Campaigners call for tar sands company boycotts
Article published: Friday, July 17th 2009
Tar sands, a mixture of sand or clay with bitumen (‘heavy oil’) are found beneath the pristine forests and wetlands of Alberta and are increasingly being exploited for oil by fossil fuel companies as other reserves run out.
Reports by leading int
ernational environmental organisations state that tar sand extraction releases greenhouse gases at 2.5 to 8 times the rate of conventional oil before the end user even gets to burn it as fuel. Extracting tar sands also causes massive environmental destruction to major wildlife habitats, affecting fish, plant life and migratory birds. The toxic pools of waste matter from tar sand processing measure up to 50 square kilometres in size and are deadly to wildlife: in one incident in 2008, a flock of 1,600 migratory birds died after landing on one. This figure was initially said to be 500, but the company responsible, Syncrude, admitted during a court case a year later that it was triple the number first reported.
Indigenous communities living downstream from tar sand sites have raised concerns about the poisoning of their water and fish stocks. Cancer rates in communities downstream from tar sand sites are above average, and traditional ways of life are suffering as animal and fish populations decline. In the USA working-class communities near refining plants have also campaigned against the health effects of bitumen processing.
If Canadian tar sands expansion go ahead at the rate currently projected, it would account for 87 per cent of the maximum allowable emissions from OECD countries in 2050 if we were to stabilise at 450 ppm. Carbon Capture & Storage technology, intended to ‘scrub’ CO2 from fossil fuel emissions, has not yet been proved viable, and even if current experimental models were to succeed they would take decades to become fully operational.
The brands named and shamed by Ethical Consumer magazine include consumer providers such as 3 Mobile, Superdrug and Nouvelle recycled toilet paper, as well as international banks HSBC, RBS and Barclays. Caterpillar, also the subject of a boycott over its sale of machinery used to commit human rights abuses by the Israeli army, is also on the list.
According to Ethical Consumer, Superdrug and 3 Mobile are owned by subsidiaries of Hong Kong company Hutchison Whampoa, which also owns Husky Energy Ltd. In 2006 Husky had a total of 510,890 acres of oil sands leases and in 2007 signed an agreement with BP for a 50/50 partnership to develop the Sunrise oil sands project. Caterpillar, along with Hitachi and Liebherr International AG, are accused of manufacturing specialised equipment used to dig and transport tar sands.
Nouvelle and hosiery staple Lycra are owned by Koch Industries, whose involvement in tar sands extraction comes via its subsidiary Flint Hills Resources and another subsidiary company which has constructed a pipeline which carries oil from Alberta to Minnesota, USA.
Ethical Consumer’s Dan Welch noted that Koch Industries has a very sketchy track record as far as environmental responsibility goes. In 2000 alone, more than 310 spills from its pipelines and oil facilities in the USA resulted in the company being fined $35 million dollars.
And the three banks named in the report have been accused by environmental groups Greenpeace and Platform of financing the involvement of major oil companies such as BP and Shell in exploiting tar sand reserves.
Ethical Consumer’s own website now features a dedicated campaign page with form letters, key facts and links to further information, including reports by the Worldwide Fund for Nature and Co-operative Bank, and by Platform and Greenpeace.
Sarah Irving is a freelance writer specialising in environmental and social issues.
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