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Boreal Forest, Lubicon Cree People Threatened by Chris Genovali One of the biggest oil development schemes in the history of North America is about to commence in northern Alberta. An array of oil company consortia and corporate investors are planning to spend $25 billion over the next 20 years on mining the Alberta oil sands. The project is so large that Canada's largest oil company, Imperial, has abandoned conventional oil development to focus solely on the oil sands. The shameless boosterism of the Alberta media, spurred on by a public relations onslaught by the oil industry has created a climate of near hysteria. If one is to believe 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 was given, major tax breaks and sweetheart royalties by the provincial and federal governments for oil sands development. Under a new royalty regime recently announced by the province, companies will pay a minuscule one percent on oil sands production. The Alberta oil sands occupy a vast area in the boreal forest zone about the size of New Brunswick. Industry claims 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. Not surprisingly, development of additional pipeline capacity to the U.S. is in the works. Alberta environmentalists have questioned the proposed "Express Pipeline," as the Alberta Energy Company plans to route it through native prairie grasslands, a highly threatened ecosystem supporting more than 100 endangered species. The Alberta Energy Company says the Express Pipeline is needed to provide an impetus for further oil sands development. After all, meeting projected export demand to the year 2000 will require the drilling of thousands more wells. 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: over 225,000 wells have been drilled; 1.5 million kilometers of seismic road access and 500,000 kilometers of pipeline right-of-way have been cut; 750,000 kilometers of all-weather road access have been built; none of it subjected to environmental assessment. Reserves at or near the surface are recovered through large-scale strip-mining. Huge mounds of oil sand are excavated and moved by trucks weighing 240 tons and standing three stories high. 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 sandsóliterally ripping the skin off the face of the earth. Syncrude has possibly created the largest surface mine in the world. The deeper oil sands reserves are recovered by drilling horizontal wells and injecting massive amounts of steam deep into the groundóusing 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. The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg compared to what's to come. Oil sands development produces four times more upstream greenhouse gas emissions than 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. Oil operations in Alberta and nearby parts of British Columbia constitute the second largest source of sulphur emissions in North America. A draft report by the province's environmental research center, disclosing the ongoing harm to domestic livestock from prolonged sulphur dioxide exposure, is being suppressed by the Alberta government because of oil industry pressure and fear of affecting beef exports. Oil sands development will also be disastrous for indigenous peoples in the boreal forest, overlapping upon much of the 10,000-square-kilometer unceded traditional territory of the Lubicon Cree. The Lubicon are already struggling to preserve their boreal forest homeland from industrial forestry, conventional oil and gas development and the underhanded political machinations of a racist provincial government known as the "Nigeria of the North." In the mad 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 afterthought. Chris Genovali is the North American Coordinator of Taiga Rescue Network. TRN is an international network working to preserve boreal forests worldwide. TRN North America is reachable c/o Pacific Environment & Resources Center, Bldg. 1055, Fort Cronkhite, Sausalito, CA 94965; e-mail: perccanada@igc.apc.org. |
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