Canada needs to kick its dirty-oil habit

Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
by Andrew Nikiforuk
Declaration of a Political Emergency, an excerpt.

Canada needs to kick its dirty-oil habit

Canada has become an oil junkie, hooked on the tarsands and in desperate need of detox.

That's a perspective put forward in a new book by Alberta journalist Andrew Nikiforuk in Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent.

The book is likely to be lauded by environmentalists and pilloried by folks in Canada's oil patch.

The author argues for a reopening of the North American Free Trade Agreement to enable Canada to reclaim its resource from a ravenous customer and partner in crime, the U.S.

Writes Nikiforuk: "Canada has adopted a new geodestiny: Providing the U.S. with bitumen."

He notes that while Canada furnishes the Americans with 20 to 30 per cent of their oil, half of this country's own citizens, in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, continue to rely on insecure supplies from the Middle East.

Accordingly, a vast network of north-south pipelines and electricity corridors are being built across the continent -- to serve U.S. interests.

Nikiforuk disapprovingly cites NAFTA provisions that guarantee the U.S. unlimited access to Canadian oil and natural gas, and reasonable access during times of shortages.

These guarantees, he says, need to be renegotiated to allow Canadians to safeguard their domestic energy security.

Canada's official policy, of course, is quite different. Alberta's government regularly lobbies Washington to ensure its oil exports remain unimpeded.

When the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act became law last December, limiting dirty oil imports, Edmonton and Ottawa immediately began lobbying for a tarsands exemption.

The Harper government has signalled it hopes to use American reliance on tarsands oil as a way of conveying to the new Obama administration Canada's strategic importance.

Nikiforuk believes the tarsands should be developed gradually and with far greater environmental sensitivity, a view that has been supported by former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed.

Nikiforuk paints a picture of the current development as an environmental cesspool.

In fact, every barrel of bitumen from the tarsands produces on average three times more C02 emissions than a regular barrel of oil.

The tarsands are Canada's single largest growing source of carbon dioxide, and by 2020 will account for no less than 16 per cent of the nation's total emissions.

Meanwhile, "no comprehensive assessment of the megaproject's environmental, economic or social impact has been done."

Approvals are granted enthusiastically as part of a process that seeks to maximize potential profit, says the author.

And there's where the rubber hits the road; the tarsands have been wildly profitable. How can we realistically expect the politicians to voluntarily turn off the spigot?

Between 2000 and 2020, it's estimated that corporate taxes from the tarsands will yield $44 billion for Alberta and $51 billion for Ottawa.

The Alberta Energy Department website describes the tarsands -- which it more benignly refers to as 'oil sands' -- as "a triumph of technological innovation," covering an area the size of the state of Florida and accounting for nearly half Canada's oil output and 62 per cent of Alberta's output.

Just as impressively, some 145,000 Albertans are employed in the mining and oil and gas extraction industry. And thousands more work in the services sector that supports energy exploration and production. Jobs are going to people as far away as Newfoundland.

In the face of such facts, it would run counter to human nature to curtail the tarsands or even scale back development.

Nikiforuk argues convincingly that we have been both quick and somewhat reckless when it comes to the tarry goo, but democracies are run according to the wishes of their people.

And the main overseer of the tar sands, Alberta's Conservative governments, keep getting re-elected with hearty mandates.

Meanwhile, the feds are thrilled by the revenue take from the tarsands and other provinces are grateful for the job opportunities.

As much as scientists keep predicting global doom resulting from greenhouse gases, Canadians still love their cars and continue running their dishwashers.

The tarsands has a lifespan of about 40 years and to date only about two per cent of the resource has been produced. This is a topic that will continue to fuel heated debate.

byaffe@vancouversun.com

Author Andrew Nikiforuk fears tar sands undermine democracy

A Calgary author and journalist says most Canadians don’t understand that we’re living in a “petrostate” that could undermine our democracy. Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (Greystone Books, $20), told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview that Canada needs a national debate on the topic. “I think the tar sands has created a political emergency for the country,” he said.

In his book, Nikiforuk describes the Alberta tar-sands developments as the world’s largest construction project, the world’s largest capital project, and the world’s largest energy project—one that uses as much water in a year as a city with a population of two million.

“We need reporters from our national daily newspapers living in Fort McMurray and writing about this nation-changing event,” Nikiforuk said. “This is an event much greater than the building of the national railway. This is an event much greater than the Apollo moon project.”

Canada, which has approximately 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil, is the largest supplier of oil to the United States, having surpassed Saudi Arabia. “We have become a petrostate without any of the safeguards that a petrostate should have,” Nikiforuk said.

He noted that there is a vast amount of political-science research demonstrating that oil wealth hinders democracy. He said this is true regardless of whether the petrostate is in the Middle East, and whether it’s a large or small country.

Nikiforuk pointed out that Canada has ignored recommendations from the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calling on countries that generate a great deal of oil wealth to put those revenues into a separate fund that cannot be touched by politicians.

“Canadians need to start thinking of themselves as a petrostate, and they need to start thinking of the kinds of controls needed to protect the country from the excesses of oil,” he said. “We also need to think about the pace, and where we want to go with it. It is out of control.”

He said that oil wealth undermines democracy in several ways. Governments enriched by petroleum revenues reduce taxes, which makes the public feel good about politicians who make these decisions. Oil money is also used to buy votes, he alleged.

“Then, those parties tend to stay in power for long periods of time,” Nikiforuk said, noting that Conservatives have governed Alberta for 37 years. “Parties that stay in power for long, long periods of time tend to become more authoritarian in nature.”

Alberta has the lowest provincial voter turnout in the country. Nikiforuk said governments that remain in power for decades tend to make more appointments based on patronage rather than merit.

“So you end up with all kinds of people being appointed to positions they should not be in,” he claimed.

He estimated that $200 billion has been spent developing the Alberta tar sands if the cost of pipelines, refinery expansions, and upgraders is included.

“It has brought 700,000 people into Alberta since 1996,” Nikiforuk said. “It is almost like the invasion of Iraq, but in this case, it’s a petroboom.”

According to the Alberta-based Pembina Institute, two tonnes of the bituminous sands, otherwise known as tar sands, and two tonnes of overburden must be excavated to create a single barrel of oil. Nikiforuk writes that producing each barrel generates three times as much greenhouse gas as a barrel of conventional oil because of the work involved.

He noted that the tar-sands developments are playing a role in preventing Canada from meeting its climate-change goals. But the impact goes beyond that, affecting cross-Canada labour mobility and causing politicians to amend immigration legislation to allow more temporary foreign workers. “The tar sands has changed Canada in the same way the fur trade has changed Canada,” Nikiforuk said.

He said that Canadian provincial and federal governments have generated $60 billion from tar-sands development, but claimed that Canadians have little to show for it. In his book, he notes that Ottawa will have collected at least $50 billion from tar-sands developments by 2020. “True to the First Law of Petropolitics,” Nikiforuk writes, “government has used this windfall so far to reduce corporate taxes and slash 2 per cent off the federal sales tax. While Norway has kept the resource curse largely at bay with clear accounting and its dedicated oil/pension fund, Ottawa has spent the cash to win friends and influence elections.”

Nikiforuk said that Canada has no strategy for ensuring self-sufficiency in energy over the long term, even though it appears that conventional oil production has peaked around the world. He also said that no Alberta politician ever expected that environmentally concerned Americans would start asking questions about degradation wrought by tar-sands developments. “What we’re seeing is a complete vacuum here in terms of political direction, political policy, political strategy,” he claimed. “It’s dangerous for Alberta. It’s dangerous for Canada. It’s dangerous for North America.”