blog2009: Suncor sues Greenpeace

Suncor sues Greenpeace

By Shaun Polczer
Calgary Herald
October 9, 2009

$1.5M lawsuit comes after protest at mine

Environmental protesters say they will continue to target oilsands facilities in the face of lawsuits and criminal charges after Suncor Energy filed a $1.5-million lawsuit against the environmental group Greenpeace in the wake of a protest at its Fort McMurray mine earlier this month.

Greenpeace leader Mike Hudema confirmed the group has been served with a statement of claim in relation to the Sept. 30 incident in which 23 activists forced their way into Suncor's plant site and occupied an oilsands ore processing unit. The standoff ended after RCMP moved in to arrest the demonstrators.

"We're going to continue to do this work," he said in a phone interview from Edmonton. "I think it's criminal that these companies can get away with what they're doing. The damage they're doing pales to the actions of peaceful protesters. For them to prosecute peaceful protesters at the end of the day is wrong."

Suncor spokeswoman Sneh Seetal confirmed the company filed the statement of claim on Oct. 7 as part of a broader injunction seeking to bar Greenpeace protesters from its plant site. The statement of claim is a necessary component of the injunction, which was filed Sept. 30, and the $1.5 million is a preliminary figure based mostly on the value of lost oil production, she added. "We are continuing to review what the total damages may be in relation to the civil claim," she said in an interview.

The Suncor protest was one in a series of actions against oilsands producers carried out by Greenpeace in recent weeks, including a similar demonstration at Shell Canada's Scotford upgrader near Fort Saskatchewan last weekend featuring live webcam footage, media interviews and commentary that was made available over the Internet.

The Shell incident earned Greenpeace a rebuke from Premier Ed Stelmach, who vowed to use "the force of the law to deal with these people." Greenpeace in turn accused the premier of using his political influence to undermine the justice system.

On Thursday, the protests shifted to France, where activists entered a Total refinery in Normandy and hung banners denouncing the French state oil company's involvement in northern Alberta. On Friday, the group defaced four Total billboards in the Edmonton area, accusing the company of being committed to "environmental destruction."

In a media release, Greenpeace claims 37 of its members from Canada, France, Brazil and Australia have been arrested in the past three weeks on charges ranging from break and enter, trespassing and mischief.

Other oilpatch protests have been less than peaceful. On Wednesday in B. C., Dawson Creek RCMP urged local residents to be vigilant on the first anniversary of a series of bombings against EnCana Corp.'s natural gas pipelines. The company has posted a reward of$1 million after six bomb attacks in the past year. The perpetrator remains at large.

John Redekop, a professor emeritus at Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., who also teaches part time at Trinity Western University in Abbotsford, B. C., said western cultures have a tradition of disobeying laws perceived to be unjust extending back to biblical times. He has lectured extensively on the topic and written a book, The Christian and Civil Disobedience, that has been translated into multiple languages.

He said civil disobedience is "moral" provided that nobody is hurt and all other avenues of appeal have been exhausted. As with Greenpeace, perpetrators are often willing to be arrested to make a point, he added, similar to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, who were both arrested protesting U. S. racial laws in the 1960s.

Civil disobedience is more common in British Columbia, where protest groups, including Greenpeace, have disrupted logging operations in old growth forests. In that sense, Redekop said, he's prepared to assert the validity of the oilsands protests, but refused to condone the bombings.

"Some trespassing, some disruption, I can accept," he said. "But that (the EnCana bombings) is not civil disobedience, it's a crime."

Seetal argued that Greenpeace didn't respond to overtures to meet with the company and its members placed themselves and others in harm's way. Protesters at the site refused the company's offer to provide basic protective equipment such as hard hats and safety glasses, she said. Consequently, the company chose to shut down operations until the demonstration ended.

"The fact of the matter is that they were trespassing. Not only were they putting themselves in danger, but they put our employees in danger, our subcontractors in danger along with all the other visitors on the site."

spolczer@theherald.canwest.com

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