Tar Sands protests (Brighton & London)

Cli­mate Camp Invades BP Petrol Sta­tions Over Tar Sands
On Sat­ur­day 13th Feb­ru­ary activists from the South Coast neigh­bour­hood of the Camp for Cli­mate Action invad­ed the three BP petrol sta­tions in Brighton, on the Lewes Rd, Ditch­ling Rd and Lon­don Rd, to protest at BP’s plans to invest in the Alber­ta Tar Sands in Cana­da. Mov­ing by bicy­cle 8 activists car­ried a ban­ner read­ing ‘Tar Sands Oil Is Blood Oil’. They hand­ed out infor­ma­tion on the Cana­di­an tar sands and BP’s plans to invest in it to cus­tomers and urged them to boy­cott BP.

Many of BP’s cus­tomers where shocked to hear about BP’s pro­posed involve­ment in one of the dirt­i­est busi­ness­es on earth, espe­cial­ly in the light of its past attend to project a green image, and in some cas­es left imme­di­ate­ly left to get their fuel some­where else. This action is the start of a cam­paign, which is hoped will spread across the UK. A one of the Brighton activists said: “We hope that oth­er con­cerned local peo­ple across the UK will fol­low our exam­ple and begin putting the pres­sure on BP in their areas. Tar sands are an appalling exam­ple of plac­ing insane greed ahead of the whole plan­et and every­one on it.”

Tar sands are deposits of tar, sand and clay under the forests of Alber­ta in west­ern Cana­da. Tar sands extrac­tion is an eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter, some­times referred to as ‘The biggest envi­ron­men­tal crime in his­to­ry’. Oil pro­duced from tar sands is the filth­i­est most car­bon inten­sive oil (over 3 times as much CO2 to pro­duce as con­ven­tion­al oil). The Athabas­ca tar sands oper­a­tions are the largest sin­gle indus­tri­al emit­ter of CO2 on the plan­et. Enough nat­ur­al gas is used every day extract­ing this oil to heat 3.2 mil­lion Cana­di­an homes.

Tar sands extrac­tion involves the whole­sale destruc­tion of vast tracts of ancient for­est over an area the size of Eng­land and Wales and the use of huge amounts of water that is left so con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed that it must be stored in giant ponds. The tox­ic tail­ings ponds are so vast they can be seen from space. Leaks for these ponds are poi­son­ing local rivers and the indige­nous peo­ples that live there. The rush to extract oil from tar sands is also tram­pling on the rights of the local indige­nous peo­ples.

While the tar sands are in Cana­da, much of the financ­ing is com­ing from UK com­pa­nies. BP which once tried to rebrand itself as ‘Beyond Petro­le­um’ to give itself a green image is plan­ning on invest­ing $10billion in the Sun­rise Project a tar sands extrac­tion project in Alber­ta. This week a num­ber BP’s share­hold­ers have start­ed a revolt and are pres­sur­ing BP to stop. Oth­er UK com­pa­nies that are involved in tar sands include Shell, RBS and Bar­calys.

Pho­tos:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/4354992582_a300eeb4fb_b_d.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4354252823_1123bd6cd9_b_d.jpg

Tar sands info:
http://www.ienearth.org/tarsandsinfo.html

Press:
BP faces protest over oil sands devel­op­ment
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7018483.ece
Share­hold­er group calls on BP to rethink oil sands project
http://business.scotsman.com/business/Shareholder-group-calls-on-BP.6050650.jp

Con­tact:
E‑mail: southcoast@climatecamp.org.uk
Web: http://climatecamp.org.uk/get-involved/local-groups/south-coast

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Oil-ympics Come To Trafal­gar Square
On Sat­ur­day, 13 Feb­ru­ary at 12 noon, UK and Cana­di­an envi­ron­men­tal activists opened the ‘Oil-ympics’ at Cana­da House in Trafal­gar Square. The event, timed to coin­cide with the open­ing of the 2010 Win­ter Olympics in Van­cou­ver, high­light­ed the role of British com­pa­nies in the sin­gle biggest indus­tri­al project on earth, the Cana­di­an Tar Sands (1).

The Oil-ympics event saw activists divid­ed into three teams: BP, Shell and RBS, all ready to ‘Race to the Tar Sands’. Tra­di­tion­al win­ter sports were sub­vert­ed to illus­trate the irony of Cana­da por­tray­ing the Van­cou­ver Win­ter Olympics as an event which cel­e­brates Cana­di­an indige­nous cul­ture and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, while in the neigh­bour­ing province of Alber­ta, Cana­di­an First Nations are find­ing that their lands, com­mu­ni­ties and health are being dev­as­tat­ed by the Tar Sands (2).

BP received spe­cial atten­tion after it recent­ly unveiled plans to embark on its first Tar Sands extrac­tion project. BP had pre­vi­ous­ly sold its poten­tial stake in Alber­ta in 1999, when BP’s chief exec­u­tive at the time, Lord Browne, deemed Tar Sands extrac­tion to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly unvi­able and envi­ron­men­tal­ly unpleas­ant. How­ev­er, BP’s new chief exec­u­tive, Tony Hay­ward, is now set to make BP a major play­er in the Tar Sands with a part­ner­ship with Canada’s Husky Ener­gy – a ven­ture that is fac­ing sharp crit­i­cism from BP’s own share­hold­ers (3, 4).

Alice Har­g­reaves, of the UK Tar Sands Net­work, said: “BP has been try­ing to prove that they are ‘Beyond Petro­le­um’ for years, but with their entry into the Tar Sands project, we can see the truth: Beyond Petro­le­um is noth­ing more than a Bro­ken Promise.(5) BP share­hold­ers are rebelling over this betray­al, and so are we. Over the next two months, we’ll be putting the pres­sure on to make sure BP get the mes­sage – stay out of the Tar Sands!”

Shell has been sin­gled out as it is already a major oper­a­tor in the Tar Sands, and RBS as it is the 7th biggest glob­al investor in the Tar Sands. (6)

tarsandsinfocus@gmail.com

http://tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com/

(1) Deposits of Tar Sands are spread out over 54,000 square miles of prime for­est in north­ern Alber­ta, an area the size of Eng­land and Wales com­bined. Pro­duc­ing crude oil from the Tar Sands gen­er­ates up to five times more car­bon diox­ide, the prin­ci­pal glob­al warm­ing gas, than con­ven­tion­al drilling: see

Envi­ron­ment Cana­da, 2007, Nation­al Inven­to­ry Report Green­house Gas Sources and Sinks in Cana­da 1990–2005, http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2006_report/som-sum_eng.cfm

(2) This action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Cana­di­an First Nations who have called for a mora­to­ri­um on the Tar Sands. For more infor­ma­tion see the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work: http://www.ienearth.org/cits.html

(3) BP has entered a joint ven­ture with Husky Ener­gy to devel­op a Tar Sands facil­i­ty which will be capa­ble of pro­duc­ing 200,000 bar­rels of crude a day by 2020. In return for a half share of Husky’s Sun­rise field in the Athabas­ca region of Alber­ta, the epi­cen­tre of the Tar Sands indus­try, BP has sold its part­ner a 50 per cent stake in its Tole­do oil refin­ery in Ohio. The com­pa­nies plan to invest $10 bil­lion in the project, mak­ing BP a major play­er in Tar Sands extrac­tion. The final invest­ment deci­sion will be made in the next few months.

http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&contentId=7038865

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aGw2sL7JwHG8

(4) A coali­tion of share­hold­ers has tabled a res­o­lu­tion for BP’s AGM on April 15 high­light­ing the envi­ron­men­tal and social risks of Tar Sands extrac­tion. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article7018483.ece

(5) http://tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com/bpbrokenpromises/

(6) For Shell Invest­ments see http://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/pdfs-members/economic-justice/shells-big-dirty-secret/view?searchterm=shell%27s%20big%20dirty%20secret

For RBS invest­ments see http://understory.ran.org/2010/01/31/banks-ranked-and-spanked-on-tar-sands/

UK Tar Sands Net­work
tarsandsinfocus@googlemail.com
http://www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com