Every second the counter on the Syncrude web site goes up by another 3 ticks – indicating 3 more barrels of sweet crude oil put into the great oil engine that drives the economic, commercial and political systems that you are part of.
Syncrude seem rather proud of their oil sands operation. They say, “According to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, Alberta’s oil sand deposits contain approximately 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen, of which over 175 billion are recoverable with current technology, and 315 billion barrels are ultimately recoverable with technological advances. The Athasbasca Oil Sands Deposit is, by itself, the largest petroleum resource in the world.”
Now that’s something to talk about. Not that the talk should be in the glowing terms that Syncrude coat each word with, from the dripping oil that shimmers on the Sustainability pages of their web site, to the half a million barrels of crude a day that they say will be delivered into the welcoming, warming world by 2015. Syncrude have nothing to be proud of.
A front line report in today’s Guardian sheds clear light on the dirty world that is Athabasca Sands:
Apart from the smell, you get little sense of what the oil sands are like unless you drive 45 minutes up Highway 63 and take a site tour of, say, Syncrude, a consortium that includes Imperial Oil and Petro-Canada. You might know that it’s the world’s largest producer of synthetic crude, but it still takes a while to comprehend the awesome size of its operations here. After the boreal forest is cleared and the peat bog removed, what’s left is dark, molasses-like, oil-saturated sand, which is then transported by trucks with tyres as high as two-storey houses. When full, they weigh more than two Boeing 747s; they can crush a pick-up truck without noticing it.
That’s what Syncrude is about. A partnership of some of the giants of the Canadian oil industry: Imperial Oil, ConocoPhilips, PetroCanada…Imperial Oil? Actually it’s ExxonMobil to you and me. Yes, ExxonMobil, once again spreading their oily arms wide to welcome the filthy riches being dug out of the heart of one of the most vital ecosystems on Earth.
It’s not just Syncrude, though, but also Shell, another of the “Big Four” oil companies who are intent on sucking their own 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the Athabasca field, and who write so eloquently on their web site:
“We believe that oil and gas will be integral to the global energy needs for economic development for many decades to come. Our role is to ensure that we extract and deliver them profitably and in environmentally and socially responsible ways”
Yes, that’s right: environmentally and socially responsible ways. Let’s all have a big group hug and say “welcome” to the saviours of the Canadian economy – and the slaughterers of our planet.
Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.greenseniors.org