Protesters serve dirty water

Oil investors pass on oilsands H2O

BY ALICIA FOX

June 17, 2008 01:31

Tainted water from a lake near Fort Chipewyan and from the Athabasca River, was offered to international investors and members of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers by environmental protestors yesterday at the Calgary Hyatt Hotel.
“We’re here to tell the investing community that if they’re investing in the oilsands, they’re investing in something that comes with an increasing price tag,” said Mike Hudema from Greenpeace Canada.
Lionel Lepine from the Chipewyan aboriginal community said even the kids are wary about swimming in the lake and eating fowl or fish from the area which could be contaminated with arsenic and mercury due to oil sand production.
“Our whole tradition and way of life is in jeopardy,” Lepine said.

Energy firms put on the spot

Symposium lures investors and protesters

Jon Harding

Calgary Herald

Monday, June 16, 2008

Oil and gas companies swimming in cash. Protesters handing out bottles of Athabasca River water.

Both await 350 of the top institutional investors in the Canadian oilpatch as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) investment symposium begins Monday in Calgary.

The annual CAPP event opens with a different backdrop to a year ago, when drilling activity in Western Canada was in a rut and capital markets were dry as dust, particularly for scores of Canada’s junior and intermediate explorers.

Oil prices are fluttering towards $140 US a barrel and natural gas prices are up roughly 70 per cent since January — an almost immeasurable difference, although one that investors in equities have still not taken completely to heart. Some Canadian oil and gas stocks are up but the group as a whole has lagged behind growth in surging oil and natural gas.

Meanwhile, the world’s focus on Alberta’s oilsands has recently intensified amid global supply constraints and growing concern about the massive play’s environmental footprint.

Energy battles boiling over

Energy battles boiling over

Industry faces public conflict across Alberta

Richard Cuthbertson and Dan Healing, with files from Renata

Calgary Herald

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

CREDIT: Ted Jacob, Calgary Herald Native elder Taz McGillis of Edmonton takes part in a protest Monday at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers symposium at Calgary’s Hyatt Regency hotel.

A Wall Street analyst attending Calgary’s prominent energy investment forum found himself in the eye of a growing environmental storm battering Alberta’s oilsands — one of several clashes centred on the energy sector Monday.

About 50 people gathered outside the Hyatt Regency to protest the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers investment conference, an annual event that draws hundreds of oil executives and well-heeled corporate clientele from around the globe.

Ross Levin, a New York hedge fund analyst, decided to find out what the fuss was about, but when Greenpeace spokesperson Mike Hudema offered him a bottle of muddy Lake Athabasca water to drink — the main source of water for the booming oilsands — he declined.

Natural Resources Defense Council to Oil Companies: Stop Tar Sands Fuel

Recently, 500 ducks mistook a lake of toxic tar sands waste in Alberta for one of the many pristine waters in Canada’s Boreal forests. Once coated with the oily residue, the ducks couldn’t fly away and they all died. Many had flown from the United States on their way to have their young in the Boreal. The deceptive waters of the enormous waste lagoons were likely too attractive for them on their long trek north. Tar sands oil is just as deceptive as a solution to our energy needs.

The death of 500 ducks was one more warning about harm caused by mining and drilling Canada’s Boreal forests for the tar sands oil that lies deep under the surface. Beneath the carpet of blue waters and green forests of the Province of Alberta, the tar sands are sand mixed with a sticky substance called bitumen. This bitumen – after using lots of energy and water – can be turned into synthetic crude oil, and from there into fuel for our cars, trucks and airplanes.

In addition to the problems of torn up forests and toxic lagoons, the process for making the synthetic crude produces three times the greenhouse gases per barrel as conventional oil production.

Alberta Should Say No to Upgraders

Alta shouldn’t approve Edmonton oilsands refineries without greener rules: report

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By: John Cotter, THE CANADIAN PRESS

EDMONTON – Alberta should not approve as many as six more oilsands upgraders near Edmonton until the province has a solid plan to limit the huge amount of fresh water they will use and to better manage the pollution they will produce, a new study says.

The Pembina Institute’s Oilsands Fever report, released on Monday, says nine bitumen upgraders are expected to begin operating just northeast of the capital between 2015 and 2020.

Together they would consume 10 times as much water as the City of Edmonton each year and spew 45 megatonnes of greenhouses gases – the equivalent to an amount produced by 10 million vehicles, the report says.

Investing in Environmental Destruction and Cultural Genocide

Petroleum meeting greeted by protesters

Investors at a petroleum symposium in Calgary Monday were challenged to taste water taken from Lake Athabasca in northern Alberta. (CBC)Oilsands protesters challenged investors at a Calgary petroleum conference on Monday to drink from bottles of murky water from Lake Athabasca, which sits near Alberta’s major oilsands developments.

Environmentalists joined residents from the Fort Chipewyan area in northern Alberta at the annual symposium of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to ask the oil and gas industry to slow down development long enough to fully study the water supply downstream from oilsands projects.

The protesters also wanted to attract the attention of hundreds of investors at the symposium.

“Our kids, my children, they swim in that water. They drink that water every day. They drink it and we drink it out of our taps, so if it’s safe, they should be able to take a drink of it too,” Lionel Lepine, a member of the 1,500-member Athabasca Fort Chipewyan First Nation, told CBC News outside the downtown meeting.