Fuente: The Independent
As one industry giant pursues ambitious plans to
develop a huge new reserve in Canada, another is running into trouble in Alaska
Under the cold soil of the province of Alberta in
western Canada lie oil reserves as huge as those of Saudi Arabia. This
astounding fact has led the industry giant Shell to launch a massive operation
to recover that oil. It's taken four years, and one of the biggest construction
projects in the world, to prepare for the launch. And it's an undertaking that
has been fraught with environmental and social concerns, raising difficult
questions about the green and socially aware image Shell has been trying to project
in recent years.
The Alberta reserves are held in what are called oil
sands, mixed with individual grains of fine sand in a sticky black mess that is
the consistency of Plasticine and smells of tar. But it's the method of
extracting the oil that worries environmentalists.
"You just add hot water and stir," says Neil
Camarta, the genial senior vice-president of Shell Canada in charge of the oil
sands project. He makes it sound like making a cup of coffee. But it's a
process that uses relatively large amounts of energy and water compared to
conventional oil wells, and it's also a more expensive method of extraction.
In energy terms, fuel is needed to run both the huge
shovels that dig up the oil sands and the giant trucks – the largest in the
world – that carry away hundreds of tonnes of sand. And that's before you start
adding hot water and stirring on an industrial scale, a process from which
emerges black gloopy bitumen, as thick as molasses. That's diluted and taken
away along hundreds of miles of pipeline for further energy-intensive
processing at an enormous new plant, the Scotford Upgrader. The result is a
light crude oil, ready for refining into petrol.
Gail McCrimon, a policy analyst with the Pembina
Institute, a Canadian environmental think-tank, explains: "Because the oil
is bound up with sands and clay, you have to put in a lot of energy to separate
them. You have to use chemicals and you get waste streams when you've finished,
as well as air emissions and pollution of water."
The oil sands project will increase Shell Canada's
emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by almost 50 per
cent, yet the company has pledged to cut emissions from the project itself by
half over the next decade. Shell Canada's president Tim Faithfull argues this
proves the company is making the project "robust against challenges".
But it still means that, overall, Shell's output of harmful emissions will have
been boosted.
And then there's the liquid waste left behind from all
that adding of hot water, which gathers in what are called tailings ponds. Not
to mention the devastation of the bleak but beautiful landscape, a habitat of
caribou and grizzly bears. Shell Canada is working on the waste problem, and on
long-term reclamation projects to make the land usable again, drawing lessons
from other companies that have mined the Alberta oil sands.
The project marks a new departure for Shell Canada,
and it has pulled out all the stops to persuade, mollify and cajole objectors,
inviting people such as Ms McCrimon on to a raft of committees, which negotiate
compromises to allow the project to go ahead. "There is common
ground," says Ms McCrimon. "They want not only to do the right thing,
but to be seen to do the right thing."
The lengths Shell is going to in dealing with
objections have included installing a bird-scarer to deter birds from alighting
on the waste-filled tailings ponds. But this is no scarecrow. It's a portable
caravan full of electronics which activates a robot hawk to flap its wings and
screech if any bird comes near.
Objections to the oil sands project have not all been
on environmental grounds. Also of concern is the impact on the Cree and
Chipewyan tribes, the indigenous people of this part of Canada. This is a
sensitive issue for Shell as a global company, raising the spectre of the
controversy caused by its involvement with the Ogoni people of Nigeria, which
led to the tarnishing of its reputation. Violent protests by the Ogoni against
Shell's operations forced the company to abandon its oil wells on their land.
In 1995 the late General Sani Abacha, the Nigerian dictator, reacted to the
rebellion by hanging nine Ogoni leaders, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa.
So the Canadian arm of Shell has to tread carefully in
its dealings with the Cree and Chipewyan, who like to be known as people of the
First Nations. They used to hunt and fish on the land now leased by the
Canadian government to the oil sands project. You might expect them to object
loudly to the extraction process. They don't.
Jim Boucher is the president of the Athabasca Tribal
Council. Dressed in a leather jacket and designer spectacles, he speaks wearily
of how his people lost their traditional livelihoods as fur trappers after
protests by animal rights campaigners in the 1980s. So when Shell and other
extraction companies appeared, offering lucrative contracts for trucking
services at the oil sands mine, plus funding for social and educational
projects, the die was cast.
"We were faced with a bleak future," says Mr
Boucher. "We saw a need to establish positive working relationships with
the companies." First Nations people now sit on 32 separate committees
connected with the oil sands.
However, Mr Boucher warns that if the development
moves too fast and is too disruptive, support could still be withdrawn. For
now, though, he concedes that the relationship between Shell and the First
Nations is one of mutual respect, thanks to their common goal of boosting the
local economy.
Shell's oil sands project actually started producing
bitumen last December. Soon after, a small fire at the mine disrupted
production, but the company maintains it's still on track to produce its target
of 155,000 barrels per day by later this year. Already it has plans to expand
further, which are causing some concern locally. But it's a tribute to the
executives at Shell Canada that the project has got as far as the start-up
phase, given all the possible objections.
One last question hangs over the operation: will it
make money? After all, extracting oil in this way is far more expensive than
getting it out of an oil well. It costs around $7 to recover one barrel,
compared with just $2 in Saudi Arabia, but with Brent crude now selling at more
than $31 a barrel, that leaves a healthy profit margin.
It looks as if Shell Canada has thought of everything.
"They had some learning to do," Ms McCrimon says. "They're
reasonably progressive. I think they've gotten better as they've gone
along." Certainly, the way the company has tackled external resistance to
the project is proof that, these days, global giants must spend generously to
persuade communities to support their operations, wherever there are real
social and environmental issues at stake.