Stevie's Oil Ugliness . . .

SLATE ASKS: Saudi Arabia. Nigeria. Venezuela. Canada? Is our neighbor to the north becoming a jingoistic petro-state?

Take, for instance, the country that provides by far the largest share of our petroleum imports. Its regime, in thrall to big oil interests, has grown increasingly bellicose, labeling environmental activists “radicals” and “terrorists” and is considering a crackdown on nonprofits that oppose its policies. It blames political dissent on the influence of “foreigners,” while steamrolling domestic opposition to oil projects bankrolled entirely by overseas investors. Meanwhile, its skyrocketing oil exports have sent the value of its currency soaring, enriching energy industry barons but crippling other sectors of its economy.

Yes, Canada is becoming a jingoistic petro-state.

Oh, to see ourselves as others see us. And with the Head Jingo, Stevie, at the helm, well, the next 3 years are going to pass very slowly, but eventually, de-nazification will commence. Save the papers, videos, e-mails, all the evidence for Stevie's day in court.

"Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta"

says Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle.

PetroChina, the world's second largest oil company, is buying a 60% majority stake in two Athabasca Oil Sands Corp tar sands projects. The $1.9 billion deal will provide Chinese capital for Athabasca which controls about 1.3 million acres of oil sands properties containing as many as five billion barrels of reserves in Alberta. The deal is slated to go through on Oct 31.

"Sveinung Svarte, chief executive of Athabasca, said the company would likely ship its initial output to U.S. refiners, but would consider other export routes if they open up."

In 2005 the state-owned PetroChina signed a memorandum with Enbridge to take up to half the space on its proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to the port of Kitimat in BC.
Enbridge is applying to build the pipeline this year, so presumably PetroChina will eventually be able to ship its newly acquired share of Alberta oilsands straight home to China.

Athabasca does not foresee any "issues" from Investment Canada.
Oilweek :

"Such a takeover would be subject to a new provision recently incorporated into the Investment Canada Act, under which the federal government could block a deal from a foreign firm if it was deemed to pose a threat to national security. But Ottawa will likely wave through the deal.

Geopolitics Central economist Vince Lauerman : ""Given the environmental factor down in the states, it only makes sense to diversify our customers, especially to customers that are somewhat less concerned about the environment in general and greenhouse gas emissions in particular."

The Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta, said Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle."

Yup. Just in case this :
August 2009 : Washington approves oil sands pipeline

"The Obama administration yesterday approved [an Enbridge] pipeline to carry oil-sands fuel from Canada into the US, saying its action was designed to send "a positive economic signal in a difficult economic period".

reverts back to this :
June 2008 : Obama's fight against 'dirty oil' could hurt oil sands

"Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed he would break America's addiction to "dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive" oil if he is elected U.S. president -- and one of his first targets might well be Canada's oil sands."

Good to know the Cons' criticism of China's crappy environment record - their stated reason for blowing off the Kyoto Accord - isn't likely to stand in the way of selling China the product of our own crappy environment record.

How the US will react to this possible threat to 'North American energy security' is anybody's guess.
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Related : Laila Yuile : Support divided for Enbridge Northern Pipeline
The Tyee : Environmental groups demand public inquiry into Enbridge Pipeline
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NAFTA has made us patsies

This week the Canadian American Business Council will be running this full-page ad in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the National Journal, in advance of Obama's visit to Ottawa. The purpose of the ads, according to CABC, "is to remind Americans about how important Canada is and how intertwined our interests have become."

The ad prominantly features a famous quote from John F. Kennedy during his visit to Canada in 1961 : "Geography has made us neighbours ... economics has made us partners "

and states : "Canada is poised to securely supply even more oil and natural gas to the U.S"

The chairman of the CABC advisory board is the current Canadian ambassador to the U.S. and former NAFTA negotiator Michael Wilson.
Canadian ambassador Michael Wilson explained his position on Canada/US relations in this speech from June last year, courtesy of the Government of Canada website :

Advancing the North American Economic Area

"Economic integration is happening. Our businesses and consumers are making it happen"
"Building a competitive North American platform is essential"
"to engage the world as a North American economic powerhouse."
"a strong, dynamic, and increasingly integrated North American economy."
"we need to continually position ourselves better — position North America better"
"the North American economic partnership is working"
"developing a sectoral approach to improving North American competitiveness"
"committed to keeping the North American supply chain running smoothly"
"we must stake-out a strategic position for North American companies"
"We [Canada] are champions for improvements to the infrastructure that our North
American industries depend on."

There's lots more quotes about the importance of North American economic integration from our Canadian ambassador to the US/chairman of the CABC advisory panel but you get the general idea.


There are of course dissenters ...

Thomas Walkom writes in The Star that Harper, abetted by Iggy, is using the budget implementation Bill C-10 :

"to introduce measures to weaken environmental laws affecting rivers and lakes, limit federal oversight of most foreign investment and scale back some of Canada's few remaining restrictions on foreign ownership."

Two days ago a coalition of unions and religious, environmental, student and social justice organizations sent a letter to Harper urging the renegotiation of NAFTA. It specifically calls for the elimination of the energy clause requiring Canada to continue to export oil and natural gas to the U.S., even in times of crisis, and the scrapping of the Security and Prosperity Partnership which "has excluded Parliamentary oversight, lacked any consultation with civil society, and led to further deregulation that has benefited only corporations."

On Tuesday Bruce Campbell, director of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, will also call for a revamping of NAFTA :

His report, titled The Obama Effect, urges Ottawa to, among other things, work to exclude water from NAFTA and ban bulk water exports, as well as putting more emphasis on ensuring basic public services like medicare and education can be expanded without risk of NAFTA challenges from foreign investors.

Without those NAFTA changes and the scrapping of the now even more secret SPP corporate advisory panels, that ad from CABC actually reads more like this :
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Expanded from yesterday's post at Creekside

A view of the tar sands you're not likely to hear from the government

There is a price to pay for Harper's "Energy Superpower" ambitions. Aida Edemariam writing in the Guardian spells out a few of them in a long article highlighting the troubles around the Athabasca tar sands. (All emphasis mine)

Current technology means companies can reach only about 10% of deposits, but even that makes the Athabasca oil sands the second largest proven oil reserve in the world. Add in the so far unreachable 90%, and Alberta's oil reserves would be at least six times the size of Saudi Arabia's. Already Canada produces as much oil as Kuwait. Soon it'll be two Kuwaits. Canada is the biggest single supplier of crude oil to the US. Small wonder Canada is increasingly described as the world's next great energy superpower.

[...]

The extraction of the oil requires heat, and thus the burning of vast amounts of natural gas - effectively one barrel of gas to extract two of crude - and some estimate that Fort McMurray and the Athabasca oil sands will soon be Canada's biggest contributor to global warming; nearly as much as the whole of Denmark. This in an area that has already seen, according to David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, two degrees of warming in the past 40 years.

[...]

The oil sands excavations are changing the surface of the planet. The black mines can now be seen from space. In 10 years, estimates Schindler, they are "going to look like one huge open pit" the size of Florida. Acid rain is already killing trees and damaging foliage. The oil companies counter that they are replanting - grass for bison, 4.5m trees by Syncrude alone - but the muskeg (1,000-year-old peat bog and wooded fen, which traps snow melt and prevents flash floods, and is home to endangered woodland caribou) is irreplaceable.

Two barrels of water are required to extract one barrel of oil; every day as much water is taken from the Athabasca river as would serve a city of a million people. Although the water is extensively recycled, it cannot be returned to the rivers, so it ends up in man-made "tailings ponds" (tailings is a catch-all term for the byproducts of mining), which are also visible from space. According to the US Department of the Interior, the dam holding back Syncrude's pond is the largest, by volume of construction material, in the world. Four of the projects haven't started production yet, so their tailings ponds haven't begun, but theirs, too, will soon be full of sand and what Schindler calls "dead water" because, he says, they're full of carcinogenic hydrocarbons and toxic trace metals such as mercury, cadmium and arsenic, all topped off, in Syncrude's case, with an oil slick.

[...]

The federal government, led by a conservative Albertan, talks tough, but quietly approves more and more projects, even though the oil sands would have to be shut down altogether if Canada was to have a hope of meeting its commitment to the Kyoto agreement on reduction of emissions aggravating climate change. Everyone, as Canadian author Peter Marsden argues in a book unambiguously titled Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and Doesn't Seem to Care), is turning a blind eye.

Does that explain anything?

Mayor Melissa Blake, just back from honeymoon, has the unenviable job of running a town buckling under the demands of a population that has doubled in the past 10 years, from 32,000 to about 65,000 - not counting a shadow population of about 10,000 itinerant construction workers. It is projected to grow by another 40,000 in the next five years. Increasingly, she has been squaring up to the Alberta government and to the oil companies: with one, for more money (funds are allocated on the basis of the stable population, not the shadow population, who pay taxes elsewhere); with the others, to slow, even halt construction of the mining and processing sites until she can catch up. No one seems much inclined to listen, so she is firefighting madly. A new sewage treatment plant, begun before a credit agreement was even in place, will be finished in 2009 - and will be too small a year later. A school that took three years to build was too small a year before it opened. Medical services are almost overwhelmed. Blake estimates that she needs roughly $2bn; this year she has debts of $330m.

[...]

Rents are among the highest in Canada - expensive cities such as Toronto or Vancouver notwithstanding - if there's anything available at all. Converted garages or spare rooms (no kitchen, no separate bathroom) can cost more than $1,000 a month.

Before she came to Fort McMurray looking for a better future for her three children, Inderjit Kaur, 40, taught computers and English in Mohali, in the Punjab. She began by nannying for her sister in exchange for minimum wage and board, and now has two jobs, nannying and taking telephone bookings at the big new recreation centre. She works 7.30am to 10.30pm, with few days off. After tax she earns $2,000 a month; a two-bedroom flat would cost $2,500 a month, so she can't ask her family to join her. She told them it would take a year, but she hasn't seen them for four.

There is a severe shortage of low-income housing in Fort McMurray, and since Kaur is effectively single, she keeps being bumped down the list in favour of families. "Have you been to the bushes?" she demands. In a place where earning $70,000 a year means you're effectively working poor, it is not uncommon for even the employed to resort to living in tents. The city enforces bylaws and moves them on, but people just set up their tents elsewhere.

Read the whole piece.

H/T Cat

Harper, the Oil Industry and Your Money

Question 1: What's amiss with the oil industry's profitability that requires the Canadian government and taxpayers to foot the bill for the cleanup of their greenhouse gas emissions?

Question 2: What's amiss with the Alberta economy that requires the federal government to step in and handle an environmental condition brought about by Alberta's lax regulatory regime?

Question 3: What's amiss with a government that decides to invest money in the wealthiest province in Canada, perhaps the wealthiest region of North America, when that province won't?

Question 4: Why would the Conservatives spend it where they have almost zero chance of losing a single vote or seat?

Yes, it's a problem in need of a solution. Yes, someone has to do something. Yes, it's at least action.

What are the answers to the questions?