BLACK BONANZA
The Canadian Oil Sands of Alberta
The Race to Secure North America's Energy Future
by Alastair Sweeny
PREFACE:
Welcome to Black Bonanza, the story of Canada's Athabasca
Sands, one of the greatest reservoirs of fossil fuels on the
planet.
I started to write this book during a growing attack on the
Sands by global warming alarmists. The whole movement seemed
unreal to me, and not entirely about the environment, and I
wanted to do some due diligence to see what was really behind
these attacks. I did some research in the 1980s for Alberta
Energy Company, one of the original investors in Syncrude, and
have been tracking the history of the Sands ever since. I was
particularly struck by former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed's
recent concerns about runaway Sands development, and other
worries about water and air pollution. So, I felt it was time to
dig deeper into the issues and share my findings with people
interested in a wider perspective on our energy future. As I got
further into the research, I realized that the story of the early
days of the Sands and the huge engineering challenges faced was
fascinating as well.
The first part of Black Bonanza tells how the Sands were
formed millions of years ago, and the one-hundred-year quest to
crack the code of removing usable oil from what is essentially
tarry dirt. Reminiscent of the Klondike gold rush days, only in
slow motion, the quest for oil from the Sands attracted a parade
of dreamers, adventurers and explorers, pulled by the lure of the
frontier. All of them went broke. However, the rise in oil prices
in the 1970s and 1980s attracted major investors, and finally, in
the 1990s, a marvelous new below-ground technology emerged, to
transform the industry from a backwater resource to the global
giant it is today. There is spectacular wealth in the Sands, far
more than we originally believed, and this story must be told as
well.
In the second part of the book, I explore the new role of
the Sands as the "whipping boy" of radical green activists and as
"the worst project on earth." Just as the Sands emerged to help
us deal with a growing oil supply emergency, a massive campaign
by global warming crusaders has staked a claim against Canada's
oilsands developers. In an effort to demonize the Sands, an army
of public relations activists were unleashed to turn the Sands
from what should be a treasure chest of wealth and energy
security, into what Al Gore calls "a threat to our survival as a
species."
Some of my green-leaning friends would disagree, but I'm
afraid that, for the past decade, the Anthropogenic Global
Warming (AGW) crusaders have sucked all the oxygen out of most
other environmental campaigns, and many far more serious concerns
have been set aside to placate these U.N.- backed agitators. Even
the oilsands producers seem like deer caught in the headlights,
unable to flee from this onrushing army of warmists.
The book becomes a bit of a detective story, as I go behind
the public relations spin of AGW and try to unravel the people
and players behind the crusade. I wanted to find out why they are
so bent on painting Canada black and even trying to shut down the
Sands, especially when the country is really only a bit player in
the global emissions game. This is a legitimate question, when
the U.S. and Chinese coal industries have a far more serious
environmental footprint......
Another question that intrigued me as I researched this book
was this: Why are the leaders of AGW blaming "Big Oil" for the
problems of the planet when most of them have worked for, taken
grant money from, or even partnered with the oil majors? Even the
lead environmental sled dogs, Greenpeace and WWF, have taken
funding from Big Oil. So who is co-opting whom?
For the sake of understanding this issue, I believe it is
crucial for people to set aside their very real environmental
concerns and question what is really going on behind AGW and the
stigmatizing of the Sands. Is it just hypocrisy we are dealing
with? Is the whole campaign over AGW just a fund raising scam, or
is it more? This whole advocacy issue, while painful for some, is
just too important to ignore. There are serious economic
interests at stake here and some major economic repercussions.
I know that public relations professionals have little
interest in that quaint concept called truth. They have a job to
do and clients to satisfy. And, obviously, the major oil
companies in the Sands have their own public relations
departments, as well as hiring outside consultants, but what
amazed me is how big a public relations exercise AGW and the
"carbon jihad" has become, and what a colossal amount of money
has been spent on dirtying the reputation of the Sands. I wanted
to drill down and find out who profits and who pays.
Behind the scenes, that whole AGW crusade is being stage
managed by a number of well-paid advocacy consultants. These
people are experts at using the complete arsenal of modern pub-
lic relations, including on-line campaigns, viral interactive
media, rapid response, securing placement for opinion pieces,
issues branding, political rhetoric, and persuasion.
A lot of the divide seems politically driven. Al Gore
himself doesn't dare cross the street without his trusty public
relations lady, Kalee Kreider, formerly a senior vice president
and Washington manager of Fenton Communications, and a veteran
activist and publicist who has worked closely with Greenpeace and
the WWF. The Washington Post says that Fenton founder David
Fenton, a senior hippy who's the public relations guru of the
U.S. left, is "not just the poster child of liberal causes; he's
the designer, producer and distributor of the posters." New
York-based Fenton is the guy who single-handedly changed the
tired old terminology "left wing" into a shining new brand:
"progressive." He also edits Al Gore's speeches.
Jim Hoggan, who runs Canada's David Suzuki Foundation, is a
very smooth public relations pro as well. His blog, desmogblog,
pretty much recycles the Al Gore carbon chastity mantra developed
by Fenton.
But then again, in this house of mirrors, we find that not
all left-wingers are warmists. In that great lobby bazaar called
Washington, home of almost 40,000 registered lobbyists, and
hundreds of thousands of policy promoters, both the Democrats and
the Republicans happily accept donations from pretty much the
same large corporations, with few exceptions.
So we have to drill down further. I find it fascinating that
several of the major players have extensive ties to the oil
industry. Al Gore's father, a U.S. senator, boosted the family
fortune sitting on the board of Armand Hammer's Occidental
Petroleum (Oxy), and helped Oxy get into Libya. Today, Oxy is the
world's largest user of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a
technique used to increase production from mature wells. The
current Oxy Canada is primarily a gas reseller, but the original
Occidental Petroleum Canada Ltd. has morphed into Nexen Inc., a
respected and innovative oilsands operator......
Moving beyond all the public relations issues, we have to
look at who benefits from the AGW crusade and the demonization of
the Sands. We have to question whether the Chicago Carbon
Exchange and other emissions markets and carbon credit schemes
really work, and whether there are better ways to promote
renewable energy, such as simple taxes at the pump and tax breaks
for energy conservation and innovation.
It appears that we are starting to reach "Warmageddon," the
last battle in the AGW crusade. At the time of writing, I feel
these AGW spin doctors, however bright and persuasive they may
be, are flogging a dying horse. Even before the "Climategate"
release of incriminating e-mails, the real science was dragging
them down and the recession was making it worse. Now polls show
that climate fatigue is setting in, and people are increasingly
yawning and changing the channel in face of the most brutal
apocalyptic statements by Al Gore and others. Why do they keep up
the pretense and keep repeating the same tired mantra-Canada's
oil sands are evil? They are not, and it's time to move on.
Finally, I wanted to explore the concept put forward by a
number of experts, from inventor Kay Kurzweil to financier Warren
Buffett, that we are very close to some amazing breakthroughs in
solar power, and twenty years from now most short-haul vehicles
on the road will be electric. In the final section of the book, I
explore what this will do to the oil industry, and what
transitional role the Athabasca Sands can play in the race to
real energy security.
I hope you enjoy Black Bonanza. If you want to learn more
about the Sands and the issues I discuss in the book, I invite
you to visit my Web Support Site at:
www.alastairsweeny.com/blackbonanza/ index.php
I have added chapter-related images and videos, and a full
resourcebase of Sands-related images and videos, documents,
useful Web links, and a bookstore with direct links to order
pages at on-line retailers.
The Web Support Site also has clickable Web-linked
references that connect you right to the original article that
I've cited in each chapter. These are indicated at the end of
appropriate footnotes in the book with the symbol < * >. I have
also built a gallery of images you can refer to while you read
each chapter of the book......
..........
To be continued
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