BP oil accused of ‘biggest environmental crime in history’

This video from Canada is called ALBERTA TAR SANDS PROTEST- DEADLY TAR SANDS! – ecoSanity.org.

From British daily The Independent:

This Canadian wilderness is set to be invaded by BP in an oil exploration project dubbed …

‘The biggest environmental crime in history’

By Cahal Milmo

Published: 10 December 2007

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.

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.

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.

Shell, the oil company that recently trumpeted its commitment to a low carbon future by signing a pre-Bali conference communique, has quietly sold off most of its solar business: here.

Related articles

• A bad idea: Shipping Alberta tar sands oil over the Great Lakes (afternoonjournal.wordpress.com)
• People Who Live Downwind Of Alberta’s Oil and Tar Sands Operations Are Getting Blood Cancer (thinkprogress.org)
• EU’s dirty fuel tag ‘stigmatising’ Canada (theguardian.com)
• Oil and gas industry resists new oil sands emissions standards, claims opposition is “ideological” (vancouverobserver.com)
• Oil sands crude is tanking again (mining.com)
• Oil Sands Miners Play ‘Russian Roulette’ With Toxic Water (bloomberg.com)
• Why is Canada backing the energy industry at the expense of others? (theglobeandmail.com)
• Watch: Tar Sands Oil Is the Dirtiest on Earth, Video Explains Why (news.softpedia.com)