Tar sands: Why should we care?

If Canadians have decided to raze 141 thousand square kilometres of Boreal Forests to the ground in order to extract petrol from the underlying petrol-rich sands then that’s their problem, right? But it may well become our problem too very soon. Not just because several of Europe’s largest banks and corporations (British Petrolium, Shell and Barclay Bank to name just a few) are among the biggest backers of the tar sands project but also because tar sands petrol is just steps away from making it into European petrol stations.

The tar sands have been described as “the most destructive project on earth”. Located in northern Alberta, in Canada, the Athabasca tar sands are the world’s second richest oil reserve, containing an estimated 1.7 trillion barrels of petroleum. The problem is that the petroleum is mixed in with sticky black sand (hence the term “tar sand) and lies underneath the ground. To reach it vast areas have to be deforested; so far an area almost as large as half of Britain has been clear cut to allow open air mining to dig up the soil. Once the soil has been dug it is transported by lorry to refineries where it is boiled in water diverted from the nearby Athabasca river and mixed with chemicals. Making one barrel of petrol requires 2 tonnes of tar sand and 3 thousand litres of water. Currently production is around 1.5 million barrels a day, which uses up enough natural gas (to boil the water and tar sands) to heat 6 million homes. Once the petrol is made, toxic waste water is pumped into open air reservoirs so vast they can be seen from outer space.

Until now the only countries using Canadian tar sands oil are Canada and the United States – the petrol is pumped to destination through seemingly endless pipelines, which further damage biodiversity as they too require clear cutting the forest.

On June 14 an international chain of natural cosmetics stores, Lush, launched a week-long campaign to raise awareness of tar sands and their implications for Europe. In fact, over the course of coming weeks two very important decisions will be taken in Brussels that will affect the future of the Athabasca tar sands: the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Fuel Quality Directive. Should decision makers agree to accept to import tar sands oil into Europe we may soon all unwittingly participate in the destruction of Athabasca.

Unfortunately, tar sands petrol is not just highly damaging to Canada’s biodiversity and a drain on its natural resources (land, water, air), it also has devastating impacts on the indigenous groups of First Nations people living downstream from the excavation site. Further, the oil produced by the tar sands is of a lesser quality than conventional oil and contains between 25 and 40 per cent more green house gases (GHG).

The tragedy of the tar sands may turn out to be to our benefit as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are not keen on taking decisions that are likely to increase Europe’s emissions to such an extent.

Anyone looking for information about the Tar Sands can visit Lush stores across Europe and sign a letter addressed to the European Parliament asking it not to support the tar sands. Anyone looking to support the cause can do so by buying a pot of “Sweet and Shower”, a limited edition shower gel. All money collected through the sale of the product (each pot costs around 5 euros) will be donated by Lush to the Indigenous Environmental Network, a local Athabascan  NGO that is fighting to stop further expansion of the oil fields.