings ponds have not been rehabilitated  
one drop," says David Eggen from the chief environmental watchdog for  
the New Democratic Party, one of Alberta’s opposition parties.

"In terms of rehabilitating areas that have been strip-mined already,  
they just simply put it back, back fill it and turn it into a field,  
nothing like resembling boreal forest that preceded the operations."

Eggen says this is not surprising given the strong ties between the  
government and the oil companies.

The Native Indian communities say those ties have prevented the  
Alberta government from responding to fears that exploitation of the  
oil sands is affecting the health of their members.

"Many of our people are dying prematurely, they are getting cancers  
that the doctor who working in our community suggests you find in very  
rare circumstances," George Poitras says.

Protests against oil developments have
been growing in Alberta
The government and oil companies deny any links between the sands  
development and high cancer rates.

But Poitras says the government has not done the independent  
scientific investigations needed to determine definitively there are  
no links between the projects and adverse health and the Mikisew Cree  
are now considering a lawsuit.

Other protests are also beginning to arise including one last June in  
the farming community of Rimbey to protest greenhouse gases that will  
be emitted to power oil sands refineries.

Long-term survival

During the same month the protest group the Yes Men disrupted an oil  
industry conference in Calgary to raise awareness of the oil sands  
project.

Opponents of the project face a difficult fight. They are challenging  
some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful multinational  
corporations – which control over half the oil sands assets.

Moreover, free trade agreements with the US have all but transformed  
the oil sands into an American strategic reserve.

"The US has set a goal of reducing reliance on Mideast oil by 75 per  
cent by 2025. And Alberta's tar sands feature centrally in helping  
achieve that goal of reducing their reliance on Mideast oil," Diana  
Gibson says.

Industry leaders and the Conservative government say that protecting  
the environment is in everyones' self interest given the future  
importance of Alberta's oil but environmentalists and native indians  
say if that’s what the Alberta government and oil companies want, they  
are taking the wrong path.

"What we are doing today is really trying to protect the survival of  
our people long term something that you would only think would happen  
in developing countries being overrun by multinational corporations  
and corrupt governments," George Poitras.

"But that's exactly what we are dealing with here in one of the G8 and  
most developed countries of the world."