Scenes From the Tar Wars
NEWS: As Canada scrambles to dig up some of the world's dirtiest oil, a bush doctor tracks mysterious diseases, poisoned rivers, and shattered lives.
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At a small airport in the northern Alberta town of Fort McMurray, a rickety, single-engine Cessna hurtles off the ground with a roar. Dr. John O'Connor ignores the shuddering fuselage, the tail wiggle, the steep climb above the spruce trees at the end of the runway. For O'Connor, a bush doctor who has tended to some of Canada's most remote Native American communities for more than a decade, this October morning is the start of a routine commute. In his fleece vest and green fedora, the small, middle-aged Irishman looks simultaneously rugged and elfin. A plastic tray of fruit salad vibrates beneath his seat, a gift for locals who are used to subsisting on moose, pickerel, and muskrat.
Outside, a carpet of boreal forest unfurls at the southern edge of town. Our plane flies past suburban subdivisions, freshly paved culs-de-sac, and what O'Connor says is the largest trailer park in North America. As we head north, tracking the steep banks of the Athabasca River, the forest returns. And then the trees quickly vanish, along with everything else, into miles and miles of rolling hills of sand. "The sand blows around like you wouldn't believe," O'Connor shouts over the propeller buzz. "Drive from Fort McMurray, and you will encounter what looks like a sandstorm."
Below, some 2 billion tons of soil and rock—"overburden," as the oil industry politely calls it—have been stripped away to reveal deposits of hydrocarbon-laced sandstone known as tar sands. Trucks that can carry up to 400 tons lumber across the subarctic expanse, hauling the oily muck out of terraced pits to "crushers" located in massive processing facilities.
The tar sands began forming 350 million years ago, when a prehistoric ocean deposited a layer of organic materials that was gradually cooked into a huge underground pool of light sweet crude beneath what became Alberta. Erosion made way for microorganisms that invaded the oil, forming a thick tar sandwiched between the forest above and the groundwater and limestone beneath. Along the banks of the Athabasca River, the black goop sometimes seeps through the sand as if Jed Clampett just made another lucky strike.
Underlying an area the size of Florida, Canada's tar sands (also known as oil sands) contain as much as 173 billion barrels of recoverable oil—more than the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Russia put together. Only Saudi Arabia possesses larger oil reserves. But removing oil from the sands, which involves injecting them with steam or digging them up and pumping in vast quantities of water to heat them, has always been astronomically expensive—until now. As American politicians talk about weaning us from Middle Eastern crude and the price of oil has skyrocketed, the tar sands have become a viable source of foreign fossil fuel. Canada is now the United States' top oil supplier, selling us more than the Saudis. Not since Texas wildcatters hit black gold 80 years ago has North America seen such a frantic rush for oil. Over the next five years, investment in the Alberta tar sands is expected to exceed $75 billion; oil production is set to increase by 160 percent by 2015. Alberta's 59 tar sands sites now form the single largest industrial zone in the world. If it is fully developed, the result could be up to 54,000 square miles of man-made wasteland.
Digging up the tar sands is a dirty, wasteful business. Yet in their desperate scramble to cash in, the provincial government and the oil companies have downplayed the environmental risks. The boom is a major reason Canada will likely miss its carbon targets under the Kyoto Protocol. Converting tar sand into gasoline emits up to three times the greenhouse gases as drilling and refining conventional oil.
The extraction process consumes roughly twice the energy of producing conventional oil (in total, enough energy to heat a tenth of Canadian homes). And there are growing questions about the mines, which have transformed once-sleepy northern Alberta into an industrial frontier, and their health effects on wildlife and people. O'Connor is under investigation for expressing his concerns, accused by the national health system of raising "undue alarm."
As we cross the Athabasca River, I spot the belly of our plane reflected in a shimmering reservoir of oil waste—two gallons for each gallon of oil produced. Scarecrows dressed in old mining uniforms bob on top of the gunk to discourage birds from landing and drowning in it. The oil industry consumes some 15 percent of the Athabasca River's winter flow—enough to supply a city of 2 million. Tailings ponds such as this one, owned by Suncor Energy, are required by Albertan law to keep waste out of groundwater. Yet the law allows some 1.5 million gallons of slurry containing arsenic and mercury to leach daily from the reservoir into an underground aquifer; some of it drains into the river.
Following the river's northward course, our plane threads the white steam coming from the smokestacks of Suncor's "cracker," the smell of petroleum and sulfur permeating the cabin. Below, the cracker is heating bitumen—the "tar" in tar sands—to 900 degrees Fahrenheit and turning it into synthetic crude oil before it will be piped to special refineries in the United States to be made into gasoline.
A patchwork of more pits unfurls for miles ahead. We fly over Syncrude, partly owned by an ExxonMobil subsidiary, then Albian Sands, a division of Shell. The giant mines give way to fresh clearings where Chevron Canadian Natural Resources Limited and Petro-Canada are just starting to dig. ConocoPhillips and the Exxon subsidiary Imperial Oil have staked additional claims in the area.
Finally, the last tentacles of mining roads give way to pristine forest. The river debouches into Lake Athabasca, and we descend toward Fort Chipewyan, a tiny trading outpost that clings to the rocky shore. In summer, once the ice road melts into an impassable bog, the only way to reach the hamlet is by plane or boat.
O'Connor has been flying in for seven years, serving as the town's only doctor. It's the kind of work that kept him in Canada after he came over from Ireland in 1984 for a three-month stint. "You see the same people over and over, and the whole community," he says. "You feel like part of a family."
The outside world largely ignores Fort Chip, O'Connor says. But isolation has not protected the town's 1,200 residents—Mikisew Cree, Athabasca Chipewyan, and the descendants of French trappers—from the effects of the oil frenzy 70 miles upstream. In fact, O'Connor suspects that the tar sands may be slowly killing them.
Photo: Edward Burtynsky
As if Canadians *don't* know that the 'Sands' is a nightmare? Do you think we don't know what happened to IRAQ isn't a cautionary tale of what happens when a resource becomes spotlighted by 'what is best for American Interests'?
wake up. The entire nation sat upright & began gophering when Ann Coulter announced, "Canada is "lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent";
Carlson: "Without the U.S., Canada is essentially Honduras"...
COULTER: "There is also something called, when you're allowed to exist on the same continent of the United States of America, protecting you with a nuclear shield around you, you're polite & you support us when we've been attacked on our own soil. They [Canada] violated that protocol."...
"They better hope the United States doesn't roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent."
"If we were not the United States of America, Canada -- I mean, we're their trading partner. We keep their economy afloat."
- http://mediamatters.org/items/200412010011
Get the picture?
We're not scrabbling oil because we CHOOSE to sell oil & destroy the ecology (oh, you mean AMERICANS want the Athabasca River water, 'enough to supply a city of 2 million"!, p.66, oh I'm sorry... YOU want it, so *we're* squandering it... right?)
We're selling oil because: its one of the few things **we're permitted** to do.
American industry has *crushed* Canadian industry & labour, via American funding & government policies. Our unions are gutted because American unions act not out of international worker Solidarity, but as if they are in competition with Brotherhood (notice: how many American unions are protesting for the abuses of Iraqi oil workers? not as many as a LIBERAL would expect. ILWU Canada received brotherhood solidarity request from *abused* Iraqi union organizers ("play by our American rules & we'll give you *our* democracy! no, ignore our PSA demands!" http://www.itfglobal.org/solidarity/solidarity-1148.cfm )
Do you think Canadians are blind? What you think we don't **listen** to David Suzuki? we'd LOVE to implement Kyoto Protocols. Have you asked why international corporate lobbyists (not a traditional Canadian institution, BTW) inundate Ottawa? Why did I spend a wedding reception last Summer in Bermuda listening to a woman shriek at me that I was a 'terrorist' because I mentioned David Suzuki, as well looked at the beach? corporate PROPAGANDA.
We're not blind, we're desperate. This isn't about a pack of ignorant savages in the Wilderness, or a a lone doctor. The entire nation knows what is going on... but nobody is in a position to help make it stop. The millions being dumped from abroad into developing the Sands does an effective job of creating an illusion of stability in the economic centres & eases social burdens on traditionally disenfranchised areas of economic disparity.
1. American institutions are dumping **millions** of dollars into Canada's 'ReichWing' agencies to promote
- 'pro-Americanism',
- 'pro-Life',
- 'pro-gun' worship,
- pro-privatized healthcare...
...if its ugly & American, its being funded as a 'personal prosperity & freedom' program in our nation.
2. oil companies are engaged in a massive orgy of their own... & hiring everyone they can get their hands on & throwing money around to 'ecological impact consultants' who tell economic centres & First Nations groups that the impact isn't as massive. While vacationing in Cuba this Feb, I was stunned to meet a young Canadian woman who wrote reports for US oil companies to downplay First Nations concerns. She was a graduate of an *environmental* program.
3. NAFTA pillaged the Canadian economy. It wasn't enough that we were sold out by our own gov't. Nah, American agencies also negotiated in bad faith, forcing Canadian industries to return again & again to renegotiate that which had already been agreed upon. Over & over, in & out of negotiating rooms... as our industries died.
Need an example? This should cover it for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Uj-nw3XUk
3. Ecological decline... ever wonder why the waterways of Canada's East Coast are acidified? gee... out of sight, out of mind... we get it... trust me. we get it.
4. KBR is currently going to the Supreme Court of Canada to **CHANGE LABOUR & PRIVACY LAWS** in Canada. Seems if you're raped in Iraq, you're a menace. If you have a private life in Canada? you're a menace to your co-workers during work hours.
SO:
this article is truthful but shallow.
... most offensively, written as if those poor ignorant & greedy Canadians are completely oblivious to the hazards of our ecology & social platforms. Surprise. we're not. We're freaking desperate because our economy has been -& continues to be!- pillaged by corruption.
You think *Americans* suffered under NAFTA? you've gotta be kidding.
I love how Americans write articles about leaving their nation as if they're suddenly wandering amongst the Great UnWashed or uneducated.
WE KNOW its bad... its not like American institutions leave us many alternatives...
..& we've got 'we love the "NAFTA on Steroids"-cum-"Security & Prosperity Partnership" *Harper*. (nuff said on *that*)
http://www.canadians.org/integratethis/
Meanwhile... we *know* you're panting over the Border demanding we cough up water we can't afford to be polluting. We know this.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/01/maude_barlow.html
So, basically the story reads to a Canadian like this:
a. Canadians soooo dumb.
b. Canadians soooo cruel.
c. Canadians soooo polluting the water that should be rightfully commodified to American corporate interests.
d. Canadians have substandard social mores
e. why can't those Canadians be more like AMERICANS?
But... wouldn't it be nice if Americans published articles about Canada that didn't act as if the American standards were the ONLY global standards? What is 'normal' for Americans, isn't 'the norm' for the Rest of the World.
People talk about the 'horrors' of the Sands. Damn right. They're horrible, much like what happened in Russia.
But the *article* was downright laughable, if it hadn't betrayed that quintessential American hubris, "if you're not us, you're peasants".
I'm disappointed with the Mother Jones editorial staff. really. I am.
~~~
Spread Love...
BlueBerry Pick'n
ThisCanadian com
~~~
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
~~~
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
"Do no harm"
http://thiscanadian.typepad.com/thi s_canadian/2008/05/crude-jolt-for.html
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"The SPP keeps U.S. tanks full"
May 7, 2008, Brent Patterson, an op-ed by the Council of Canadian
http://www.canadians.org/integratethis/energy/2008/May-7.html
"The following op-ed by Brent Patterson, director of campaigns and organizing with the Council of Canadians, appeared in today’s Windsor Star:
In 2006, the Security and Prosperity Partnership called for a fivefold expansion of tarsands oil production.
While right-wing pundits are claiming the SPP is dead, the new pipeline network announced by TransCanada Corps last month to connect Alberta oil to southern U.S. markets shows that plans for North American energy integration are going full steam ahead.
But the federal Conservatives and the Alberta government are worried that the rising call to reconsider the existing trade model to ensure that the environment and workers' rights trump corporate interests will affect the U.S. appetite for Alberta oil.
Ron Stevens, Alberta's deputy minister and minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations, is heading for Washington this week to promote oil from the province's tar sands as "environmentally sustainable."
The Alberta government is investing millions of taxpayer money in a U.S. ad campaign bearing the same message.
At the news conference that wrapped up the recent North American Leaders' Summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated, "Canada is the biggest and most stable supplier of energy to the United States in the world. That energy security is more important now than it was 20 years ago when NAFTA was negotiated, and will be even more important in the future."
This was a clear warning from Mr. Harper to hopeful Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as the American people, that they should stop any consideration of the idea that NAFTA be renegotiated.
Mr. Harper's strategy here seems to be informed by comments made by US Ambassador David Wilkins in November 2006. At that time, Mr. Wilkins said, "Secretary Bodman told the Alberta oil executives that if they could produce five million barrels per day they would have the United States' attention. I believe that the investors and producers in the oil sands and the government of Alberta and Canada have every intention of meeting that goal in the future. So stay tuned."
Canada is already the biggest supplier of crude oil to the United States. In 2007, Canada shipped an astonishing average of 1.848 million barrels of oil a day to the United States. But the United States wants even more, and Mr. Harper seems determined to provide it to them -- at whatever the cost to our own energy security and the environment -- and in spite of public opinion.
In terms of our own security of supply, Canada is increasingly importing oil for our own needs from countries that are not as "stable" or "secure" as Canada, as Mr. Harper might put it. In fact, Statistics Canada reported in February that while Canada remains a net oil exporter, our imports have increased to 851,000 barrels of oil per day. About half of this amount comes from Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Additionally, a November 2007 National Energy Board report found Canada will become a net importer of natural gas by around 2028 if production and price trends continue, with the shortfall being met by liquefied natural gas from overseas.
The same day that Mr. Harper made his comments in New Orleans -- which was also notably Earth Day -- Statistics Canada released a report saying Canada's greenhouse gas emissions from the production of exported energy jumped by 146 per cent since 1990. And in order to get this oil to the United States, we are now hearing that Kinder Morgan Canada is constructing a pipeline through Jasper National Park and Mount Robson National Park in order to ship some 40,000 barrels of oil a day from the tarsands to them.
And while Mr. Harper likes to describe Canada as an "energy superpower." Canadians are feeling the pinch. The latest national price survey shows the average price for gasoline in Canada is now $1.23 a litre. This is approaching an all-time high for Canadians to be paying at the pump.
So it should be no surprise that Canadians reject the course that Mr. Harper and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach want to take us on. Recent polling conducted by the Environics Research Group for the Council of Canadians demonstrates that 89 per cent of Canadians agree Canada should establish an energy policy that provides reliable supplies of oil, gas and electricity at stable prices and protects the environment, even if this means placing restrictions on exports and foreign ownership of Canadian supplies.
Canadians and Americans are telling their leaders that they want a debate on NAFTA and our energy future. Mr. Harper should take these concerns seriously instead of continuing to cling to NAFTA and a vision of Canada that is seemingly limited to being America's gas tank."
===
Brent Patterson is director of campaigns and organizing at the Council of Canadians"
http://www.canadians.org/integratethis
~~~
Spread Love...
BlueBerry Pick'n
ThisCanadian com
~~~
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
~~~
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
"Do no harm"
In the early 1980s there were only two mines active in Fort McMurray - the Syncrude & Suncor mines 25 miles north of the city - and the pop. was only about 30,000. Consequently my comments may appear somewhat dated.
Curious that the author goes all the way to Ft. Chip. - I'd be interested to learn what the people in Ft. McKay and/or Anzac think about the situation - if those communities still exist.
Both David Suzuki & the Sierra Club published rather detailed exposes about the environment impact of this development in the late '70s - much of what the author persents was predicted way back then.
I saw the devastation the author describes - two things that stand out (for me) more vividly are:
- the sulphur - great clouds of sulphur dioxide laden smoke from the refineries, mountains of bright yellow sulphur mineral - byproducts of the extraction process.
- 1000+ acres of pristine Boreal forest, immediately adjacent to the city (Ft. McMurray) destroyed - stripped off right down to the sterile "hardpan" (clay) - to make way for housing that, at that time, was unlikely to be required.
However three things I witnessed, that will never go away are ....
- the Aurora (borealis) .... in January/February, @ Mariana Lake(s), about 60 miles south of the Fort on the "Highway of Death" (formerly Bechtel 500) .... there are not sufficient superlatives in the English language to describe the experience
- the slow progress of a huge forest fire across the horizon - east of the City, across the Clearwater River, about 50 miles away - it took almost 2 weeks to pass
- wolves - wild packs, hunting in their natural habitat - chasing deer (their dinner) into the townsite for "the kill" - silently emerging from the tree line as I stood, late one winter night, answering the call of nature on the side of the highway (of Death)
These things gave me a small hint about how truly insignificant we (humans) are. A small hint of who actually "owns" the world we live on.
The bottom Line is MONEY ....
- if it wasn't for the money I (the people) would never have been there.
- if it wasn't for the money the mines wouldn't be there.
- if it wasn't for the money the $Cdn won't be where it is.
- if it wasn't for the money this problem would not likely exist.
Ho Hum ....
... as with (virtually) all other single industry/resource towns - when there's no more money to be made, the mines will close, the (non-native) people will leave, & the city will be (virtually) abandoned.
One question I have is - who will repair the damage??
2. As a refresher in world history, when Henry-the-Eight declared the Catholic Church banned from England and installed himself as the leader (pope) of the newly formed Anglican Church, a monastery of monks were evicted and expelled. As it turns out, this particular monastery had discovered how to smelt metals, about 200 years before it was officially recognized in our historical record books. They had devised a labyrinth of underground passages which allowed them to produce the necessary heat.
So, the point is, by 2008, we should have had multiple clean alternatives to oil, coal and these tar sands. I can only assume that our techno progress is constantly being stifled by an endless procession of King Henries. Human greed threatens to destroy humanity.
The only silver lining in this dark carbon cloud is that wind and solar are that much more economically viable. Let's hope that the next Administration will devote the funds to give both technologies the "pump-priming" they need to displace fossil fuel for home and business use in the very near term.
how hard would it be to over take some guys riding on horses with red suits on.
surely we can find a reason to invade canada. i mean they have universal health care that makes them socialists and that is communism in most americans minds and we have to stop communism from coming over here. ie vietnam.
bush and cheney work on that. right up your ally. yes the ally is slime but that did not stop you from envading iraq.
god i love being a super power all that oil is ours. pure black gold.
god bless america truly greatest county on earth.
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnN20327333.html
Rock on MoJo
Hasn't anyone told you that the US owns the world and your job is to shut up and do as you are told; please see Noam Chomsky.
I hadn't thought about the environmental implications of this.
W.
You may not realize it, but your a whole lot more like America than you think. When I go to Canada, I see the exact same greed in Canadians that I do in America. I do see perhaps a greater awareness of it being wrong, but that is all. The two nations are very similar (minus the frenchy factor). You can pretend your on some high pedestal of morality all you wish. While doing so, you might want to close your eyes as that Ferrari passes you with Canadian plates. They didn't get that car by being patron saints you know.
Thank you for pointing out the very salient point that Canada and the US are two parts of the same civilization--I like to tell my Canadian friends who start into a "Canada is better than America" rant that as an American (currently living in Canada) that there is essentially NO DIFFERENCE between our imaginary societies.
However, I understand Blueberry's anger. Canada's democratic processes are going feral before our eyes and this is illuminated by the environmental and human rights nightmare of the Albertan Tar Sands. I think, for the most part, Canadians in the know are as outraged by what's happening there as anything, but our deep integration with US corporate empire makes us powerless to stop it.
As a side note--MADONNA... you're right, Natives are getting shafted yet again. And I do think that there remains a very strong current of racism directed at Native Canadians that plays into this.
Good work and thank you.
"Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money."
May the Great Spirit Bless you all and never forget that our luxuries are readily available to us at a great expense to Mother Earth and Indigenous People-in Canada and the United States.
"Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money."
May the Great Spirit Bless you all and never forget that our luxuries are readily available to us at a great expense to Mother Earth and Indigenous People-in Canada and the United States.