26/10/2009

The tar sands of northern Canada have become the front line in a struggle between the world's biggest oil companies - and environmentalists.

Some environmentalists fear that the tar sands will increase global warming. They've also found an unusual ally - a Manchester based company which has joined forces with Canada’s native Indians battling to save land they claim is being devastated by the extraction of oil.
The oil fields are deposits of bitumen - a sticky, tar-like substance mixed with sand and clay. It is much thicker than conventional oil and requires huge amounts of energy to turn it into petrol.

The oil isn't drilled for - it's either scooped off the land or superheated by steam and pumped to the surface.

BBC Inside Out North West investigates what has driven Co-operative Financial Services (CFS). The Co-operative Group to support Canada’s Beaver Lake Cree Nation group in their legal challenge over the exploitation of the huge Canadian tar sand fields.

The court challenge, funded in part by the Co-op, calls for an injunction to reduce or even stop the extraction of oil from tar sands because of the impact upon the Beaver Lake Cree’s constitutionally protected treaty rights.

The treaty was signed with Canada in 1876 when the Cree ceded vast tracts of land in exchange for guaranteed hunting and fishing rights. Now they say those rights are in jeopardy because of the large scale deforestation, wildlife disturbance and pollution caused by tar sand developments.

Inside Out North West follows Paul Monaghan, the man from the Co-op who is spearheading the support for the campaign, as he travels to Canada to meet the Beaver Lake Cree and see first hand the impact on the land he describes as 'hell on earth'.

For Paul, from Oldham, the mission isn’t just about supporting a group of indigenous people thousands of miles away, it’s about the impact that the tar sand developments will have on the entire world.

It is claimed that the extraction and production of fuels from tar sands emits about three times more greenhouse gases than conventional oils. If unchallenged, the Co-op believes this trend will create an ecological disaster that could prove the tipping point into uncontrollable global warming.

Paul, who is head of ethics with the Co-op, says: "If that carbon gets into the atmosphere and we get to the brink of two degrees warming and runaway climate change, it’s virtually game over. It’s build a wall round the UK, stick guns on it and wait for it to kick off. I mean that’s what we’re looking at."

Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) is helping the Beaver Lake Cree to demonstrate the impact of tar sand development in preparation for their legal case and have given the Cree £100,000 towards their fight.

The Alberta Government, who refused to be interviewed for the programme, is promising to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by the year 2050 by using carbon capture and storage. It monitors carbon emissions from industry and the companies say they have been cutting greenhouse gases for over a decade.

But Paul argues that the technology to capture the carbon is not workable on such a large scale. He says: "Imagine where would you even apply a piece of kit that captures the carbon? I mean it’s ubiquitous across the entire region. We’re not talking about a single coal power station here and you stick a bit of kit on the top. These things are everywhere, it wouldn’t work, and it’s just not practicable."

A report commissioned by the Co-op due to be published on 26 October, 2009 will examine this claim further.