Friends of the Lubicon
PO Box 444 Stn D,
Etobicoke ON M9A 4X4
Tel: (416) 763-7500
Email: fol (at) tao (dot) ca
www.lubicon.ca
February 1, 2008
Two more oil company heavyweights -- Imperial Oil and Exxon Mobile Canada (EMC) -- have now requested intervenor status in the Utilities Commission hearing to support TransCanada's North Central Corridor pipeline application to build a jumbo pipeline across unceded Lubicon Territory over Lubicon objections. "As major producers and shippers of natural gas on the NGTL (Nova Gas Transportation Ltd. gas pipeline) system and with significant positions in Alberta's oil sands", their joint request states, "Imperial and EMC have a direct and substantive interest in the application".
Earlier Shell Canada and Suncor also requested intervenor status to support the TransCanada application.
Suncor's request says:
"Of particular importance to Suncor is a secure and reliable supply of natural gas for it's (major) oil sands facilities in North-eastern Alberta. In addition to a curtailment of bitumen production and upgraded products (bitumen is the tar sands and upgraded products is the oil wrung from the bitumen), disruptions to the supply of natural gas to Suncor's facilities could cause major safety and operational issues -- and potentially severe physical damages."
Shell's application says:
"Shell is a producer in Alberta with gas plants that are connected to the NGTL system and is a shipper on the NGTL system, we therefore have an interest in the proceedings of this application."
Shell is of course saying that it supports construction of the proposed pipeline because it wants to use the proposed pipeline to ship it's natural gas to north-eastern Alberta to be used in exploitation of the tar sands.
Shell also has a major tar sands facility to the west of Lubicon Territory and holds large tar sands leases and interests across Lubicon Territory. Instead of strip mining the bitumen and then processing it to extract the oil -- like Suncor and the other companies in the Fort McMurray area do -- Shell injects water in the form of steam into the fragile boreal subsurface in order to liquefy the bitumen sufficiently to be pumped to the surface and processed. In both cases the water used is lost forever, either because it is irreversibly contaminated or because it cannot be economically retrieved.
Originally the Shell plant was using water from a fresh water lake about 16 kilometers from the Lubicon community of Little Buffalo Lake but it took so much water from the lake in just a few months that it drained the lake to the point where the remaining water froze solid and killed all the fish. Shell therefore started taking the water it needed from the mighty Peace River. At last note Shell was taking 18,000 cubic meters of water a day from the Peace River, heating it into steam and injecting it into the fragile boreal subsurface to liquify the tar sands sufficiently so it could be pumped out of the ground. Finite fresh water resources, huge energy requirements and huge manpower requirements are the three main bottlenecks the oil industry faces in proceeding headlong with devastation of the environment on which the inhabitants of the planet depend for survival.
Aside from significant depletion of finite fresh water resources, nobody has any idea what the environmental consequences of injecting huge volumes of steam into the fragile boreal subsurface might be. The question isn't really even being asked. The entire focus is on how much money can be made and where one can get all of the necessary water, manpower and energy.
These companies are among the biggest, wealthiest and most politically powerful entities in the world. They are supporting construction of the TransCanada pipeline in order to have access to natural gas to exploit the tar sands until they can convince the public that nuclear power is good for children and other living things. It is clearly their intention to develop nuclear energy plants as a "more appropriate" source of energy to exploit the tar sands (instead of using commercially valuable natural gas). Then the crafty devils will be able to market the natural gas as well as the tar sands oil -- at least until they render the planet uninhabitable for human life as we know it.
The stakes are thus so big that the rights of the Lubicons almost seem inconsequential. But human rights are not inconsequential if any of this is to have any meaning and the issue has to be cut somewhere. TransCanada's application to build this pipeline across unceded Lubicon Territory over the objections of the aboriginal owners of the land now makes confrontation unavoidable for the Lubicons and a pretty good place to start for everybody else concerned with human rights and the future of the planet.
fol-request at masses.tao.ca