The latest news on the Climate Crime of the Century
UK Tar Sands Network
The UK Tar Sand Network was launched in November bringing together Ethical Consumer, the New Internationalist and campaign groups Platform and People & Planet. The Network organised a speaking tour featuring three aborigine Canadian activists, with events in London, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester and Wales. The Canadian visitors also participated in a parliamentary debate, hosted by Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes, who said “World leaders must work towards a treaty that will outlaw tar sands extraction, in the same way they came together to ban land mines, blood diamonds and cluster bombs.”7
Readers’ Response to our tar sands campaign
Thanks to all our readers who have contacted companies complicit in the tar sands. We’ve received a number of responses, primarily from banks keen to point out that they are signatories to the Equator Principles, which provide “financial industry benchmark for determining, assessing and managing social & environmental risk in project financing”.6
None of the responses explained how investing in the tar sands was in line with the Principles, given their catastrophic environmental and social impacts. Perhaps an answer is found in the fact that they are non-binding. Comments to Superdrug, the focus of our boycott campaign, have apparently been passed on to the company’s Executive Team.
BP in the firing line
This October, BP’s annual graduate recruitment fair was disrupted in Oxford by climate campaigners. BP’s cosy recruitment event was transformed into a major public grilling on the climate impact of the tar sands. Over canapes afterwards, head of BP UK Peter Mather stated that BP’s decision to dive into the Sunrise mine with Superdrug’s sister company Husky Energy, which we’ve been expecting in the next few months, will be taken “sometime in the next two years”. Furthermore, in response to a question about the impact of consultations with local communities, Mather made the bold statement that “if local indigenous communities tell us they don’t want Sunrise, then of course we won’t do it.”1 Watch this space.
The looming spectre of nuclear power in Alberta
The massive demand for energy from the tar sands operations has, until now, been met with natural gas. Using this finite resource is clearly unsustainable; a recent report from Greenpeace Canada states that, according to one projection, most of the natural gas in the Arctic could be consumed by the tar sands.2
The prospect of dwindling gas reserves is leading to the almost grotesquely inevitable: talk of nuclear power in Alberta. Canada could become the frst country in the world to use nuclear power to extract fossil fuels. The Canadian Parliament reported in 2007 that to replace natural gas consumption and meet forecast oil production by 2015 it would take 20 nuclear reactors, whilst the Canadian Energy Research Institute projects demand for 25 nuclear reactors by 2025.2
Proponents of nuclear power use in the tar sands argue that it would decrease the carbon cost of production. Opponents suggest it is insane.
The ‘Dangerous Myth’
In October the Co-operative Financial Services and WWF-UK released a report debunking the ‘dangerous myth’ that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology is the magic bullet that will resolve the climate change risk posed by the tar sands.4
CCS is the primary strategy that the Canadian government and oil companies have to deal with tar sands carbon emissions. But the report argues that even the best scenarios for the application of CCS technology would not see Canada meet its international climate commitments.
Greenpeace activists blockade tar sands mine
When Obama met Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper in Washington in September the tar sands were doubtless on the agenda. In Alberta, 25 activists sent them a message in the form of a 24 hour blockade at Shell’s Albion Sands
open-pit mine. Spokesperson Mike Hudema said “Greenpeace has come here today, to the frontiers of climate destruction to block this giant mining operation and tell Harper and Obama meeting tomorrow that climate leaders don’t buy tar sands”.3
Africa’s frst tar sands project looms
Italian oil giant ENI Spa is priming itself to construct Africa’s frst tar sands project in one of the poorest countries in the world, the Republic of Congo, where a history of confict and corruption has been centred on the oil sector.5
A $3bn agreement has been signed between the government and ENI which covers a tar sands project, palm oil
production and and a gas powered electricity plant. How this equates with the fact that CEO Paolo Scaroni urged action against climate change at the UN Leadership Forum on Climate Change in September is unfathomable. ENI is 30% owned by the Italian state.
References 1 ‘Up close and personal with BP’s boss’, 16th October 2009, available from http://blog.newint.org/editors/2009/10/16/up-close-and-persona/ [viewed 13/11/09] 2 ‘Dirty Oil: How the tar sands are fueling the global climate crisis’, Greenpeace, September 2009, available from http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/documents-and-links/publications/tar_sands_report,
[viewed 13/11/09] 3 ‘Activists block tar sands mining operation to send message to Obama and Harper: Climate leaders don’t buy tar sands’, available from http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/recent/stop_the_tar_sands [viewed 13/11/09] 4 ‘ Carbon Capture and Storage in the Alberta Oil Sands - A Dangerous Myth’, The Co-operative Financial Services and WWF-UK, October 2009, available from http://www.co-operative.coop/corporate/Press/Press-releases/Headline-
news/Carbon-cannot-signifcantly-reduce-tarsands-emissions-says-new-report/ [viewed 13/11/09]
5 ‘Eni’s New Investment in Tar Sands and Palm Oil in the Congo Basin’, the Green Political
Foundation, July 2009, available from http://www.boell.de/navigation/climate-energy-7110.html,
[viewed 13/11/09] 6 Available from http://www.equator-principles.com/principles.shtml, [viewed
13/11/09] 7 Available from www.libdems.org.uk/ (viewed 26/11/09)