The Dominion - Macdonald Stainsby

Oil Rich Gulf Co-operation Council Grows

stephlaw — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:55:55 +0000

Extreme extraction could prove to be the meaning of GCC membership for Morocco and Jordan

AMMAN, Jordan—The Arab Spring sent shockwaves through the regimes of the Middle East and North Africa, and in the face of demands for popular accountability alongside bread and butter issues, states throughout the region have devised strategies to try and avert popular upheaval.

If one were asked to list the most powerful players from the Arab world, it is likely that neither Morocco nor Jordan would head that list. Both are relatively poor countries, and neither is classically known as being resource-rich. Morocco occupies the edge of Western Africa, geographically distant from richer Arab countries such as Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. Jordan has high energy demands, and thus has long been reliant on imports. The steady backing of the United States, in exchange for Jordan's relative complicity in American policy, has also somewhat isolated Jordan in the Arab world.

Regardless of their outsider status, the kingdoms of Morocco and Jordan have recently been invited to join the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC). On the surface, inviting in Jordan—and even more so the non-Gulf nation of Morocco—appears to be a puzzle.

Similarities between the newly-invited monarchies and other GCC countries are not completely lost, at least not with their reigning pro-American kings: Mohammed VI of Morocco, and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Despite some limited political reforms, both monarchs have spent a dozen years on their thrones with static regimes and unregulated, free market economies. Both reflect the deires of other regimes in the region to avoid the uprisings that have swept rulers from some Arab states in recent months. Jordan and Morocco also share in high unemployment and poverty rates, and both countries have seen street protests in recent months.

Recent promises from King Mohammed VI for "meaningful reform" included a recent referendum on constitutional amendments, to which it was reported that the general population of Morocco responded 98 per cent in favour. Moroccan protesters have since called the poll fraudulent and the newly-drafted constitution insufficient. Likewise, in an attempt to placate protests, King Abdullah has re-shuffled the Jordanian parliament. Critics, however, perceive the changes in both kingdoms to be little more than cosmetic.

The GCC, which is now courting Morocco and Jordan, was founded in 1981 by Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. “It's not as far advanced as the European Union but in many ways is similar to the European Union regional integration project,” says Adam Hanieh of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

“This was partly a security agreement that was established with the support of the United States, but then beyond that it has evolved in the last few decades—particularly the last ten or so years—to be focused very much on the economic integration of these six countries in the Gulf,” explains Hanieh.

“These countries all have strong oil and gas supplies, they have similar political structures and through economic integration they have been promoting common trade, free movement of capital and goods, pretty much across the borders, and also the movement of citizens,” he says.

During the Arab Spring, Jordan and Morocco experienced street protests in their capital cities, and elsewhere. Neither have had movements that called for the end of their respective monarchies or the establishment of republics. However, in terms of reshaping the economy and landscape, both nation states have been looking to convert oil shale rock into synthetic petroleum, which has implications for the GCC.

Within OPEC, GCC states have consistently called for production targets that are more in line with most Western countries like the U.S. and France—seeking to heighten targets and lower global market prices. Nation states such as Venezuela or Iran seek lower production targets as a way of generating higher prices for crude on the world market.

In recent years, the way that global petroleum reserves are measured by country has changed so as to be able to include bitumen from the Canadian tar sands. This is a result of Canada proving the “commercial viability” of its mock oil development, which has been expanding at a breathtaking pace. Similar dynamics could immediately take root in both Morocco and Jordan if their planned oil shale ventures go into production. Integrating these new huge reserves into the GCC would guarantee both investments and a market for mock crude from the new member states.

The terms of the invitation to the GCC have yet to be spelled out, but there is good reason to assume some conditions may apply.

“If countries like Jordan and Morocco were to join, I don't think they would join as full members or with the same type of integration as the existing GCC states have,” says Hanieh. “I don't think you would see for example, the ability of people to move freely to the GCC states from Jordan and Morocco.”

This may leave GCC membership for newcomers to look more like the North American Free Trade Agreement than the European Union: de-regulation and neoliberal re-regulation, freer movement of capital, no new movement (or rights) for labour.

“In all of the GCC countries, citizenship is restricted to a minority of the population,” says Hanieh. “The bulk of the people living in these countries are migrant workers who don't have citizenship rights.”

GCC countries, however, have long been the favoured states of Washington in the Arab world for other reasons as well. Even before the 2011 uprisings began, the GCC states were allied with many American ventures, such as the two wars of aggression against Iraq.

“They have become a close adjunct of the U.S. foreign policy in the region. The one thing about the GCC states—with the exception to a certain extent of Saudi Arabia as you saw in the case of Bahrain—is in general, their military capability is very weak and they act under a U.S. military umbrella,” explains Hanieh. Qatar in particular has been exposed recently, having aligned militarily with NATO countries in their air and ground war against the Qaddafi government in Libya.

The short and long term development of the large oil shale deposits in the Kingdoms of Morocco and Jordan have similar plots. Both countries are poor and reliant on imports for energy. Both have large oil shale potential despite serious water shortages, and both also have (among others) development plans that stem from a partnership between Brazil’s state-owned Petrobras and French energy giant Total to strip mine and convert kerogen rock into mock oil, perhaps allowing the integration into economic and trade matters for the rest of the GCC states.

Of course, there is also the issue of Israel.

While publicly critical of Israel, GCC states have accommodated Tel Aviv to varying degrees. Normalization with Jordan in 1994 allowed for Israeli-Jordanian trade. Jordan joining the GCC may provide another means of trade with Israel for Arab states that are still officially part of the general Israeli boycott.

“It's clear that over the last decade, the United States has really been pushing increased regional integration in the Middle East and particularly trying to break the boycott of Israel, and increase the normalization. This has had some success in the case of the GCC. For example, in the case of Qatar, there was a trade office that was opened for many years, I'm not sure if it still operates but it probably operates unofficially,” says Hanieh.

In Jordan, collaboration with Israel functions at an official capacity. However, if Jordan's industrial plans were to go ahead, closer ties between the two nations might emerge. Already on the table is a major nuclear facility within Jordan, and the so-called “Red-Dead” canal.

The Gulf Co-operation Council has set itself up as a localized combination of NATO and EU in terms of policy. There is little doubt that given the events of the Arab Spring so far the GCC has adjusted itself to a combination of counter-revolutionary politics, mixed together with a promotion of western (oil) interests, ranging from Saudi Arabia leading the occupation of Bahrain, to Qatar flying sorties and providing ground troops during the recolonization of Libya.

Jordan and Morocco both maintain Kingdoms that straddle the so-called fence. They choose to deal with Israel, align with the Saudis and other oil-producing monarchies, all the while adding their own plans to become extreme extractors. The Gulf Co-operation Council is the agent to integration of the same ideology, regardless of territorial ambiguity.

Jordan and Morocco both possess reserves of oil shale that, if counted by the International Energy Agency and OPEC as oil, would outstrip other members of the GCC. The spread and influence of pro-USA, pro-Israel, GCC politics into Morocco and Jordan could have an important social, political, and environmental impact on the entire region.

This article is the fourth in a four part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published by the Media Co-op. Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Shale Oil Basins in Israel and Jordan

Extreme Extraction

stephlaw — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:03:49 +0000

Oil production plans could reshape Morocco's economy and environment

RABAT, MOROCCO—Many well-known voices trying to address the global climate crisis have posited that less-developed countries—those without a full-blown industrial base—can skip industrialization all together and transition away from fossil fuels. If that is achieved, development in those countries would ideally result in the construction of infrastructure suitable for a post-fossil fuel society.

But if Morocco is any indication, the opposite scenario appears more likely to happen. Instead of proceeding with climate-friendly energy developments, Morocco is poised to begin extracting crude oil from unconventional deposits—the dirtiest fuel available. Mining rock for oil in Morocco would leave massive craters in post-fossil, green energy hopes.

Morocco, like Jordan and Israel, is moving towards using the most carbon intensive fuel base on earth. This move is supported by present, and projected, oil prices that make synthetic crude from oil shale profitable on a near permanent basis. Technology has become cheaper while the price of oil has gone up dramatically. Recent industry estimates indicate that oil can now be extracted from shale for approximately US$40 per barrel, while the average price at an American pump is US$94 per barrel.

With global oil demand slated to grow, Morocco is set to become an unconventional oil producer through mining oil shale and converting it to mock crude oil in a fashion similar to Canadian tar sands development, but borrowing on shale technology from Brazil. Morocco also has contracts to use Estonian technology to mine and burn oil shale directly for domestic electricity.

Estonia is one of a few countries in the world that has ongoing oil shale currently in operation. The Tangier deposit of oil shale in the north of Morocco is likely to see Eesti Energy-owned Enefit of Estonia work to mine this shale directly for domestic electricity generation, which would treat the kerogen shale more like a cousin of coal rather than an ancestor of oil.

Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company, has developed a technique of extracting oil as well as gas from oil shale, and has been involved in this process commercially since the early 1980s. A partnership between Petrobras and TOTAL energy of France has been developing towards shale-to-oil mining at the Timahdit deposit, a deposit much larger than Tangier, approximately 240 kilometres southeast of Rabat, Morocco’s capital. Petrobras would be the main operator of the Timahdit mine, but both world energy majors will share the costs and profits.

However, there is one persistent problem for both these projects: water. Even without proposed oil shale mining and in-situ developments, Morocco has a serious potable water problem.

To operationalize oil shale in Morocco, water would need to be sourced from nearby the Timahdit deposit. Throughout the country, waterways are already becoming silt-ridden as erosion slowly manifests as a result of another ecological tragedy in the area: illegal timber harvests.

Some environmental journalists, like Mohammed Attaoui, have recently landed directly in the crosshairs of the Moroccan Kingdom. Attaoui was imprisoned by the Moroccan government after he investigated ongoing illegal timber marketing and exporting. Although Attaoui was officially charged and convicted in March 2010 for the extortion of 1,000 dirham (approximately US$120), critics maintain Attaoui was set up in a ploy timed immediately after his research into the country's “cedar mafia” had been published. He was handed a two-year sentence for his alleged crime.

Deforestation, destructive in its own right, is without doubt one of the major factors furthering the water crises of Morocco. But if the water needs for running a major mining operation are appended onto the existing crisis, the prognosis for the country's environmental health gets ever bleaker. The proposed mine at Timahdit happens to be in the same region as two national parks: the Ifrane National Park, which is already under threat from the illegal timber harvest, and Haut Atlas Oriental, which is home to tens of thousands of small farmers who rely on the area and its habitat for agriculture and subsistence.

The illegal timber harvest is the primary threat to the macaques, the last remaining large population of monkeys in northern Africa. Primarily living in the Ifrane National Park, macaques used to be common throughout the Mahgreb but are now endangered by loss of habitat elsewhere and by the shrinking forest. The only place outside Morocco where they live is in the small and shrinking Djebel Babor Nature Reserve on Algeria's coast. According to The Morocco Board News Service, the region is also home to more than 200 forms of plant life not found anywhere else.

Oil extraction is but another burden in a region defined by an already fragile environment. Between the three proposed sites for shale oil development in Morocco, early projections indicate that 50,000 barrels per day of mock oil could be produced for conversion into various fuels within a few years. (This figure does not include electricity generation where shale is burned in a similar fashion to a coal fired plant.)

That estimate includes the Tarfaya deposit near Morocco's border with the nominally independent Western Sahara, which is still occupied by Moroccan forces. Tarfaya has also just seen the completion of an in-situ pilot project constructed by San Leon Energy of Ireland, a smaller player with some operations in the continental United States. Building up Tarfaya has already meant the construction of major highways in less populated parts of southern Morocco to allow for the transport of supplies and materials for the project.

Morocco is on its way to becoming a testing ground for unprecedented oil shale extraction. “The environmental issues in places such as Colorado are not an issue in Morocco,” John Buggenhagen, San Leon Energy’s vice-president of exploration, told Petroleum Economist.

This article is the third in a four-part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published on the Media Co-op.

Questions? Comments? Email us at info@mediacoop.ca.

Morroco map shale oil

Oil in the Desert

stephlaw — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:48:38 +0000

Will water be sacrificed to oil in Jordan?

AMMAN, Jordan—In March of 2011, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan jumped headlong into unconventional oil extraction, and signed a deal with Karak International Oil (KIO), a subsidiary of Jordan Energy and Mining Limited (JEML--a British company), for the commercial mining of oil shale approximately one hour’s drive from the capital of Amman. Unlike most countries in the region, if you fill up your gas tank in Jordan, you are using imported oil— but the Kingdom is touting a future when extreme extraction will change that, and soon.

Jordan is one of the countries most likely to bear the harshest impacts of climate change, and least suited to dive headlong into the most destructive forms of energy yet devised. Walking the streets of Amman, however, one gets the sense that the government has already decided the country will serve as a launching pad for American interests. The entire city is oriented towards the American troops, engineers, and others who stop off on their way to and from Baghdad, Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq transformed Jordan without the dropping of a single bomb overhead. New oil shale proposals could promote a similarly intense kind of change with an absence of popular input—but perhaps even more discreetly.

The main oil shale deposit designated for exploitation in Jordan is at Al Lajjun in the southern Karak governorate, and the lease has a 35-square-kilometer radius. This project is expected to produce commercial crude for refining within five years, maxing out some years after that at 60,000 barrels of mock crude per day. By way of comparison, the entire nation consumes an average of 200,000 barrels per day.

Part of the project’s construction and know-how will be imported into Jordan from the Athabasca region of Canada via Thyssenkrupp Group of Germany. Thyssenkrupp has pledged to build strip mining operations there based on their existing work in Alberta's tar sands mines—the largest existing industrial project in human history.

Elsewhere in the country, Royal Dutch Shell operates under a 100-per-cent-owned subsidiary called Jordan Oil Shale Company (JOSCO). JOSCO also has long-term development plans for oil exploitation in Jordan that are expected to come online no sooner than 2021. Shell/JOSCO have exploration rights to large segments of the country. Shell will also be bringing technology from their operations in Alberta, Canada—including the huge Albian Sands mine.

It's not just Shell and Thyssenkrupp that are coming in with the know-how. So too are Petrobras and TOTAL SA Energy, of Brazil and France respectively. Petrobras has long since operated an oil shale mining and conversion to oil and gas plant. TOTAL has multiple unconventional oil shale and tar sands plays around the world, some operational.

Oil shale slated for extraction in Jordan is for local electricity (not synthetic crude production), by Eesti Energia of Estonia. Estonian electricity has been provided almost exclusively by oil shale mining and burning for several decades. Eesti Energia is now looking into providing technology and constructing electrical plants from shale in not only Jordan, but also in Morocco. Estimates of a recoverable 40-billion barrels of mock crude exist in Jordan, in a total of 26 different deposits.

“We depend 96 per cent on importing our energy from outside of Jordan. It's basically coming from Saudi Arabia, from Iraq and from Egypt,” said Basel Burgan, the head of the Jordanian Friends of the Environment—a group that, among other issues, is in opposition to possible nuclear development in the country on economic and environmental grounds.

“We had depended for a good time on the Egyptian Gas that was cheaper than heavy fuel, but unfortunately the Egyptians have been bombing the pipeline that's sending gas through Sinai to Jordan because it's connected at the same time to Israel,” he said.

Jordanian Friends of the Environment has yet to take a firm position on oil shale.

Power needs for synthetic oil production are vast, and could coincide with a brand new nuclear power plant expected to be announced by French nuclear powerhouse Areva. The amount of water needed for cooling nuclear reactors as well as heating oil shale to extract petroleum is exceedingly high.

With regards to the water needed to run nuclear plants, Burgan says the Jordanian government “claims they are going to take this grey water and do tertiary purification which is a very costly plan, about $800 million [US], and eventually it will produce good water available to be used in a reactor.”
Burgan went on to explain how all of these projects may in fact rely on one another, and even on further regional integration with Israel:

“Some people have said that Jordan will end up sending electricity to Israel. [...] I have read only that Hashemite University, located in the area proposed for the plant site (north of Amman ~40kms) has signed an agreement with Colorado University, which already has an agreement with Ben Gurion University on the same project to build up some kind of desalination plant inside the Hashemite University with modern technology for purification and desalination. We say that all of these agreements and projects are basically depending on the Jordanian nuclear reactor because any desalination plant or station would need massive energy, and the energy would be available from a nuclear reactor.”

Jordan possesses, at best, the fourth smallest water to population ratio on the planet. Israel, which is also poor in terms of water, has already constructed five desalination plants, one of which is the largest on the planet. In the area where KIO plans to construct a large oil shale mine, many traditional Bedouins live off the land and source their water through deep wells in an extremely arid environment just east of the Dead Sea. Damage to the water table through use for extraction, or through contamination resulting from toxic waste produced by the mining process could have disastrous health effects on local people and ecosystems. The same would be true of air quality.

One of the other possibilities for increasing available water supply is a massive industrial project euphemistically known as the Red-Dead canal. This canal comes with a plan to pump sea water over 200 kilometers from the Red Sea to fill up the ecologically unique Dead Sea (where water levels are currently dropping at an alarming rate) and provide sea water for desalination projects and industry to both Israel and Jordan. Essentially Red-Dead project would transform the Dead Sea into little more than a reservoir for Israel and Jordan to use for industry, and would likely require the deepening of 1994 normalization agreements signed in the shadow of the increasingly sidelined 1993 Oslo Agreements, themselves signed as a pre-cursor to a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Jordanian water is used in varying amounts by Israel, depending on the season, under the terms of the '94 normalization between the two states. The water situation in Jordan is so bleak that the Red-Dead Canal is endorsed by groups that oppose nuclear power, including Friends of the Environment, in the hopes that this massive Israeli-Jordanian project could supply the population with potable drinking water even as climate change dries out the planet ever further.

The Jordanian government has announced open bids for nuclear plans, while the United States—backed by Israel—demands the uranium be converted to fuel somewhere other than the Kingdom out of a desire to prevent technological and research development. For obvious reasons, official confirmation or details about Israel's continued uranium research at their Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where Israel's nuclear arsenal was almost certainly developed, are not forthcoming. Israel has also declared their desire to have a nuclear power plant in the Negev—the hot, arid desert lands west of the rapidly drying Dead Sea.

If normalization were to include collaboration on a plan to extract crude from shale, industrial mega-projects would stand in as a regional response to dwindling water and energy supplies.

With the Red-Dead Canal plan still in play, the possibility of collaboration and increasing development on both sides of the Dead Sea looks likely.

This article is the second in a four part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published at http://mediacoop.ca

Israel Jordan Shale Oil Map

Apartheid Oil

stephlaw — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:58:40 +0000

Crude oil trapped in shale could transform Israel into energy powerhouse

JERUSALEM—Major offshore gas strikes in 2009 and 2010 may soon convert Israel into a gas exporting country with self-sufficient energy. But perhaps more important than the gas under the sea is the mock crude trapped in husk dry sands and rock hard shale, reserves which could push Israel into the upper echelons of recoverable oil on the planet. Israel’s reliance on others for energy supplies has long been a weakness, both economically and militarily.

What promises to be the most energy intensive form of oil recovery on the planet could reinforce Israel's military might, while presenting a new threat to scarce water resources and the climate.

New estimates show that there are 250 billion barrels of recoverable mock (or synthetic) crude oil, possibly even more, in locations throughout Israel. By way of comparison, Canada has just under 200 barrels of oil, including recoverable tar sands while Saudi Arabia is said to have 260 barrels.

The announcement of these major oil finds comes on the heels of the discovery of the contested Leviathan offshore gas field in the Mediterranean Sea, estimated to hold between 16 and 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The Leviathan field was discovered by Texas-based Noble Energy Inc. in June 2010. The discovery is disputed by Lebanon, which brought a complaint to the United Nations alleging Israeli slant drilling off the Lebanese coast following the 2006 aerial war. Further complicating matters is the other major natural gas play in the region, which lies beneath the recognized maritime territory of the Gaza Strip.

“Israel [will] never buy gas from Palestine,” declared Ariel Sharon in 2001, after the Palestinian Authority signed 25-year development leases with European energy companies. Palestinian control over their own gas was challenged in a 2003 Israel Supreme Court case that has yet to be resolved.

British Gas Group was close to striking a development deal on the Gaza deposit, and was planning to pipe gas through to Egypt when, in 2006, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair allegedly intervened to prevent sending the gas south, in the interest of Israel. In the following year, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued a proposal to buy the $4 billion worth of gas found in the Gaza deposit, with $1 billion in profits going to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Israeli cabinet approved the proposal, and bypassed the newly-elected Hamas government in Gaza altogether.

The proposal eventually fell through because various military and security advisers warned a gas deal with the PA would pose a security risk to Israel. Soon after, British Gas Group closed their office in Israel and announced on their website that they were “...evaluating options for commercialising the gas.” Perhaps on the advice of retired high-ranking Israeli Defence Forces officials, British Gas Group ceded their field license, so as to no longer involve the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli interest in the Gaza deposit didn’t end then. In November 2008, the Israel Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed the Israel Electric Corporation to enter into negotiations with British Gas with hopes of purchasing natural gas from British Gas’s offshore concession in Gaza, according to a press release by Boycott Israel UK.

These instructions came approximately one month before Operation Cast Lead, or the Gaza War, and might have played a role in stalling an official Israeli attack on Gaza.

"It is possible that the prospect of a major natural gas transaction with the Palestinians has been a factor in the Israeli cabinet's refusal to launch a Defensive Shield II operation in Gaza,” wrote retired Israeli Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, only months before the Operation Cast Lead bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Together with the Leviathan deposits, the natural gas fields off of Gaza's shores represent reserves that could easily meet Israel's internal electrical energy needs and turn the Zionist state from net importer to an exporter of energy. But the importance of the gas deposits may pale in comparison to the more recent development of technology for recovering tar sands and shale oil. In fact, given the massive energy inputs required to extract oil from shale, the Leviathan and Gazan gas fields may become an integral part of supplying the energy for this massive heavy oil project.

Israel's massive oil shale deposits vary in form from petrified kerogen rock to bituminous formations that have the texture and appearance of the tar sands common to places like Alberta, Canada.

Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI) announced in March 2011 a project to transform shale into oil. The project will use a combination of technologies already in use in Canada's tar sands and newer conceptual technology developed in Colorado's vast oil shale deposits. If it proceeds, the shale oil extraction in Israel project could permanently alter the political and atmospheric climate of the Middle East.

IEI is a subsidiary of the much larger Israeli Data Technologies (IDT), a corporation that already dominates Israel's economic landscape and is led by IDT Chairman Howard Jonas. Along for the ride on this venture are media mogul Rupert Murdoch and former US vice-president Dick Cheney, along with many other notables.

Approximately 15 per cent of the landmass of UN-defined Israel overlays oil shale deposits. In fact, Israel has already exported their know-how to the Alberta tar sands: Ormat, an Israeli firm, has set up shop with patented energy technology in Alberta under the name Opti. Opti teamed up with Nexen in Canada to launch an in-house technique of burning the waste gunk produced through extraction in order to provide energy for the extraction operation itself. At the end of July 2011, Opti (and their interests in Alberta's tar sands) was sold to China National Offshore Oil Corp.

Not unlike the seismic shift that kicked the long dormant Alberta tar sands into high gear following the war on Iraq and cumulative rise in oil prices that coincided with the Katrina disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the latest announcements out of Israel are staggering.

The oil shale proposal that is closest to approval is a short drive southwest of Jerusalem, a pastoral area of Kibbutzes and small villages that historians believe was the backdrop for the biblical battle between David and Goliath. The area doesn't feel anything like the oil boomtown of Fort McMurray, Alberta, or even anything close to much of the Middle East, but more like parts of western Canada's Okanogan Valley.

In the sunny backyard of a house in a gated community, Lia Tarachansky of the Real News Network interviewed Chagit Tishler about the proposed oil shale project while myself and a Palestinian man from a Jerusalem neighbourhood listened and drank tea.

“It's the biggest license even given to a private company in Israel,” said Tishler, who works with the organization Save Adullam, which is made up of local residents who oppose the IEI pilot project. The license was granted under the Oil Law, said Tishler, which is essentially a free entry law dating from 1952, which prioritizes oil and gas exploration over farms, parks or historical sites.

“The area could be ruined completely. This area is the last area in the centre of Israel that remains an open area and a green area, and has a lot of archaeological sites that are important not only to Israelis but to the rest of the world,” she said, before listing historical sites in the vicinity. Known as the Elah Valley, the area was re-settled only a couple of years after the Nakba in 1948 by primarily North African Mizrahi Jews. To this day, they and others use the valley for food crops and Israeli wine.

IEI's planned operations in the Elah Valley include digging five kilometres of trenches through farms and vineyards to expose the shale rock, which would then be heated until the kerogen and other organic materials held inside it are bled out of the rock, producing a basic crude substance. Much like tar sands bitumen, this substance will still need to go through an upgrading process before refining.

If carried out as planned, IEI’s project would constitute one of the least energy efficient forms of oil production ever devised. Three to five gigawatts of electricity would be used to produce a single barrel of shale-based oil, according to Save Adullam. Heating the shale, which takes place for months at a time, could release at least 15 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. No other extraction process in conventional oil or even tar sands involves a heating process this extensive, nor is any as carbon intensive. This carbon release takes place even before refining, let alone consumption.

Regardless, for Israel, these reserves represent a local supply that cannot be blockaded. IEI states that the petroleum from this shale produces a light synthetic crude nearly perfect for converting to jet fuel.

Thus far, groups like Save Adullam who wish to stop this project have failed to make alliances with other communities living with the threat of oil shale extraction. The focus of Save Adullam is to demand a repeal of the 1952 oil law. Their allies are inside the Knesset and others within the Israeli state, including the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

Though the first lands slated for large scale development projects have religious and biblical resonance, there are also mining projects that will spread across the traditional territory of Bedouin Palestinians in various parts of the Negev Desert. The majority of the surface oil shale, which is similar in composition to the Albertan tar sands, sits in the northern part of the desert. In addition, mining for oil shale, which is burned for electricity, has already taken place in the deep south of the desert, close to Eliat.

The Mishor Rotem Basin is on the west bank of the Dead Sea, and an oil shale deposit straddles both sides of the border between the state of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In 2006 the JNF concluded that Israel was using 25 per cent more water than was sustainable (this includes the almost 90 per cent of the water diverted from Palestinians in the West Bank).

In Zionist settlements and recognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, cancer rates are already considerably higher than in the rest of the Jewish state. Pollution from oil shale developments in any form would undoubtedly contribute to increasing overall contamination. In addition, the bulk of the Negev desert is also a training ground and “free fire zone” for the air force and military—already a massive environmentally destructive force at play.

Israel's laws make it nearly impossible for non-Jewish citizens of Israel to exact equal rights in almost any field, even within Israel. Bedouins are seeing these problems deepen—primarily upon the orders of the JNF, and carried out by riot squads and the IDF—with JNF-led “making the desert bloom” projects, attacking and bulldozing entire villages (some over 25 times in the last year) to facilitate “forest planting”; and forced re-settlement into government planned townships.

Bedouin communities traditionally linked with the land who wish to stop the intrusion of oil shale and its toxic consequences will likely need to think beyond strategies that simply try to undo laws written by the Zionist state, and they aren't likely to find allies in the JNF.

And in yet another parallel to Canada, the vast offshore gas deposits claimed by Israel—mainly but not exclusively the Leviathan field—could serve the same vital role for energy input of oil shale developments that natural gas plays in the Athabasca tar sands. Israel already has a water crisis, but it looks like it might see fit to exacerbate that problem in the push for energy independence.

This article is the first in a four part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published at http://mediacoop.ca

Israel Jordan Shale Oil Map

World's Crudest Extraction

dawn — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 09:55:54 +0000

At the tar sands they’re digging up dirty fuel

EDMONTON, ALBERTA–When the Albertan government recently put forward $25 million to counter the negative press around tar sands mining, Premier Ed Stelmach strained credulity by stating: "In terms of David and Goliath, I've been in this position before, and now I'm here."

According to Stelmach, David was the largest industrial project on Earth, with nearly $200 billion in investment, being picked on by what he imagined were the God-like powers of environmental campaigners.

The goal of the $25 million was to make the tar sands seem like just another source of petroleum, including re-branding the massive undertaking as the “oil sands.” Of course, now that the price of oil has risen so high, it seems any “oil” is good “oil.” But what if it isn't really even oil?

Those who read the Dominion's tar sands special issue from 2007 are likely already aware that the bulk of today's tar sands production includes digging out northern Alberta's boreal forest at an astronomical rate in order to create what are by far the world's largest strip mines.

Sometimes digging to levels of over 100 metres or 300 feet deep, it can take anywhere between two and four tonnes of earth to produce just one barrel of oil. At a rate currently approximating 1.3 million barrels of “mock” (synthetic) crude, the rate of mining in the Athabasca region is far beyond that of any other process in the world.

But energy corporations, along with the Albertan, Canadian and American governments, are doing whatever they can to hide this basic information, instead simply calling the tar sands “heavy oil,” perhaps a little dirtier, perhaps more expensive but generally just another hydrocarbon.

Some of the realities of the tar sands mining process, however, are coming to light across North America, through not only the work of those opposed to the destructive process, but also because of “errors” being committed by the producers themselves.

On April 29, 2008, Albertans awoke to discover that “hundreds of ducks [were] dead or dying after landing on a Syncrude tailings pond,” the second largest of Syncrude’s tailings “ponds,” which, alongside Suncor’s, is one of the two original and still largest mining operations in the region. The event helped focus the media and the public’s attention on the ticking time bombs of waste water produced in the mining of the tar sands.

All mining operations in the world today, whether gold, nickel, cadmium or uranium produce waste, which is mixed with water in tailings ponds, and which will not settle or separate for centuries.

However the scale of the waste, composed of very toxic materials unleashed through the mining of tar sands, is practically beyond comprehension. So, too, are the massive piles of sulphur extracted as a by-product of the “slurry” upgrading process, which separates the bitumen (pre-fuel) from the sands.

The final product – after digging, upgrading and ultimately refining – is a mock crude that can become gasoline (though it produces a much smaller proportion per barrel than “regular sweet crude”), diesel and more. But the mining process is needed because the regular carbon breakdown and evolution of the tar sands are being artificially sped up by several millions of years. This is why the tar sands are so expensive to make into mock oil and take so much input in terms of energy, money, water, labour and ecological destruction to extract.

The largest trucks in the world are carrying hundreds of tonnes of mined land to the slurries in order to get this done. The contractors who carry this out are generally among those corporations who would help other forms of mining across North America and around the world, such as Caterpillar.

It is perhaps fitting that Canada, which is home to the investors and head offices of the mining corporations with the worst track records of violating human rights in the Global South, would also have the largest and most destructive mining operation on the face of the earth.

But there is no “poetic justice” here, rather just a local version of the victimization of primarily indigenous communities who live near theses massive mining projects that occurs around the world.

Celina Harpe, an elder from the Cree community in the northern Albertan village of Fort MacKay, has seen the impacts of the tar sands development first hand.

“They ruined our water, the air, pretty much everything else. The animals, the berries, all our livelihood – that’s what we used to live on,” she explains. “The fish; there’s no more. We can’t eat fish from the river, we can’t drink the water, we get sick from all that pollution. People are dying of cancer, whereas it never used to be like that. And I’m sure, I’m very positive that this has got something to do with the air and the water. The pollution is doing something to our people.”

Similar to operations across Latin America and Africa, the people who call the region being mined home are not given the opportunity for “free, prior, and informed consent” that the recent United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples declares necessary.

Canada was one of the four countries, along with New Zealand, Australia and the United States, to opt out of signing this declaration. Hosting the offices of mining corporations both operating in the Global South and carrying out multiple projects at “home” is surely one of the major reasons why Ottawa voted against the ratification of that historic document.

“First Nations in the region impacted by the tar sands development in Alberta have been stuck in a regulatory process that has degraded their sovereignty by forcing them to engaged in a multi-stakeholder process that in no way recognizes their unique nation-to-nation relationship with Canada,” says Clayton Thomas-Muller, tar sands campaigner for the Indigenous Environmental Network.

The Albertan government is working overtime to obfuscate the actual environmental and human costs of producing mock oil from mining the tar sands. While they are spending enough money on the campaign to make most grassroots activists drool, it will be a test of their communication prowess to see if they can create the perception that “the oil sands will become an increasing source of interest as a secure, abundant energy supply. The oil sands are definitely on the world's radar screen,” as Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach would have us believe.

Invoking the war on terror and the global energy crunch, Stelmach has accused tar sands detractors of not only sending out misinformation, but “even worse, they could serve to jeopardize this country's [the United States’] energy security at a time when Asian markets are clamouring for oil." The result, he says, would be North America being pushed to rely upon countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iran for conventional oil supplies.

“In the province of Alberta, industry dominates all provincial regulatory and enforcement bodies and the stacks are against First Nations,” says Muller.

Those activists who wish to see the tar sands understood as a massive escalation in both the mining of the earth and the extinguishing of First Nations in the region already have a major asset on their side: the truth, along with the continued errors of tar sands producers in their giant strip mining operations.

Canadian mining corporations are being exposed as among the worst practitioners of corporate social responsibility the world over, from Guatemala to Australia to Chile. They must also be called out for using the same approach in the tar sands – not just for the multiple ways they impact climate change, deforestation and more, but also as the initiators of the largest strip mine ever conceived by human beings.

For decades, the indigenous populations living in North America have contended with the twins of mining and energy. In a few cases, such as uranium mining, energy and mining coincide in a single project. They do so again with a vengeance in the largest industrial project in human history – the tar sands, a gigaproject of strip mining the earth to send mock oil to the United States and leave a vast wasteland of poisoned land, human beings and giant lakes of waste in their wake.

With companies such as Barrick Gold going around the planet in search of its namesake precious metal, it is noteworthy that Canada's tar sands operations – using clean natural gas to produce this massive amount of dirty mock oil – can be seen as turning gold into lead at home.

Macdonald Stainsby is an avid hitchhiker and works for Oil Sands Truth.

tarsands_1

tarsands_2

Impacting Unimpaired

dru — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:36:25 +0000

New agreements like the SPP and TILMA are aimed directly at unimpeded extraction in the tar sands

Demonstrations against the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) began in the Summer of 2007, but several of the issues raised by anti-SPP organizers invoked déjà vu for many observers: informal agreements, secret talks, plans to do away with layers of national sovereignty in favour of corporate rules of engagement set to supersede labour organizing, environmental regulations or human rights. The laundry list of rule changes sounded a lot like debates of years past--the FTA, MAI, APEC, FTAA and NAFTA.

However, a deeper look at the driving force behind the new acronyms tells a different story, one of a world with new dynamics like peak oil, tar sands and the extreme measures that North American governments are attempting to use in the tar sands to keep an oil-dependent economy going.

Before the SPP became a larger issue nationally and continentally, the Trade, Investment & Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) had already been passed in British Columbia and Alberta. The agreement, having passed as legislation and set to be "phased in" by April 2009, plays a role complementary to the SPP and continues to be similarly criticized by many organizers for the anti-democratic way it has been implemented.

According to an analysis published by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, TILMA "encompasses provincial and local governments, regional districts, school boards, health and social services.

"Nearly every action by a government, now and in the future, is potentially constrained unless expressly excluded in the agreement. Measures are defined broadly and include any legislation, regulation, standard, directive, requirement, guideline, program, policy, administrative practice, or other procedure."

CUPE also describes the SPP as "another attempt of corporate America, in partnership with their political and corporate allies in Canada and Mexico, to reduce the power of government to protect citizens from profit-hungry business.

"Their intention is to scale down government regulations and controls that try to protect our society, culture and environment. Specifically, the SPP will minimize controls in areas like immigration, food and agriculture, natural resource exploitation, public services and entertainment."

TILMA is a new set of limitations on government's ability to regulate and the SPP is the removal of a pre-existing set of regulations. Both TILMA and the SPP have specific aims that go beyond the usual attempt to enshrine investors' rights and protect corporations from government regulations.

Both agreements pave the way--in many cases literally--for the largest industrial project in history to move forward: a project that calls for the extraction of over 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil from the tar sands of Alberta's Athabasca, Peace and Cold Lake regions.

The SPP and TILMA have anticipated popular resistance and preemptively removed the ability of governments to control the massive supply of energy, land, water and labour needed in the tar sands. They similarly preempt governments' ability to regulate the destruction and pollution that the "gigaproject" will create.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union (CEP) is concerned.

"As energy workers, we are compelled first of all to respond to the SPP energy agenda," the CEP said in a statement. "Through the SPP and the North American Energy Working Group, the governments of Mexico, United States and Canada have formed an unprecedented collaboration with energy corporations to promote the continental integration of our energy industries and infrastructures."

The result has surprisingly few benefits for Alberta or Canada. A massive, ecologically rich region will be reduced to an industrial sacrifice area. The synthetic crude that it renders will go south to the US. Royalties for Albertans and Canadians are minimal, and communities living in the vast area that will be strip-mined--Indigenous and settler alike--will be dismantled.

The "Oil Sands Experts Working Group," a part of the 2006 SPP meetings in Houston, calls the tar sands "a significant contributor to energy supply and security for the continent." According to the group, it was founded "when the three countries agreed to collaborate through the SPP on the sustainable development of the oil sands resources." The working group includes the US, Canadian and Alberta government representatives.

What does "sustainable development of the oil sands resources" consist of? The same SPP report says that it requires expanded "integrated long distance pipelines," plans for which are "already in place" to accommodate "the certain doubling of oil sands production to two million barrels per day by 2010.

"The five-fold expansion anticipated for oil sands products in a relatively short time span," the report says, "will represent many challenges for the pipeline industry."

To accomplish this, the report concludes, "Governments are encouraged to streamline the regulatory approval process and better manage the risk to both pipeline and energy projects.

"Canadian governments have already gone a long way to co-ordinating and streamlining the environmental and regulatory approvals, but more needs to be done."

TILMA sets up a free trade zone between Alberta and B.C. that "breaks down barriers" for all industries. April 2007 saw the official beginning of the TILMA agreement, sold as giving Alberta and B.C. a "competitive" way to deal with Ontario's vast size advantage. In reality, TILMA turns the provinces into locations where corporations can sue any person or entity that tries to legislate or otherwise invoke regulations that would make investment more "troublesome." The agreement bans measures which "impact or impair" investment and allows even an individual investor the right to sue governments to knock down such "impediments" and receive compensation for loss of revenue.

What can be seen as an impediment under TILMA is extensive. Under NAFTA, corporations can "challenge" legislation that affects their profits. A third party then rules on the "dispute" at hand. This has seen Canada paying to maintain some of its legislation around tobacco and environmental regulations, for example.

TILMA, however, starts on the assumption that the investor is correct. Unlike the resolution process seen in Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the current agreement includes an automatic up-to-$5 million penalty for a government body (at any level other than federal) that violates the rules of "free access" for capital. For example, if a city blocks the construction of a building for reasons of heritage, costing a corporation a projected $4 million, then the governing body that invokes the regulations "impacting or impairing" owes that corporation $4 million.

Article 3 of TILMA reads, in part: "Each Party shall ensure that its measures do not operate to restrict or impair trade between or through the territory of the Parties, or investment or labour mobility between the Parties." The agreement has specifically designed protocols for hearings to be held if one or more of the signatories are in breach of the agreement.

These secretive deals and agreements are taking place during the single largest energy policy shift in North America since the peaking of US domestic oil production in the seventies.

Internationally, the US is in a scramble for remaining oil reserves. Chinese demand for oil continues to grow. Disasters such as hurricanes and war--and the fact that only one barrel of oil is discovered for every nine that are used--have brought oil prices to record highs since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. With an economic and military structure that needs vast supplies of hydrocarbons everyday, North American energy concerns have found the oil "boom" in Northern Alberta that was expected in the aftermath of a regime change in Iraq.

In response to Chinese interest in the tar sands, US energy expert Irving Mintzer blurted out, "The problem with the Chinese is that they don't know that the Canadian oil is ours. And neither do the Canadians." In the same breath Mintzer noted, "One provocation for rethinking US energy policy will be when Chinese investment in Canadian tar sands and Venezuelan oil development make it increasingly difficult for us to get access to the resources."

That hypothetical situation has come about more quickly, since the Iraqi resistance has cut off access to "stable" flows of petroleum and Venezuela has reduced its contribution to US energy markets by one third. The US has shifted their boom from Baghdad and Kirkuk to Fort McMurray and Grand Prairie. Many Venezuelans who oppose their country's socialist government have re-settled in Alberta.

Whether led by Liberals or Conservatives, Canada has been more than willing to help this shift. Approvals for tar sands operations and newly designed agreements help to take Tar Sands development to unfathomable levels of expansion.

The industry that extracts bitumen and then crude oil from tar sands was once aiming to get to production levels of one million barrels per day (bpd) by 2012. Last year, the average already surpassed 1.3 million. The swiftly rising price of oil and the near-impossibility of a long term drop in price has suddenly allowed a major shift towards producing this oil, which is only profitable at a barrel price of at least $30.

The production process of the synthetic oil is unlike anything else: there are huge labour and energy needs currently unavailable to the producers, needs that are being drawn up and planned through TILMA and the SPP.

The US Department of Energy and Natural Resources Canada had another secret meeting, along with US energy corporations, in February 2006. Some details of the meeting were leaked earlier this year to the CBC. The agenda: to reduce labour and environmental rights in order to ramp up production from the Athabasca, Peace and Cold Lake tar sands to five million barrels per day.

The United States has reorganized their long-term plans for petroleum energy by setting a goal to get up to 25 per cent of their daily oil from tar sands based operations (in addition to Canada's conventional oil). In 2003, the US Department of Energy began declaring tar sands reserves part of their calculation of oil imported from Canada. This will include massive pipeline construction across territories within British Columbia, made nearly impossible to block by TILMA.

The SPP is setting the stage for the creation of a series of "super highways" that may extend from as far as Panama City north to Edmonton and branching off to the three "hot spots" of the Albertan Peace and Athabasca Regions and northeast British Columbia.

Along with the reduction in labour rights across both provinces through TILMA, the SPP will provide much-needed labour through the expansion of the "temporary foreign workers" program. The growth of Alberta's economy has already exceeded the available population of workers. Workers from the Maritimes are paid to fly to Fort McMurray from Moncton, Halifax or St. John's and work in camps in the tar sands.

The energy needs of production in the tar sands process--whether the strip-mining operations or the "in-situ" underground "Steam-assisted gravity Drainage" (Sag-D) procedure--are equal to almost a third of what is produced. (For comparison purposes, the crude in Iraqi reserves produces about 100 times the energy that is needed to pump it out.) Sag-D consumes more energy and water than strip-mining operations, setting the stage for the requisite equivalent of four to five billion cubic feet of natural gas per day required in tar sands operations if they become fully operational.

This reality is what is leading Energy Alberta to promote nuclear power for the Peace Region, where Sag-D has barely even begun to operate.

The two maps included show the plans for this vast expansion, both in terms of the importation of labour by highway and the construction of needed energy supplies by pipeline to get to the planned five million bpd.

The first one shows the flow of goods and labour. The aim of TILMA and the SPP is the immediate creation of far more labour inflow from places such as Mexico and China, most of it ultimately destined to work in the tar sands. Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) began using 500 Chinese labourers on a "guest worker" program at their Horizons Oilsands Project last year. The SPP is a cost-effective means of importing needed labour and keeping costs down at the same time, through enacting 'labour mobility' and allowing non-citizen workers to be exploited at rates currently unreported.

The Alberta Federation of Labour points out that 2006 was the first year that the number of people admitted into Alberta who were not even allowed to apply to become landed immigrants (let alone citizens) exceeded the number of new immigrants. With agreements like the SPP in place, this will increase sharply. With TILMA, every time a labour right is undermined, it becomes the new bottom line.

According to Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour, "Employers are using temporary foreign workers as a way to suppress wages and working conditions and to avoid legitimate unions...we oppose the importation of hundreds of workers just to complete a job and then sending them back home. That is exploitation."

The truly daunting reality is that the production level being proposed will have no other option: the only way to keep up with projected production rates is to bring in people from outside.

The guest worker programs keep non-status workers in camps where they are not allowed visitations by any union. The only means by which such a "guest" will be allowed to stay beyond the term of their contract (up to 24 months) is if the employer applies, not the individual. Figures on pay and to whom it is delivered are not available and have not yet been obtained by organized labour in Alberta--we simply do not know how much migrant workers in the tar sands are being paid.

The "guest workers" may not end up only in the camps. The proposed size of tar sands expansion is such that constructing infrastructure for vast new energy "inputs" will take thousands of workers as well. Two pipelines of various gas are needed "in" to the tar sands for every pipeline going "out."

The energy needed to go into the tar sands are slated to come from the natural gas in such places as Alaska's north slope, coal-fired mega plants in Alberta, proposed nuclear reactors in the Peace Region and near Whitecourt, along with the industrialization of the Mackenzie Valley (and much more). The outward shipping of bitumen-sludge (later converted to mock oil) entails corridors across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and more, all the way to Texas and Louisiana. These schemes, in particular the one known as the Keystone Pipeline headed by TransCanada, is already causing the AFL to warn of dire consequences for job loss and deregulation of currently union-run operations.

The other corridor for sending sludge to refineries is slated to be across British Columbia, over the lands of the Carrier, Gixtsan, Haisla, Tsimshian and other unceded nations to a yet-to-be-constructed port to operate out of Kitimat, where oil could theoretically be shipped to California, Japan and China. The same port would serve to import "diluent" from Russia, a kerosene-like substance used to make the thick mud of bitumen flow like oil in a pipe.

"Pipeline ruptures happen, they're inevitable," says Gerald Amos of the Haisla Nation from Gitamaat Village on the Coast of B.C., where the construction of a Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) port is being planned.

"We just don't know the location yet...All of the proponents of the Gateway project and all the other pipelines which would mean more tanker traffic here point out that we've had tanker traffic here, big ships coming in for about 40 to 50 years now. I think you are talking about a substantially different ball game when you talk about supertankers."

This project, the "Enbridge Gateway," is currently delayed due to lawsuits launched by seven First Nations, Indian Act-mandated governments and the China National Petroleum Company's withdrawal from the project.

Other pipelines heading southward are the Alberta Clipper Project and the Spearhead Expansion Project, also led by Enbridge, a self-described "leader in energy transportation." In June of this year, the first new refinery in the United States in decades was announced. The map shows only some of the refineries planning to receive tar sands bitumen.

Under the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, every single project in the Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River tar sands region has been approved. TILMA will streamline the regulations in line with these projects across all of B.C. and Alberta. It will also mean the elimination of a long-time moratorium on oil and gas offshore tankers on the central coast of B.C.

Kitimat and Gitamaat Village, currently host to major Gray and Humpback whale migration, would see 330 super tankers of oil and gas a year migrating offshore, according to the Dogwood Initiative. Nations up and down the proposed corridor would see a loss of forest cover in areas where giant grizzlies still roam near ranchlands.

The oil and gas going to and from the tar sands would cross rivers and streams and the tankers will come near 1,000 salmon spawning areas. Upon completion, the entire 1,200-plus kilometre pipeline systems would provide 75 full-time jobs. Enbridge has quietly shifted gears towards building the infrastructure to send the current bump in oil production to Texas, promising to complete this project at a later date.

That later date may well coincide with the B.C. government's other "Pacific Gateway Strategy," designed to use TILMA, the SPP, the 2010 Olympics and vast tar sands export growth to make the West Coast of Canada a major hub of de-regulated trade with Asia.

It could soon be illegal and not 'merely' politically difficult to regulate how these constructions go ahead. Environmental regulation, revenue for nations who approve the use of their lands, taxation for reclamation purposes, requirements on unionization for the construction--all of these things are being legislated and signed away.

With TILMA, Alberta and B.C. have united to ensure that the oil dug out of the earth is sent south, at an incomprehensible rate. The primary legacy of the project will be run-away climate emissions, the second fastest rate of deforestation on earth, the dismantling of previously won workers' rights, a sacrifice area in Alberta the size of Florida and the removal of meaningful democratic oversight at the community level.

The usual critiques of the SPP and TILMA are not inaccurate. Placing new developments in a global context, however, changes our understanding of what is driving this latest set of deals. Instability around the planet, dwindling reserves of oil, a collapsing American dollar and more are exposing imperial economic structures to a level of insecurity unknown in a generation. By lurching headlong in 2003 towards the Albertan tar sands, the US has made the rising price of oil work to their advantage, rather than its opposite; when the price of oil goes up, those who invest heavily in expensive, unconventional oil gain a larger foothold in market share.

The SPP and TILMA have been drawn up to increase and integrate this into a decades-long strategy for North American economic stability, a strategy that does not address our dependence on oil. Understanding the true nature of these plans allows people to make informed decisions about what to do during the rapid changes in energy politics--changes that will affect the entire population of North America (and the planet) for decades to come.

SPP Tar Sands

NAFTA Trade Corridors

The Richest First Nation in Canada

dru — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:42:53 +0000

Ecological and political life in Fort MacKay

The primarily Indigenous, mostly Cree (also 'Chipewyan Dene') community of Fort MacKay--just north of the internationally famous tar sand "boom" city of Fort McMurray--is said to be the "richest First Nation in Canada." The alleged wealth is largely due to the fact that the community is surrounded by, and on top of, tar sand.

Home to about 500 residents, Fort Mackay is the only official community north of Fort McMurray on highway 63, and lies 40-odd kilometres down the Athabasca River. On a remote northern highway like this one, one would normally see car traffic every few minutes. On this particular road, cars go by every few seconds. When shifts at tar sands processing plants change over--the plants operate around the clock--the traffic is bumper-to-bumper and slows way beneath posted limits. Where two generations ago, there was nothing but muskeg forest, there is now sandy wasteland. Where there were rivers, there are now nine-storey-deep holes. Where there were lakes with fish, there are now "tailing ponds" filled with toxic waste left over from the extraction process--cannons are fired to prevent birds from landing in them and dying. Syncrude's largest such "pond" is surrounded by one of the largest earthen-built dams on the planet.

"Every which direction you look, they're [tar sands extraction plants] all around us, they're all around. And these two up above us here, those are the worst ones. These two are the worst polluters...that's Syncrude and Suncor, they're the worst ones because they're so close to us too, you know?" Celina Harpe told us. An elder in Fort MacKay, Harpe has lived here all her life. When the mining operations began in the 1960s, they brought many changes, including serious health problems, to the community.

"People only died of old age in our days...very seldom--maybe the odd now and then, but other than that, few deaths, very few. But now? [deaths] right and left, young people 37, 34, 43...in their forties, early fifties. People are dying here."

"It's got something to do with these plants, I'm sure of it myself because I've been here my whole life--in our day that's not the way it was."

After the plants began to operate, the water began to make people concerned for their health. Many locals who ran trap lines nearby lost their lines when the land was "scraped off," in mining terms. Those whose trap lines were not destroyed describe the disappearance of many of the animals they depended upon for their food and their livelihood.

Blueberries and Saskatoon berries were once so abundant that everyone had more than enough to flavour their favorite recipes. Now, locals report, they are not scarce--they are simply gone.

Today, there is suspicion about the collusion of the Fort MacKay administration with Syncrude, Suncor and other corporations: companies that have been the driving force of the drastic changes in living conditions that have occurred in Fort MacKay.

The facts of the drastic changes visited upon Fort MacKay by operations like Syncrude and Suncor are not disputed. Few speak out as defiantly as Harpe. Whether because of the perceived inevitability of tar sands mining or the millions of dollars in "partnerships" offered by oil companies, the local Indian Act government--the Fort Mackay First Nation--is going along with mining. (Under the Indian Act, the federal Minister of Indian Affairs has control over the funding of the Band.) While many others oppose the mining, they are less apt to go on the record in a small community like Fort MacKay.

Now, the Fort MacKay First Nation wants to begin a new joint venture with Shell in the tar sands themselves. This means that Fort MacKay will likely find itself opposed by the two First Nations of Fort Chipewyan, which is downstream from the tar sands. Fort Chipewyan has seen a drastic increase in rates of rare forms of cancer and other illnesses, but has not seen the millions in investment and "community partnerships."

Perhaps as a result, its representatives oppose the expansion of the tar sands, and may find themselves in conflict with Fort MacKay in the approval process. However, it is an "open secret" that the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board review process is not much of a process. The board has yet to refuse a single application for tar sand mining.

Today, the problems of Fort McMurray have extended to Fort MacKay. There are many victims of random violence in the small community, violence often tied to drug and alcohol abuse. Downstream of the massive plant for Suncor along the Athabasca River, there is a collective sense of defeat to these "side-effects." And when you cannot see the plumes rising out of the stacks, you can smell them in Fort MacKay's living rooms--the smell of burning tar all day, every day.

A trip out to the Suncor plant by river can give one a sense of the size of the intrusion. The plant is located approximately 12 kilometres from MacKay as the crow flies. There, huge volumes of water are sucked out of the river. Some of the worst effects are the various forms of pollution that are expelled into the air and the water in the area right at the plant. Suncor has colonized an island in the middle of the Athabasca River--turning it into a giant tailings island of waste material. The size of the dykes has been growing for 40 years. Some day, they may give way.

The speed of growth of the tar sands, the quantities of money that will be infused to develop them, and the vast influx of migrant workers from other parts of Canada and beyond trigger social breakdown in varying degrees. Alienated, unhappy work forces will abuse drugs and alcohol, leading to violence, prostitution, elder and spousal abuse and children fathered by workers who are long gone.

Perhaps nowhere are the symptoms of this breakdown more acute than in Fort MacKay, where the niece of a top band council member was hospitalized after being beaten over the head days before our visit.

Today in Fort MacKay, there is a resignation of fate for many members of the community. Syncrude and Suncor make it known that they want to be seen as the companies who "take care" of the community and work in constant co-operation with the residents. Yet there are no open forums and holding a referendum or giving any actual decision-making power to the original owners of the territory is out of the question.

"Keeping you informed" is the slogan attached to a notice posted recently in the Band Council's office building in town. The notice reads: "Suncor Energy Oil Sands would like to notify local residents that throughout June and July there is a potential for increased flaring and emissions for a scheduled tie-in event. Increased flaring may occur during the shut down and start up of Upgrader 2...If you have concerns, call Suncor's Community Consultation Office at..."

Elsewhere in Alberta, flaring is blamed for premature deaths and stillbirths in livestock and human beings.

Throughout the area, Syncrude and Suncor make their names as public as possible -- on calendars, on booths at events, at parks and cultural happenings; their names even permeate annual Treaty Day celebrations.

The Indigenous peoples of the Athabasca region, in particular the community of Fort MacKay, have watched the water turn toxic, muskeg turn into desert. Some community members will no longer eat the fish or moose and many can't trust the water flowing from their own taps. "You can't drink oil to live. You can't eat money to live," said Harpe. "If you've got no water, you've got no life."

Most residents of Fort MacKay aren't as publicly outspoken. But when they get to talking, a transition sometimes takes place. Talk of the inevitability of the projects--of the "it's bad, but what can you do?" variety--is briefly sidelined, and an anger shines through. Words like "crime against humanity" and "getting away with murder" issue from people who now make their living from the tar sands and related employment. In many cases, it surprises the person speaking as much as it surprises us. It seems that having the names "Suncor" and Syncrude" attached to radio commercials, books, events and more has an isolating effect on believing what one sees with one's own eyes.

It makes one wonder what prevailing opinion would be if it were not widely assumed that the unlimited expansion of the tar sands is inevitable and unstoppable. Perhaps that confidence will come in a small community if challenging the tar sands rights to operate starts first in larger centres.

Mackay Sky

Community Notice

A Novel Cause

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 20:43:32 +0000

"North of 9/11" is a book about war, racism, and hysteria - and the people who fight against them

The events themselves may be fictional, but the world of "North of 9/11" will be familiar to Montreal activists.. photo: The cover of "North of 9/11"

Something has been missing from the portrayal of the political landscape in North America. While there are plenty of statistics on the impacts of corporate globalization, war and racism, there are few stories about the people who risk injury, imprisonment and even their lives to fight against them in North America. Activist, academic, and now author David Bernans, attempts to address this omission with his new novel North of 9/11.

Set in Montréal, Québec, North of 9-11 describes the idealism and determination of many of the young would-be revolutionaries in the city. The novel revolves around the Murphy family: Sarah - the 19 year-old raging granddaughter –and her parents: a reactionary father who works in public relations for military contractors, and a liberal mother, sympathetic to her daughter's beliefs.

Bernans' main storyline involves a group of activists plotting direct action in response to the prevailing climate of panic and warmongering post September 11. The target of the action is chosen based on information that young Sarah Murphy gleans from her right-wing American father. The tense exchanges between activists help the reader understand the risks of and reasons for taking direct action.

The events themselves may be fictional, but the world in which they take place will be familiar to Montreal activists. Details of the Concordia University campus and student union will jump out at activists who spend their days there--the effect is less compelling however for readers who haven't taken part in Montréal political battles.

These descriptions do not detract from a story that moves smoothly from family dinners where daughter and father debate US imperialism, to debates between student activists and engineering students on the moral implications of a University hosting corporations that profit from war, to arguments between privileged white activists and their Arabic and Muslim counterparts about tactics post 9/11.

To the uninitiated, the true value of the story is the insight into the hearts and minds of young activists who have cut their teeth during the era of "anti-globalization." Along the way, the reader also learns about the personal motivations and internal conflicts of some of the other elements in the leftist landscape: of fence-sitters like her mother, of student radicals of 35 years earlier, and of members of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. The story is punctuated with dialogue-driven history lessons about the US backed coup that overthrew democracy in Chile and the 1982 massacre of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children in Lebanon. Through Bernans' characters, we start to see the faces – and not just the fists - of those fighting for justice.

By bringing characters, people and movements to life, David Bernans has given readers an opportunity to understand why so many choose a life of struggle over a life of ease. In doing so, Bernans offers a valuable perspective. He also provides something far more important: hope - and perhaps a reason for the reader herself to join the struggle.

Macdonald Stainsby reviews David Bernans' first book: a novel about war, racism, and hysteria - and the people who fight against them.

The Blockade Between Hope and Destruction

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 21:54:18 +0000

Grassy Narrows, Abitibi Consolidated and the Canadian Governments

Chief Saskatcheway, who was chief when Treaty Three was signed, appears on flags and other designs. Photo: Macdonald Stainsby

Many years before the arrival of the white man to the land of the Anishinabe Nation, there was a prophecy that when the white people arrived, they would bring the destruction of the forests and the land that sustains the Anishinabe people. When Montréal-based Abitibi Consolidated began logging the land in the late 1980s, the sound of the machines was enough to cause great concern for many elders.

Years of massive clearcutting took a serious toll on the Anishinabe population living in Grassy Narrows. In 1996, members of the nation decided that it was time to try and do something about it.

Initially, Abitibi held open houses and public gatherings in the nearby settlement town of Kenora, Ontario. In an attempt to deal with the loss of forests to Abitibi, some concerned Anishinabe people attended the consultations and tried to dialogue with Abitibi. The concerns of Indians living with the land were not addressed. Several more steps marked a slow but inevitable escalation. When Abitibi held shareholder meetings, some Anishinabe set up pickets outside; letters were written; petitions were signed.

These were either ignored or treated as a minor nuisance. Meanwhile, the centuries-old prophecy took on a deadly accuracy.

For many years, logging went on in the Whiskey Jack forest without generating much concern. People knew the loggers were working there. People tending their traplines would often hitch rides on back roads with logging-truck. At the time, the logging was selective and not deeply damaging; the operations did not directly gouge the land.

When Abitibi introduced clearcut logging practices to the area, however, the devastation to the entire ecosystem was immediately apparent. When a forest is clearcut, nothing is left except a few trees deemed not profitable enough to cut by the corporation. Moss, mushrooms and the soil itself are torn up, exposing giant patches of barren land.

"I'm not against logging," says Joe Fobister of the Anishinabe Nation. "I'm against how they're doing it, and who is doing it, making millions of dollars off of our land and leaving us nothing."

A shelter near blockade sites, built by volunteers from support groups in Winnipeg and Toronto. Photo: Macdonald Stainsby

"This land is so wealthy. It's our land, and yet we remain the poorest of the poor."

This view is not a monolithic one. The youth, in pushing for more permanent forms of resistance, carried a simple slogan: No negotiations, no compensation, no more clearcutting.

The reason for the first part of the quote is that a) Abitibi wanted to talk while continuing to work in the Whiskey Jack forest, and b) the negotiations that were being proposed involved corporations such as Abitibi, inherently giving them nation-level legitimacy, something that many Anishinabe from Grassy Narrows reject.

Part of the blame, says Fobister, should be laid at the feet of a corrupt band council that acts on behalf of the settler state of Canada.

"The council and the chief make a good living, and get a very good income. In this very poor community, that's why people join the council. They have no real power, but they are scared to risk their funding," he explains. This dynamic — the creation of a de facto ruling comprador class of Indians to implement colonial expropriation of resources — is an all-too-familiar refrain in Nations that resist the assimilationalist policies of Canada and refuse to give up their land to corporations like Abitibi.

Fobister continues, "They are not there for the good of the people, but simply for an income."

The entire Whiskey Jack forest is part of the homeland of the Anishinabe Nation. As Abitibi's work has progressed, the land has been damaged. To date, slightly more than half of the Whiskey Jack forest has been destroyed.

"When they destroy the land, they are attacking my spirituality," explains Fobister. He describes how deer like the grasses that grow in areas recently clearcut, and deposit copious droppings in the area. These droppings enters the water, which the moose drink, causing a brain disease very similar to mad cow disease. Anishinabe People might eat these moose with potential dire effects.

"I used to be comfortable in the bush, but I'm not anymore," says Fobister. "The bears are acting very strangely and are no longer afraid of people; they don't just run away when they see you."

Meeting with people on the reserve, the greatest threat to the health of the nation becomes apparent: clearcut logging causes massive soil erosion, and this in turn releases a normally non-threatening natural form of mercury. This mercury ends up in the water - the water supply of the reserve - as well as in the animals, fish in particular. The Anishinabe nation depends on the land, eating and harvesting the animals and fish as they have for thousands of years.

"Some people have the shakes. [This one elder], his arm shakes badly when he's trying to do something and he can't stop it. You can also lose your sight [from the mercury]. The ones who trap and fish off the land get it especially," explained Ashopenace. "We take it very seriously when someone loses a trapline [to clearcuts] or when more contamination comes in. We hear that more mercury is supposed to come by soon."

Here, one can witness the poisons draining the life out of the people, one at a time. The Canadian and Ontarian governments have done nothing to address the poisoning and the ecological devastation caused by the clearcutting.

The site of the original blockade, which still stands. Photo: Macdonald Stainsby

Several women from the nation delivered an ultimatum to Abitibi workers inside the Whiskey Jack forest in February 2003. After protests at the Montreal head office of Abitibi did not elicit any response, some members of the community decided to symbolically demonstrate their power to the corporate giant. A plan was launched to blockade the logging roads where Abitibi had access to the forests. Several women from the nation delivered a notice: if you have not evacuated the forest by 5 PM tomorrow, you will be blockaded in and you will not get out.

The workers left.

The Anishinabe youth have been among the strongest voices advocating for the rights of the Nation and the preservation of both the land and their traditional means of using it. They argued persuasively that a one-day symbolic protest and blockade would not be enough to deter Abitibi in any real way. They argued for a complete shut down of the forest roads period, thus bringing an end to logging - at least for the time being.

Ashopenace remarks, "We [the youth] already wanted to do something more, we knew that one day wouldn't be enough. We wanted to do more damage. [Now] we are slowing them down and reducing their profits."

It was only after a year of round-the-clock rotating blockades that Abitibi saw a need to talk to the people who live in Grassy Narrows.

"We fed them and tried to get them to relax, but you could see they were still very nervous to be here," explains Ashopenace.

He describes the corporate representatives' defence of their logging practices: "Abitibi said they are trying to provide economic development for the community." He says, "It was hard to hear the debate because the youth were openly laughing at how ridiculous the arguments were. The argument was that Abitibi doesn't have obligations because the treaty [Treaty 3] was between Canada and Anishinabe and had nothing to do with them." When it comes to responsibility for the poisoning of the community, their food supply, the animals and the land itself, "Abitibi blames a paper mill that comes out of Dryden [approximately 200 kilometers away from Grassy Narrows] and says 'you need to talk with them.'"

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has the official responsibility to uphold environmental regulations. While MNR holds jurisdiction, regulations allow for almost all mining, forestry, oil drilling and similar resource extraction work is "assessed" by the very same company that wishes to dig, drill, cut and so on.

In Canada, the fox is in charge of the henhouse.

Chief Saskatcheway, previous to the Indian Act, signed treaty 3 from the traditional, non-hierarchical political system that many nations including the Anishinabe practiced before the imposition of the band council system. It was not interpreted or understood by the nation — who then decided on such matters by consensus - as a surrender of title or land. To this day, the elders maintain that they would not have signed any such treaty.

The legacy of Treaty 3 is still disputed. Yet, not even the Canadian government's own interpretation of the treaty is honored. Members of the Nation are trying to challenge the rights of Ontario, Abitibi or Canada itself to claim the Nation's land for themselves.

Fobister speaks about dealing with Abitibi about this challenge: "They are afraid that if we can control our land, if we can prove it is ours and always has been, that this will mean the same thing elsewhere, that then other nations will follow."

"I told them that that's their problem, not mine," he adds.

The idea of having talks at all with Abitibi— rather than the state of Canada—continues to be problematic. Many nationals point out that even talking to Abitibi at a table that includes both the nations of Anishinabe and Canada confers on a forestry corporation the same status as a nation. The only legitimate talks, say many Anishinabe, would take place between the governments who make laws.

But for the Canadian government, it appears that Nation to Nation talks between the Anishinabe and Canada must be avoided at all costs. If Abitibi were accountable to the law of the land as negotiated between Nations, it would establish the de facto existence of the Anishinabe as a Nation. Judging by the government's across-the-board intransigence in sovereignty negotiations, this would be a worst case scenario for the colonial state. But talks have continued, meetings still get held and money is even accepted in the short term from Abitibi, in exchange for continuation of operations.

"Those who want a deal are operating for today, just to get the money, and not even that much money really," explains Judy Da Silva. "It is the youth and others who blockade that are thinking long term, thinking about the future, about preserving the forest, our traditions with the land and our way of life."

Roberta Keesick makes the case more bluntly.

"The government wants us off the land, they want us to be assimilated," she states. "They don't want us to be who we are."

Ashopenace explains the dynamic.

"With the destruction of the forests, it's our whole way of life and culture that's getting sick." He describes areas in the Whiskey Jack forest that might hold the key to the ancient history of his people.

"[In the Whiskey Jack Forest] there are some historical rock paintings that are thousands of years old. These are in areas we call virgin land. If Abitibi continues doing what they are doing, with their roads, their cutting and so on, we might lose these."

His assessment is severe.

"What Canada is doing is ignoring us when we try to bring attention to how our rights are being violated. The world needs to open their eyes as to how Canada really is."

Many say there are only three options to deal with the social problems and poverty of the Nation. First, people could accept the clearcutting as "economic development", and try to secure temporary work while the land and their connection to it is decimated. Second, they could try to develop eco-tourism as a means of using their knowledge of the land to bring in much needed dollars, but at the risk of commercializing their own history and reducing themselves once again to a secondary role in their own woods and waterways. The third option is for things to remain as they are, with people living subsistence lives with no jobs and little income.

A fourth option defies orthodoxy, but is becoming more appealing as the situation deteriorates with little recourse for those stuck in a colonial system of governance. The people could take control of their lands back from the Canadian state and assert their right to self-determination in accordance with prior treaties and international law on the preservation of National culture. This fourth option involves nothing short of decolonizing the Nation of Anishinabe.

For anyone who visits, it is clear that the process is already underway.

One of the most remarkable changes to come from the last few years of blockades has been the increased self-confidence of the Anishinabe people. By taking matters into their own hands, they have taken back a modicum of control over their own destiny.

The area near where the main blockade was originally established is now a common gathering place for many purposes, whether praying at the sacred fire in the wigwam or to roast wieners on the large open firepit a few feet from the site of the first blockade.

I was sitting by that firepit one night with an eight-year old girl from the Nation, and I asked her a few questions.

"How do you feel about the blockade?"

"I feel good," she answered.

What do you want Abitibi and the government to do?"

"I want them to stop logging."

"What do you think will happen if they don't stop logging?"

"Then my mommy will have to keep on warring," she said.

Then abruptly, she got out of the chair and ran off to play with other kids and her puppy. As the sun set near the blockade, the roar of the machines of Abitibi remained absent from the Anishinabe Whiskey Jack forest for another day. And the sun always rises again.

Macdonald Stainsby discusses the history of the blockades and the struggle for self-determination at Grassy Narrows.