Hundreds of people gathered outside the White House in Washington, D.C., last week to chant, unfurl banners and wave signs. But this protest had nothing to do with a war being fought half a world away or the iron-fisted rule of a foreign dictator. The object of the participants’ ire was much closer to home, both for them and for us: the Alberta oilsands.
The protesters gathered outside the seat of American power and the residence of President Barack Obama to protest the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline by Canadian energy conglomerate TransCanada. Thirty-six inches in diameter and with a price tag of $13 billion, the pipeline would stretch from Hardisty, Alta., to refineries and ports in the Gulf of Mexico.
Nearly 400 protesters were arrested as of Friday. Among them were Canadian actors Margot Kidder — better known as Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve’s Superman in the 1970s and 1980s — and Tantoo Cardinal, best known for her work on North of 60 and Dances with Wolves.
At play is the convergence of environmental ideologies. The building of the pipeline will mean the expansion of the oilsands, ergo more harmful greenhouse gas emissions. And the pipeline will run through water supplies in several American states en route to the Gulf Coast. Should the pipeline spring a leak, it could result in underground water contamination.
Some would argue, why even build the pipeline? After all, if TransCanada is willing to spend $13 billion to send oil from central Alberta to the other end of the continent for refining, why haven’t our provincial and federal governments been able to convince some multi-national that the money would be better spent building refineries and doing that value-added work right here? It would alleviate some of the environmentalists’ concerns — if the oil is transported a shorter distance, there is less chance of it spilling — while creating jobs for Albertans and spurring on our own economy.
The problem with this rationale is it doesn’t take into account the political and economic implications of the Keystone XL pipeline. Firstly, the infrastructure to refine oil is already in place in the Gulf Coast. Building the infrastructure here in Alberta, with our current cost structure, obviously doesn’t make sense or the big players, like Suncor and Syncrude, would be doing it. Secondly, supplying the United States with Alberta oil to refine means the Obama government will have less reliance on oil from Hugo Chavez’s socialist Venezuela and other countries not on America’s A-list of friends. Thirdly, some estimates say the building of the pipeline will employ 118,000 Americans, either directly or indirectly. With a recessionary climate in the U.S., where some 14 million Americans are unemployed, the pipeline looks like an oasis for a government thirsting for economic relief.
The building of the Keystone XL pipeline gives Alberta a chance to show the U.S. and the rest of the world that the oilsands can be managed with minimal impact on the environment. The oil companies harvesting bitumen north of Fort McMurray must continue to invest in technology to reduce the oilsands’ environmental impact — including accelerated land reclamation, better settling of tailings ponds and reducing the processes’ overall carbon footprint. Doing so is an investment in Alberta’s economic future.
