[IPSM] Devastation, Madagascar: France's Total and US based Madagascar Oil tangle with military governments to push tar sands projects forward

[Macdonald Stainsby]

Devastation, Madagascar

France's Total and US based Madagascar Oil tangle with military
governments to push tar sands projects forward

Macdonald Stainsby

December 27, 2010

Total's proposed tar sands operation in Madagascar is potentially the
dirtiest mining operation its kind in the world, in a region where the
local people have few options but to live next to it. If, as some charge,
Total helped bring down a democratically elected government in order to
install a regime that would favour their tar sands project, it's likely
that international campaigns against Total and their social and
environmental record could well expand.

In 2008 Total bought a 60% stake in the Bemolanga tar sands field, a field
that they predict may operate at just under 200 000 barrels per day of
bitumen using strip mining techniques developed in Alberta, Canada. The
bitumen is less 'pure' in place, which means it will produce more toxic
tailings and require even more water usage than the already notorious
strip mines north of Fort McMurray, Alberta. If developed, the Bemolanga
mine would rival the largest of the mines in operation today.

Not unlike Alberta, for at minimum of 20 years after the start of
operations, Madagascar will only receive 1% in royalty payments from this
development. An index published by the World bank ranks Madagascar as the
12th poorest country in the world, wedged between Nepal and Afghanistan.

France, the former colonial master of Madagascar, had seen its influence
waning in the country under the previous presidency of 'Marc'
Ravalomanana-- a free market leaning leader who had sought stronger ties
with the United States. Part of Ravalomanana's program saw the country
attempt a break with what is still often called “Françafrique”, which
refers to the continued dominance of France in the economic and political
relations of multiple former colonies across Africa. Though the details
are undisclosed, local and international observers believe that the
successful coup, which was led by former disc-jockey (and 36 years young)
Andry Rajoelina in March of 2009, was a military reaction against breaking
from the traditional French relations.



Tar sands at the heart of a coup?

That thesis is backed up by disputes that have emerged between the
American-centred Madagascar Oil and the current government. Madagascar Oil
was told early on after the coup that the government wanted to
“renegotiate” their standing contracts and licenses. MO halted all
exploration in several of their blocks, including the large Tsimiroro
deposit. Total, however, suffered no such pressures.

A $100 million windfall for Madagascar Oil at the end of November, 2010
renewed speculation that a new push to develop the Madagascar's tar sands
deposits is on. The November announcement that the first public offering
of a company that has yet to produce petroleum for market had received an
injection of cash raised on the Alternative Investment Market in the UK
came at a tumultuous time, just weeks after an another attempted coup,
this time against the French-leaning coup leader Rajoelina, and was
followed by a stop trade order on December 17 barely two weeks later after
Rajoelina has now apparently re-consolidated power.

Despite the name and the cute ring-tailed lemur in the corporate logo,
Madagascar Oil is an American entity based in Houston, Texas. In 2008,
Madagascar Oil indicated that it was lacking in sufficient overhead
capital and mining technology to develop the tar sands deposit that is
similar to Alberta, but much heavier and harder to extract in the Central
Western coastal region of Melaky, while retaining full control of a second
in-situ deposit to its immediate south.


In August of 2010, I left Antananarivo, and drove westward towards the
Melaky region to investigate the impacts of the proposed tar sands
projects. The roads start out paved, then gravel, and from there, the road
is a mish-mash of red-clays and gravel with more potholes on it than any
other such road I have seen in my lifetime. The distance to the Melaky
Region is less than 300 kilometers, but it took 14 hours to drive, a vast
improvement over the 3 days it took a couple of years ago. When I arrived,
I met with locals who are organizing around the tar sands.

“There is a problem with the new [Rajoelina] government and Madagascar
Oil, not with the new government and Total. The new government tried to
review the contracts between the government and Madagascar Oil. With
Total, it's okay,” said Jean-Pierre Ratsimbazafy, who lives and works on
social and environmental issues with a community based NGO in the Melaky
region, as well as with the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar. In the
months following, MO did the pubic offering and rescinding, all oddly
coinciding with the attempt and then apparent failure of members of the
military to re-overthrow the government once again.

 "Following a meeting between the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons and
Madagascar Oil in Antananarivo late on 16 December, the Ministry has
indicated that it is interested in acquiring from the Company all of its
licences excluding Bemolanga," a representative from Madagascar Oil told
the UK Guardian on December 17, 2010. That Madagascar Oil executives
admit the government wishes to take over their claims lays credence to
the possibility of Total's involvement behind the scenes. Bemolanga is
the only exploration block that is majority owned by Total.

 Whatever the behind the scenes details are, the tightening of what amount
to sanctions from the United States, and several African countries, the
implication of France, Holland, Morocco and the World Bank in financing
illegal exports of rosewood trees from the famous national parks that are
home to the equally famous lemurs, the exodus of investors and further
increased poverty indicators (due, in part, to a switch over to the
informal sector from many formerly employed persons in the waning export
sector) have all been results of the 2009 military ascension to power of
a man who, until a recent referendum, was too young to constitutionally
be the president. In fact, it is widely believed the bulk of the illegal
logging money was going into the hands of those in the military loyal to
the coup leader Rajoelina.



Locals organize in the face of social and ecological costs

While Total SA has earned enmity in Canada for both proposed upgrading
facilities and mines, the direct impact on the human population of Melaky,
one of Madagascar's poorest regions may end up coming at an even higher
social and environmental cost.

“In the [Melaky] region, the problems are deforestation & the consequences
of the fires,  and recently there are many companies who explore petroleum
here,” said Ratsimbazafy. Along with these issues, there are also possible
uranium mining sites and offshore oil exploration in a major whale
corridor.

“In Bemolanga now, there are two problems. One problem is a social
problem,” said Ratsimbazafy. Total has already relocated the local
population for this development: “They drove the villagers out of the site
of Bemolanga,” he said. There is also the ecology, the water, the lands
and desertification, affecting the people living near the Bemolanga
deposit.

 More than just lemurs, 60 percent of the birds in Madagascar don't exist
anywhere else in the world. Same goes for 85 per cent of the fauna, every
mammal other than bats and 96 per cent of the dung beetle varieties.

Yet the Bemolanga field lies in a vastly dry and deforested area, one
where villages of a few hundred or less live with zero services or power
are scattered across the landscape. Though eco-tourism has been one of the
mainstays of the country since the collapse of an old socialist collective
model some 20 years ago, few adventure seekers would travel to the areas
Total and Madagascar Oil seek to develop. The people in the area
constantly re-burn the grasses to provide fresh grass shoots for the zebus
and chickens that they raise, some for their own sustenance, and some for
export to the more urbanized centres of the country.

“The villagers currently use the land to plant kassava and potatoes, and
in the natural forests there are natural yams the villagers seek for
food,” explained Ratsimbazafy. The natural forest he refers to takes less
than ten minutes to drive across. It's all that is left.“In Bemolanga
there is very little water, so in the dry season there is no water-- Total
says they will collect the water, but on the site of the Bemolanga [mine]
there is no [water] reserve," said Ratsimbazafy.

There is only one large river near Bemolanga and it is a mere trickle of
water compared to the Athabasca River near the giant mines in Canada.
Multiple villages rely on the water-- untreated, of course-- for
everything from drinking to washing to supplying water for their livestock
(who wander the landscape without fences) to fishing for extra food. There
is no water to spare. Each family in the villages gathers an average of
five buckets of water a day, transported by foot and carried on their
heads.

If the mostly Dene and Cree hamlet of Fort Chipewyan is ground zero for
tar sands development in Alberta, villages like Ambonara approximately a
mile from the operations plant that bears Total's name are ground zero in
Madagascar. They have an even more direct reliance on the water, and have
no such thing as a treatment plant or plumbing of any sort.

As for benefits, much like similar villages around the world near
extractive plants they have had the local liaison office of Total SA hand
out t-shirts, hats and promising local wealth to end all of their daily
problems-- and not warning them whatsoever of massive new ones that may
begin. The experimental project has so far disturbed only small blocks of
land with mining, and has created 10 small tailings ponds, all of which
are now filled over and even planted-- with trees that do not naturally
occur in the area.



You see men wearing Total shirts and hats all over the neighbouring
regions, especially in Morafenobe, a town of perhaps 1000 people that is a
short drive from Bemolanga and Tsimiroro, the two large tar sands deposits
that exist in Madagascar. This town is likely to expand rapidly if Total
moves ahead with strip mining operations here, though the privately owned
airport that Total runs right near their plant suggests they may already
be planning to bring in workers from outside the region. Their airport has
a giant Total windsock, visible from the much smaller villages near
Bemolanga. If one place struck my thoughts wandering about Morafenobe, it
was Fort McMurray, Canada- the town of debauchery that hosts the majority
of those who work in the mines run by Syncrude, Suncor and Albian Sands,
among others.

Madagascar is famous for it's ecology, but the poorest region in the
country is also in the most barren, perhaps keeping “big win”
organizations that often only attempt to protect areas that look
spectacular on a postcard away from trying to halt the project. Some
individuals have even written that “at least this is nowhere near the
national parks and the lemurs,” and similar sentiments. Total is, however,
already relocating people who have lived there for generations, some of
whom are members of the poorest communities in one of the world's poorest
countries.

The villagers whose lives and land seem to hang in the balance are not
lost, yet. There has been one upside to the coup, which is that the
Alliance Vohary Gasy has sprung up to coordinate popular resistance across
Madagascar. Their stated goal is that no longer shall the government of
Antananarivo and foreign corporations decide without the input of the
people as to what developments should take place in the country. Without
taking sides in the dispute in governance, they advocate for community
level democracy to expand. They have done so, in part, because the
international community has mostly left since the coup of 2009. Positive
resistance often takes place because of the most dire circumstances, and a
feeling of the need to act independently of others whose help seems to
have dissipated.

http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/devastation-madagascar/5524


--
Macdonald Stainsby
Co-ordinator,
http://oilsandstruth.org
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moderated radical discussion list:
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In the contradiction lies the hope.
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