[IPSM] SF Gate: Battle for Canada's underground resources

[Macdonald Stainsby]

A couple points about this article first:

The Federal governments "extinguishment" of the Gwitch'in and the Inuvialuit 
took place in the 80's, not the 90's; the Inuvialuit Settlement Region was 
Canada's first "extinguishment (which took away all land that contained 
quote "proved oil and gas reserves" as well as stating "all water in the 
region will be retained by the crown" I belive the term was "for simplicity" 
(sounds simple!). Extinguishment was to mean there would never be any legal 
recourse to challenge this agreement when it appeared not-so-beneficial 
later on. Inuvialuk's are not one and all happy with the agreement nor the 
pipeline-- the virtual monarchy that apparently has been constructed working 
as a go-between for the Inuvialuit, The GNWT and the Feds certainly support 
the pipeline. They got nothing but their people and labour left to sell-off.

As far as the Gwitch'in, I can not speak of the relationship between the 
government Indians and the people themselves, but the terms of surrender in 
the "final claim" are much the same.

And the Dene of the valley, all the various Dene nations, those who are not 
working in Yellowknife for Ottawa and Canadian money, do not want a pipeline 
  by any measure I have come across. That's why they are now organizing 
separate from the "first nation governments".

Macdonald

Battle for Canada's underground resources
Some tribes oppose pipeline to tap land rich in oil reserves

Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, March 24, 2005
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/24/BUG8MBTQPS1.DTL&type=business

Battle for Canada's underground resources

While Congress debates whether to allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska's 
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a similar battle with much higher stakes is 
under way in northwest Canada.

The $6 billion Mackenzie Pipeline project would open the Canadian Arctic for 
natural gas drilling and send the gas 800 miles south down the Mackenzie 
River Valley to Alberta. There, much of this fuel would be used to throttle 
up production in a huge but hard-to-tap supply of petroleum dispersed in 
underground gravel formations. These so-called oil sands hold petroleum 
reserves that are second in size only to Saudi Arabia's, and analysts say 
they could supply a large portion of U.S. energy needs for decades to come.

But the project has sparked opposition from some native tribal groups, which 
call it a federal grab of their ancestral lands, and from environmentalists, 
who say it would churn out greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

It is a fight that is likely to forever set the course for Canada's vast and 
empty north. The project is full of continental superlatives -- North 
America's richest oil patch, its biggest construction project since the 
Alaska pipeline in the 1970s, its largest strip-mining operation.

"By far the most important thing for North America are those oil sands in 
Canada," said Robert Esser, director of oil and gas resources at Cambridge 
Energy Research Associates in New York. "It's nice we're going to have 
access to (the Alaska refuge), but there are a lot of unknown questions 
there. We have no idea whether there is oil or gas or how much. In the oil 
sands, we know the reserves are huge, much larger than in Alaska."

The Canadian government, which calls the project an economic necessity, is 
not required to seek approval from Parliament in Ottawa. Pipeline 
construction is expected to start in early 2007, with gas flowing two years 
later.

In Alaska, by contrast, congressional authorization is required to develop 
the wildlife refuge. Last week's Senate vote to allow drilling will be 
followed by several more months of legislative maneuvering and, if the plan 
is approved, about eight years of preparation before oil begins to be pumped.

Despite its bright prospects, Canada's pipeline could still be stopped in 
its tracks by opposition from one of the region's native tribes, which are 
known in Canada as First Nations.

The Deh Cho First Nation, a tribe of about 4,200 people who occupy the 
southern third of the pipeline route, has filed suit in federal court in 
Vancouver, British Columbia, to block the project. Unlike tribes of the 
northern Mackenzie Valley that have settled their land disputes with the 
government and support the pipeline, the Deh Cho are holding out for 
autonomous powers in their area. Until a deal is reached on the land 
dispute, the government lacks legal authority for a pipeline right of way, 
the tribe insists.

"What we see today is Canada not living up to its obligations," said Noeline 
Villebrun, national chief of the Dene, the parent federation of Mackenzie 
Valley tribes. "If Canada hopes to settle the claims, then the Deh Cho have 
to see their rights being accommodated."

The Deh Cho won a round last week, when a federal judge ordered the 
government to release briefing notes, minutes, draft plans, correspondence 
and other documents related to planning for the pipeline project.

Contained in the oil sands are vast quantities of so-called bitumen, or 
super-heavy oil, underneath an area of northern Alberta as big as Florida. 
One extraction process is similar to strip mining, in which sand is scooped 
out and cooked at high heat to extract the sludge. Another process pumps 
steam into the underground deposits, dissolving the bitumen and allowing it 
to be piped to the surface. Under both methods, the resulting goo is refined 
into commercial grades of crude oil and piped to customers, mostly in the 
western United States. About 2 tons of sand have to be dug up, heated and 
processed to make a single 42-gallon barrel of oil.

The crucial ingredient in this process is natural gas. Although other fuels 
have been used to cook the oil sands, such as coal and the bitumen itself, 
none works as well as gas. Production of gas from long-established fields in 
Alberta is expected to decline in coming years, and because demand for gas 
is rising fast, expansion of the oil sands will require new supplies.

The nearest major source is in three well-explored yet untapped gas fields 
in the delta of the Mackenzie River on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. If the 
pipeline is built, gas from the delta can be funneled down to Alberta, where 
it will connect with the province's pipeline system to reach the oil sands.

With international oil prices soaring over $50 per barrel and likely to 
remain high for years to come, the oil sands are a bonanza in the making. 
The oil sands are estimated to contain 174 billion barrels of oil, second 
only to Saudi Arabia's 260 billion barrels.

In contrast, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contains only about 10 
billion barrels. The Energy Department predicts output there will reach a 
peak of about 1 million barrels per day within a few years after the 
estimated 2015 start, and will decline gradually thereafter.

Companies such as ChevronTexaco, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Petro-Canada and Suncor 
Energy have made multibillion-dollar investments in the oil sands in recent 
years, raising total production to about 1 million barrels per day. If 
sufficient natural gas is available to cook the sludge, output from the oil 
sands is expected to reach 2 million barrels per day by 2010, rising to 3 
million by 2020 and as much as 5 million for many decades to come.

"Imagine Saudi-type production levels just north of the U.S. border in a 
friendly country," said Roland George, an Alberta analyst with Purvin & 
Gertz, an oil industry consulting firm in Houston.

But environmentalists say the process of burning large amounts of energy 
just to get more energy is reckless. "The oil sands are the world's dirtiest 
source of oil," said Stephen Hazell, director of the Sierra Club of Canada's 
campaign against the Mackenzie pipeline.

The oil sands expansion is expected to increase Canada's emissions of 
greenhouse gases by as much as 12 percent of the country's total allotment 
under the Kyoto Protocol, making it almost impossible for the government to 
meet its commitments for reducing emissions, Hazell said.

The economic potential of the pipeline project has been a powerful lure for 
many of the region's Natives. Poverty is rampant in the ramshackle Native 
villages that dot the boreal forest. Unemployment can be as high as 50 percent.

"People need jobs, and although we're not sure the pipeline won't just hire 
outsiders from down south, there are a lot of people here who are really 
hopeful," Villebrun said.

Three tribes in the Mackenzie Valley have allied themselves with the oil and 
gas companies behind the pipeline project. The Sahtu Dene, Gwichin and 
Inuvialuit, which settled their federal land claims in the 1990s, hold a 
one- third stake in the pipeline project along with its corporate parents: 
Exxon Mobil, Shell and ConocoPhillips.

Although it supports the Mackenzie pipeline, the Gwichin tribe, whose 7, 000 
members live on both sides of the Alaska-Canada border, oppose oil 
development in Alaska. Its leaders have long been active participants in 
U.S. environmentalists' lobbying campaigns in Washington against drilling in 
the wildlife refuge because the area is the main summer calving ground of 
migrating caribou herds that are a major source of the tribe's food supply.

"By destroying that one area in (the refuge), they will ultimately destroy 
the caribou," said Joe Linklater, chief of the Gwichin First Nation in Yukon 
Territory, who traveled to Washington earlier this month to lobby against 
the Alaska refuge proposal.

Linklater said he and his family, who live in the village of Old Crow, north 
of the Arctic Circle, hunt and kill several caribou each April and October 
during the animals' migration through the area. "That's what is in our 
freezer all year long -- the caribou -- and that's what we eat," he said. 
But he noted that the Canadian pipeline lies outside caribou migration areas.

Many other twists and turns lie ahead amid the complicated energy politics 
of the Far North.

The Mackenzie project has caused consternation in Alaska because it could 
delay construction of the planned $20 billion, 3,500-mile natural-gas 
pipeline from Alaska's North Slope down into Canada. The existing 
trans-Alaska pipeline carries oil only, and natural gas extracted in the 
North Slope as part of the oil drilling process must be re-injected into the 
ground. Experts say income from a natural-gas pipeline is needed to allow 
full expansion of oil drilling in the Alaska refuge.

The proposed Alaska pipeline route, which would parallel the Alaska- Canada 
Highway into the Yukon and British Columbia, is further behind in the 
Canadian regulatory process than its Mackenzie rival. Canadian officials are 
believed to be deliberately taking a go-slow stance to ensure that their 
pipeline gets built first.

Although U.S. officials hope the output from Alberta's oil sands will be 
exported mainly south of the border, Chinese officials are trying to lock up 
long-term contracts for oil that would be sent through a proposed pipeline 
to the coast at British Columbia and then exported via tanker to China.

"There have been Chinese delegations in every skyscraper in Calgary," said 
George, the analyst.

"The Chinese are doing what the United States is doing, scouring the planet 
for every molecule of oil production they can get their hands on."

Many Washington conservatives are seeing red. "It's definitely a big worry 
for the Chinese to be trying to monopolize the oil sands," said Frank 
Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.

"We're in a race for energy supplies, and we can't allow China to win this 
one."
-- 

Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
	--Bertholt Brecht.