(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #226 - Oil Sands: A disaster foretold (fr)

Oil production from the tar sands of Alberta in Canada seriously threatened ecosystems in 
North America. Resistance increases, led by indigenous peoples whose territories are 
threatened. ---- You can not stop progress to meet the energy-bulimia our consumerist 
societies. While conventional fossil fuel reserves (contained in easily accessible pockets 
geological) come to an end in a few decades, unconventional resources (mixed with rock, 
sand, etc.). Should allow us to continue to pollute while many generations. The oil sands 
in Canada is participating in this madness, fever international side for gas and shale 
oil, already criticized in our pages. ---- Delusions of grandeur ---- The oil sands are a 
mixture of viscous oil, sand, clay and water. Difficult to extract, however, their use 
becomes more profitable with rising oil prices.

Canada has in the eastern province of Alberta the first reserves in the world for this 
type of oil, raising the country's third largest reserves in the world all types of oil 
combined. Production in this country began in the late 1960s, has since evolved into the 
largest industrial project in the world, with already more than 100 billion dollars 
invested, and current production of 3 million barrels per day. Canada has become the 
largest supplier of oil to the United States, and expects an increase in production of 68% 
by 2025. This price announced an ecological disaster.

Located in the superficial geological layers, oil sands extraction require for their 
shaving boreal forest to open opencast mines. 5% of this fragile ecosystem, a quarter of 
the size of France, is now concerned. It is then necessary to separate the oil from the 
sand in factories monstrous, with a lot of gas, water and chemicals. Current production 
already requires water and gas equivalent respectively to the daily consumption of two 
million Canadian-ne-s, and heating daily 3 million households. The outcome of the process 
water is so polluted that birds alight on the retention basins die instantly. Scarecrows 
and water cannons have been installed to keep them away, but leaks are common, it is the 
water system in the region is threatened. We are already seeing new malformations in fish 
from lakes downstream of mining areas.

Air pollution is not to be outdone, the air in the region is worthy of the worst cities in 
China. Acid rain intensifies hundreds of miles away, and local family physicians are 
alarmed by the surge in the number of cancers, leukemia, and other deadly diseases. Faced 
with this situation the response of federal and provincial authorities is continuing ... 
and silence doctors. In the end, the production of a barrel of oil from tar sands emits 
three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil. At this rate, 
Canada has never understood that respect its international commitments on climate change, 
and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, unconditional ally of the oil industry, 
has withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011.

Resistance was organized

Faced with this deadly industry, environmental organizations have sounded the alarm long, 
unfortunately with little success. But now is the indigenous nations of British Columbia 
representing the spearhead of resistance through an unprecedented against the Northern 
Gateway Project. This proposed $ 7 billion is to build a pipeline of 1,200 kilometers 
between Alberta and Kitimat, BC, where oil would be exported to China in particular. The 
pipeline would cross blank spaces and hundreds of rivers, while the 220 tankers annually 
required for transport to Asia would sail in sea areas among the most dangerous in the 
North Atlantic. Accident risks are enormous, that in a region where tourism is a major 
activity, and contains unique species of bears and salmon in particular. And most 
importantly, the project threatens the very existence of indigenous peoples, for whom the 
report is a constituent territory of identity, and whose lifestyles depend on ecosystems 
(salmon, seafood, plants, wood).

To counteract this project, 130 Indian nations signed a declaration opposing its 
implementation in their territories. Intense mobilization (demonstrations, petitions, 
legal action), and in case of approval of the project by the government, many leaders 
announced that they would go to civil disobedience or resistance of any kind required. The 
memory of the armed uprising of the Mohawks opposing the extension of golf on one of their 
sacred sites near Montreal in 1990 suggests that the turn events might take.

Mobilization border

The population of British Columbia is opposed to this project (60 to 80% depending on the 
survey), and many and many elected officials have spoken out against the pipeline or other 
oil sands projects, which could prevent the development of production. Especially that the 
challenge grows as the United States, for the first time consumer of oil in Alberta. Tens 
of thousands of demonstrators and protesters gathered well-es in Washington on February 
17, asking Obama to abandon the Keystone XL project, which involves the construction of a 
pipeline of more than 2000 km between the Alberta and the Gulf of Mexico. Denouncing the 
use of the dirtiest oil in the world, this event, the most massive in the history of the 
environmental movement in the United States, followed many acts of civil disobedience, one 
to the White House a few days earlier, where 48 people were arrested.

The determination of these mobilizations border, facing the oil lobbies so powerful in 
North America and relay their government will be necessary to stop the damage already 
considerable oil sands.

Jocelyn (AL Montreuil)