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Alberta oil sands get unexpected support Attacked by Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, oil sands gets thumbs up from U.S. anti-poverty coalition, civil rights, faith leaders Gary Park For Petroleum News
While butting heads with two of its familiar adversaries, the Alberta oil sands sector got support from an unlikely quarter.
First a group of 11 Greenpeace activists broke into the Syncrude Canada operation to draw attention to the organization’s campaign against oil sands development.
They were arrested, issued tickets and released by police after claiming they blocked a pipe that flows into a tailings pond where an estimated 500 ducks died last spring.
A spokesman said they also unfurled a skull and crossbones banner that claimed: “World’s Dirtiest Oil: Stop the Tar Sands.”
Tom Katinas, chief executive officer of Syncrude, the world’s largest producer of synthetic crude, said the consortium was open to “debate and dialogue about the environmental impacts of oil sands development … in a lawful and professional manner.”
“The action of the protesters put themselves at risk of injury given their unfamiliarity with the operations of a large and complex industrial site.”
WWF questions competitiveness of oil sands investments The next day a report by the World Wildlife Fund said companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and BP should take a second look at the future competitiveness of investing in the oil sands in a carbon-constrained economy where governments are attaching a price to carbon dioxide emissions.
“The financial sustainability of unconventional oil is dependent on a scenario with limited regulation, a high oil price and a low carbon price,” the study said.
“Policy makers and energy and utility companies agree that limited regulation and a low carbon price will not last.”
The report also urged the Canadian government to hold companies accountable for the environmental impact and water usage at the oil sands, while prohibiting fuels with CO2 emissions higher than those of conventional oil and banning the approval of new operator licenses.
U.S. anti-poverty coalition’s Niger Innis wants more oil In the midst of these events came the unexpected endorsement of the oil sands by a U.S. anti-poverty coalition led by African-American civil rights and faith leaders.
Niger Innis, co-chairman of the “Stop the War on the Poor” campaign, said the alliance wants more oil, not less from Canada’s unconventional deposits.
He said the group opposes the “artificial game that the radicals play of putting the so-called bad energy versus good energy.”
“All energy, when prices are as high as they are, which is such a critical resource and the lifeblood of the nation’s economy and the survival of people, is good energy as far as we are concerned,” he said.
Innis said Afro-Americans are worried about high energy prices at a time when U.S. politicians are under attack by a “very powerful, well-funded environmental extremist lobby that has a great deal of influence” over Congress.
The alliance said it is targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council.
It said in a news release that policies restricting energy development force the poor to make “horrible choices between food, fuel and medicine.”
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