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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
January 2009

Vol. 14, No. 4 Week of January 25, 2009

Oil patch violence on rise in Canada

Gary Park

For Petroleum News

As a crumbling economy spreads unease through the Canadian oil patch a more disturbing series of events is gripping the industry.

Unable to solve four cases of sabotage directed at its natural gas operations in northeastern British Columbia over the past three months, EnCana, Canada’s largest oil and gas producer, has posted a C$500,000 reward for information resulting in the arrest of the perpetrators.

But those attacks have suddenly been overshadowed by a firebombing that destroyed the upscale Edmonton home of Jim Carter, who retired in May 2007 as president and chief operating officer of Syncrude Canada, the world’s largest source of synthetic crude.

For almost three decades Carter was immersed in the development of Alberta’s oil sands, which have increasingly faced criticism and legal action by environmentalists and aboriginal communities.

The blaze gutted both floors of Carter’s home, causing damage estimated at C$850,000.

Neither Carter nor his wife were in the house at the time, but neighbors reported seeing a group of people running from the scene after a number of Molotov cocktails were hurled through the windows. Carter’s Cadillac SUV had earlier been vandalized.

Area residents said the attack resulted in a “huge fireball,” engulfing the house almost immediately. Carter, while upset over the loss of personal possessions, was thankful no one was hurt.

No one claims responsibility

Andrew Nikiforuk, author of a book about Weibo Ludwig, a northern Alberta farmer who was jailed in the 1990s on charges related to oilfield bombings and vandalism, doubted the Carter incident was the work of eco-terrorists.

He said vandals rarely claimed responsibility for their actions, whereas terrorists “compulsively do. … It could even be the work of individuals trying to discredit environmentalists.”

John Thompson, director of the Toronto-based security think-tank Mackenzie Institute, said left-wing environmental and animal rights groups in the United States and Europe have been adding “more and more of a hard edge” to their attacks in recent years, describing them as “really nasty. … They’ll pick on particular individuals and target them.”

Meanwhile, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other investigators have encountered a dead end in their EnCana investigations.

They say some residents are proving uncooperative and hope the reward will yield results.

“Whoever is responsible for these bombings have got to be stopped before someone gets hurt,” said Mike Graham, president of an EnCana division that runs the British Columbia operations.






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