“The biggest evironmental crime in history”

That, my dear reader, is the title of the Independent article I read last Sunday evening in my inbox. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to see that it was about British Petroleum..aka BP. It’s the description of a Canadian drilling project which environmentalists and people with a modicum of common sense brand BP’s method of ‘extraction’. From the Indy article:

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move “Beyond Petroleum” by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its “green sheen” by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the “biggest global warming crime” in history.

The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called “oil sands” that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Its the location of the oil, the tar sands as it’s called, that are a royal pain in the ass for oil companies when it comes to extracting that black gold. It’s messy, expensive and it destroys whatever is above it.

Producing crude oil from the tar sands - a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay - found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta - an area the size of England and Wales combined - generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling. The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK’s entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.

For decades, the technology sector has tried to figure out a way to extract the oil from these tar sands. Evidently someone is tired of waiting wouldn’t you say? Another precious resource will be sucked up in order to extract this oil:

The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers - up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will increase its carbon footprint.

BP is lying its collective ass off when it says anything about using a ‘less damaging’ method of extraction. It would cost them more money and BP is nothing if not cheap when it comes to safety and environmental concerns, judging from their past history of fuck-ups and..ahem..accidents. GreenPeace’s climate and energy guru has said this about BP and the tar sand extraction plans:

“It takes about 29kg of CO2 to produce a barrel of oil conventionally. That figure can be as much 125kg for tar sands oil. It also has the potential to kill off or damage the vast forest wilderness, greater than the size of England and Wales, which forms part of the world’s biggest carbon sinks. For BP to be involved in this trade not only flies in the face of their rhetoric but in the era of climate change it should not be being developed at all. You cannot call yourself ‘Beyond Petroleum’ and involve yourself in tar sands extraction.”

If none of this pisses you the hell off…consider the logic of BP’s PR executive regarding the project:

“These are resources that would have been developed anyway.”

Sumbitches.

Take a gander at the remains of the BP plant in texas after BP cut corners on safety and employees were killed because BP knowingly allowed safety problems to go uncorrected in order to pad their…bottom line. I wrote about the original refinery explosion here which killed 15..count em..15 employees. BP eventually only had to ante up $373 million for the lives of their employees lost in this TX refinery explosion and subsequent coverup. I wrote about that here in October of this year. Let me give you some of the highlights of the fine that was assessed:

BP PLC is taking a multimillion dollar broom to sweep away a slew of federal charges linked to energy price fixing, a deadly refinery blast and pipeline leaks and focus on its energy business.

The more than $373 million in settlements announced Thursday are part of the company’s attempt to get rid of the problems left over from the stewardship of former chief executive John Browne and move ahead with the recently announced restructuring of Europe’s second-largest oil company.

On top of the fines and restitution, four former BP employees were indicted by a federal grand jury in Chicago on 20 counts of mail and wire fraud connected to a scheme to manipulate energy markets.

The bulk of the fines - $303.5 million - aim to punish BP for conspiring to fix propane prices in 2003 and 2004.

So, the bulk of the fines were a punishment for trying to fix prices. They had nothing to do with the deaths of the 15 employees at the TX refinery, or the conspiracy to hold down costs at the expense of a safe working environment for almost a decade at the TX refinery. For a company that makes over 11 billion pounds (over 22 billion American bucks) a year, this is small potatoes isn’t it?

Its merely the cost of doing business for them. This Houston Chronicle editorial will really jack your jaw my dear reader. It points out how culpable the federal government has been to BP concerning all the violations, refinery accidents and environmental laws broken by these fuckwits. I would like to suggest you read the Chron editorial to get a taste of how the newest trial is going for them..and their pals in the federal government.

Now, the bastards want to destroy an area the size of Wales and England combined..and get paid handsomely to do it. Lets hope at least that people don’t die in the process.

Tags: BP, Tar Sands Oil extraction, Alberta Canada