January 18, 2007
Dear activists,
CBC News is reporting that, "U.S. and Canadian oil executives and government officials met for a two-day oil summit in Houston in January 2006 and made plans for a "fivefold expansion" in oilsands production in a relatively "short time span," according to minutes of the meeting obtained by the CBC's French-language network, Radio-Canada."
The "Oil Sands Experts Group Workshop Report" from the January 24-25, 2006 meeting in Houston, Texas.
The CBC also reports, "Canada is already the top exporter of oil to the American market, exporting the equivalent of one million barrels a day - the exact amount that the oilsands industry in Alberta currently produces. A fivefold increase would mean the exportation of five million barrels a day, which would supply a quarter of current American consumption and add up to almost half of all U.S. imports."
The CBC report also states, "...the current extraction of oil from the tarsands results in the spewing of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere..." and, as noted in the minutes of the January meeting, the proposed expansion would require Canada to "streamline" its environmental regulations.
Already current oilsands development destroys vast tracts of land, clears forests, and consumes 26 per cent of Alberta's groundwater. The extraction process takes at least six barrels of water to produce just one barrel of oil. The resulting toxic wastewater cannot be put back into circulation and sits in 50-square-kilometre pools visible from space.
Moreover, as Maude Barlow writes, "Canada signed away significant control over energy when it agreed to a proportional sharing clause under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Under this clause, Canada cannot cut exports to the U.S. no matter what the state of our energy supplies, unless it cuts the same proportion of supplies to Canadians. As a result, Canada now exports 70 per cent of our oil to the U.S. while importing 60 per cent of what we consume from other countries." A further expansion of our exports to the United States would only worsen this situation.
DEMAND
Chapter activists are encouraged to e-mail Prime Minister Stephen Harper today at pm@pm.gc.ca and demand that he immediately and categorically reject these plans for a fivefold expansion of oil production from the tarsands.
A sample message could read:
Prime Minister Harper,
As a member of the Council of Canadians, I am outraged that U.S. and Canadian oil executives and government officials made plans for a "fivefold" expansion of oil production from the environmentally destructive northern Alberta tarsands, amounting to five million barrels of oil a day to be exported to the United States. I believe that a moratorium should be put in place on new oilsands development until a full environmental and social assessment can be done. Already we know that the extraction process in the tarsands destroys at least six barrels of water to produce just one barrel of oil. You must immediately and categorically reject the plans developed by Canadian government officials and U.S. oil executives to increase exports to the United States and to streamline our environmental regulatory safeguards. I await your response.
cc. John Baird, Minister of the Environment at bairdj@parl.gc.ca
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