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 7, 2008
Today more gas and oil industry companies filed Statements of Intent to Participate in the Alberta Utilities Commission hearing on the huge gas pipeline that TransCanada is proposing to build through unceded Lubicon Territory over Lubicon objections. Hopefully this will be the end of them since today is supposedly the last day the Commission will accept Statements.
The end of all of these statements contains a list of those who have filed Statements of Intent to Participate. The list is called the "Integrated Application Registry Application Query".
Always before this list has seemed up-to-date. However the Lubicons filed a Statement of Intent to Participate on February 6th which has yet to appear although the list contains the names of the following 5 companies who filed their Statements on February 7th. Tomorrow the Lubicons will ask why the Lubicon Statement of Intent to Participate is not recorded.
The 5 companies who filed Statements with the Commission today are:
1.) Total E & P Canada that indicates it "holds significant interests in Alberta's oil sands, holding oil sand leases, operating an in-situ bitumen recovery plant and having submitted regulatory applications for a mine project and bitumen upgrader".
2.) Syncrude Canada Ltd. -- one of the biggest and most notorious tar sands processing plants in the Fort McMurray area -- that indicates "As a major consumer of natural gas on the NTGL system and with a significant position in Alberta's oil sands, Syncrude has a direct and substantive interest in this Application".
3.) Petro-Canada Oil Sands Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of ex-Canadian federal Crown Corporation Petro-Canada -- that together with Teck Cominco and UTS Energy owns something called the Fort Hills Project which "was created to develop, mine, extract, upgrade, and market synthetic crude oil from the oil sands underlying approximately 46,000 contiguous acres located approximately 90 kilometers north of Fort McMurray, Alberta".
4.) Petro-Canada that -- in addition to being a partner in the Fort Hills Project -- indicates it is in its own right "a major producer, refiner, shipper and marketer of natural gas, oil and bitumen in Alberta".
5.) ATCO pipelines that indicates that it is concerned that its facilities "could be directly affected by any material hydraulic change to NGTL's flow patterns that may result from construction of the (proposed new pipeline)...and also...about the magnitude and drivers behind the proposed facilities in relation to NGTL's existing rate base and the affects on NGTL's tolling structure."
The magnitude of the forces that are lining up to push this huge new pipeline through unceded Lubicon Territory to feed exploitation of the tar sands -- with all of the associated environmental and other concerns including depletion of finite water resources, generation of nuclear waste and production of massive amounts of green house gases -- is almost incomprehensible. The Lubicons truly do have their finger in the dike, and they are truly the world's yellow canary.
fol-request at masses.tao.ca