“Extremists are ordinary people with their backs against the wall.”
Disciplined RCMP Sergeant
This
is a “must” book to read, for anyone who wants to understand how the oil
and gas
industry negatively impacts
on people and the environment. Andrew Nikiforuk dedicates
his book “To all downwinders”
-- those who live downwind of oil and gas wells and sour
gas processing plants.
The
book is grounded in the impact of the oil and gas industry, over the past
ten years,
on the fundamentalist Christian
Reverend Wiebo Ludwig and his extended Trickle Creek
farm-commune ‘family’ of about
36 persons, the “Church of Our Shepherd King,” as well
as many other peoples’ experience
in Alberta. The farm-commune (on what originally was
an unspoilt 160 acres) is
in the Peace River area of northern Alberta. It is a simple,
eco-alternative lifestyle,
religious community, seen by Ludwig “as a viable visionary
alternative to the prevailing
destructive lifestyles around us.” (p. 239) From 1990 onwards,
Trickle Creek residents were
frequently gassed, through “flaring” with hydrogen sulphide
from sour gas wells on and
surrounding their farm. The pro-industry regulatory body, the
Energy and Utilities Board
(EUB), largely financed by industry itself, while consistently
refusing Ludwig's request
for a public inquiry, stated that in 1998, within a ten-kilometer
radius of the Trickle Creek
community, daily flaring “released enough gas to heat more
than 5,000 homes.” (p. 255)
Apart from this incredible waste, there is the pollution, truck
traffic and other inconveniences
associated with industrial exploitation, all having a general
regulatory government approval.
(One thinks of “best farming practices” legislation, which
has often been used to defeat
anti-pesticide campaigns or to deflect criticism of industrial
hog farms.) Flares are described
in the book as looking “like giant candles” but also
roaring “like jet engines.”
Flares can discharge through high stacks or at ground level. (p. 26)
About
40 per cent of Alberta gas is “sour,” meaning it contains hydrogen sulphide
or
sulphur. As the author notes,
those who work around sour gas suffer a number of health
problems: “Men who have worked
Alberta's sour gas fields tend to age rapidly and look
old before their time.” (p.
20) Naturally, the oil and gas industry and government has a
different view: “Both industry
and government argue that no conclusive body of scientific
evidence supports the claim
that small doses of H2S (hydrogen sulphide) are harmful.”
(p. 23) About one third of
Alberta's government revenues come from oil and gas. Yet
for over forty years now,
as Nikiforuk shows, rural Albertans exposed to sour gas
emissions have had bloody
noses, respiratory problems, premature births, nausea, cancer,
asthma, and dead or sick livestock.
(p. 255)
Why
does flaring occur? Nikiforuk explains that “oil wells flare to burn off
gas that
doesn't warrant the cost of
a pipeline. Gas plants flare to convert H2S into water and less
toxic sulphuric dioxide. Both
wells and plants often flare during routine, cleanups or
emergency burn-offs of gas
called ‘upsets.’ (p. 26)
What
is in the flares? According to a 1994 Alberta Research Council study, withheld
by the government for two
years, it was found “that flares didn't burn efficiently and left
anywhere from 16 to 38 percent
of the gases intact. While the burning of waste gas
destroyed some toxins, it
created others -- as many as 250 compounds, including
known cancer causers and brain
fuddlers such as benzene, styrene, carbon disulphide,
hydrogen sulphide, and carbonyl
sulphide.” (pp. 83-84)
Ludwig's
experience, and that of others chronicled in this fine, progressive, yet
anthropocentric book by Nikiforuk,
shows what many rural Canadians have come to learn
first-hand -- that there is
no permanent unspoilt space for one's family which cannot be
fundamentally disrupted by
capitalist economic activity. In Alberta, only about ten per cent
of forest land remains unfragmented
by seismic lines, pipelines, oil and gas wells,
clearcutting, and roads. According
to Saboteurs, in 2001 over 20,000 oil and gas wells
were to be drilled in the
province. Nikiforuk notes that in the year 2000, the regulatory
EUB only turned down one application,
out of thousands, to drill an oil and gas well.
Coincidently, the one application
turned down was the subject of a National Film Board
documentary concerning the
treatment of landowners. (p. 256)
Anyone
living in a rural area knows that one can have one's life turned upside
down
by so-called development nearby,
e.g. clearcutting, oil and gas or other mining activities. In
Alberta, Nova Scotia or any
other province, while a person may “own” land, under the
capitalist economic system
one cannot own the mineral rights underneath the land. These
reside with provincial governments.
(Deep ecology inspired radical activists believe that to
speak of the “ownership” of
Nature in this way, is the height of human arrogance. Property
rights, from a deep ecology
perspective, must protect Nature and all the non-human living
creatures, and they must protect
social justice within a society.) Capitalist property “rights”
are sold or leased on industry's
demand. The oil and gas industry operates as though those
persons, with whom they must
‘negotiate’ entry for well sites, or pipeline rights of way,
have no deep attachment to
place of residence or to preserve the ecological integrity of a
piece of land. They cannot
apparently comprehend that the Land can be part of a person.
In Alberta, wells have an
“exclusion zone” of one hundred meters. In the Maritimes, there
are more than 4,000 landowners
having to deal with the overland high pressure natural gas
pipeline to markets in the
United States. As well as a right-of-way, within this there is an
exclusion zone on either side
of the pipe, which restricts normal farming or forestry activities.
For the industry, opposition
from landowners is seen as a negotiating ploy to increase
monetary compensation.
The
fossil fuel industry can buy out down-wind rural “trouble-makers”, but there
is usually
a “confidentiality” agreement
to sign. This means for the industry, no public admittance of
wrong-doing and hence no precedent-setting
cases for other aggrieved landowners to use.
Wiebo Ludwig was not offered
a serious buy-out offer, only one with impossible conditions
if he signed.
An unlikely role model
Wiebo
Ludwig is an unlikely role model for environmentalists. He is quoted in
the book
as saying that he does not
consider himself an environmentalist, but only someone
defending “my family from
harm” and “not an environmentalist who is trying to save the
world from burning by the
petrochemical industry.” (p. 205) An anti-oil and gas video
“Home Sour Home” was
produced at Trickle Creek and widely distributed. Yet this is a
person who also has a picture
of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the executed Nigerian who fought the
ecological and social destruction
of the oil and gas industry in Nigeria, in the main cabin at
the farm.
Ludwig's
environmental consciousness may not have come initially from “intellectual
conversion,” as is the case
for many in the environmental movement, but through fighting
to defend the spot where he
wanted to live. But as he became more of a thorn to the oil
and gas industry, more and
more people with similar grievances contacted him for help.
He also came in contact with
other home-grown environmentalists who were taking on
the oil and gas industry,
and with Earth First! Ludwig received many bomb and death
threats at his home. In April
of 1999, in Edmonton, his van was bombed. Ludwig made
what I thought was a personally
revealing comment, which all of us can learn from:
“Most of the pain in life
was really the fear of pain.” (p. 235)
The
RCMP are shown in this book to have consistently worked in the interests
of the
oil and gas industry, to re-establish
oil business as usual. They totally disregarded the local
peoples’ health and safety
concerns. By sponsoring town hall meetings, the police worked
with oil and gas industry
supporters to whip-up sentiment against Wiebo Ludwig. They
went well beyond the call
of duty, by blowing up an oil shack to provide “deep cover” for
an informant, whose testimony
eventually put Ludwig and one other member of the farm
community in prison. Of course,
the car bombing directed at Ludwig remains unsolved.
The only police officer who
was at all sympathetic to the oil patch problems was
transferred and eventually
disciplined. His quotation about what makes an “extremist”
starts this review essay.
But
Wiebo Ludwig, this intelligent, witty, resolute, and unpredictable fighter,
is also a
fundamentalist Christian with
a literalist view of the Bible, and someone quite patriarchal
towards women, who for example
believes in “headship” -- women should cover their
heads in his church, to symbolize
their subordination to men.
Atlantic lessons
Reading
this book should help to cast away illusions that the fossil fuel industry
can ever
be a “good neighbour,” or,
in a marine sense here on the East Coast, that oil and gas
activities can “co-exist,”
as oil industry executives and their apologists swear up and down,
with commercial fishing, eco-tourism,
preserving the marine habitat of marine mammals
and sea birds, etc. Who will
be looking out for the inevitable pipeline leaks, breakages,
well blow-outs, release of
toxic drilling muds, human errors, etc.? One Dalhousie
University scientist wrote
recently that seismic blasts from exploration can be heard
half-way across the Atlantic.
We know that sour gas has now been “discovered” and a
huge project is in the works
by PanCanadian Energy. The farce of the hearings into the
Sable gas project established
what will be the “model.” It showed that the mountains of
company literature presented
to environmental assessment panels, all come to an identical
conclusion: “no significant
adverse environmental or adverse socio-economic impacts are
likely to occur.” (See Sable
Offshore Energy Project Application to National Energy
Board, June 11, 1996, p. 8,
section 1.) This is totally dishonest and the conclusion has
been predetermined. (The book
also shows how the industry “leans” on reporters to
achieve the correct slant
in news stories.)
Just
imagine the further opportunities to despoil in marine areas, where there
are few
humans without vested economic
interests to watch over big oil and gas? (Unfortunately,
oil and gas exploration, which
started on the Scotian Shelf in the late 1960s, was
essentially unopposed.) Those
of us living in the Atlantic region face a full-throttle
expansion of an, as yet mainly
marine-based, oil and gas industry in the service of the
insatiable energy demands
of the US economy. We have similar lap-dog regulatory
agencies to those in Alberta,
such as the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board.
This book shows us, based
on Albertan experience over many years, that there is no
rectification or mitigation
possible of oil patch problems, given the existing industrial
capitalist economic system,
where minimal government regulation is striven for.
“Sweet”
natural gas is not environmentally friendly. Methane makes up about 90 percent
of sales-quality natural gas.
Methane leakage is one problem. Methane is a much worse
green house gas than the ‘normal’
carbon dioxide from the combustion of natural gas.
Natural gas is no ‘bridging’
fuel to a more environmentally friendly world. When we know
the destructive role of increasing
climate change gases, rising fossil fuel consumption
should rightly be regarded
as a major criminal activity. We should start listening to the
advice of the International
Panel on Climate Change, which calls for over a 60 percent
reduction in green house gases,
merely to stabilize the existing climate situation. In a wider
sense, which Nikiforuk's book
does not really cover, fossil fuel is central to the continuing
ecological destructiveness
of the global industrial economy. George Bush has made it clear
that Canada has a major role
to play in servicing the American colossus. Our Canadian
politicians are prostrating
themselves to answer Bush's energy call.
Wiebo
Ludwig was eventually sentenced to 28 months prison time for his ecotage
(industrial sabotage) of oil
and gas installations. But this book makes clear Ludwig had a
lot of support in rural Alberta.
Given the new “anti-terrorist” climate in Canada, and the
passage of legislation like
bill C-36, interference with the fossil fuel industry will likely be
considered “treasonous.”
Conclusion
Nikiforuk's
book is full of stories of how in Alberta, the industry and the government
promote “denial,” not rectification.
There is a lot of rage in Alberta, and it will be heading
our way to the East Coast.
Oil and gas activists and the interested public need to read
this book. Knowing the true
face of the enemy is part of any intelligent battle preparation.
January 10, 2002
Printed in an
edited version in the Earth First! Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3, February-March
2002.
Also printed
in the Watershed Sentinel (http://www.rfu.org/ws121.htm#Toxic Downwinds),
Vol. 12,
No. 1, February/March
2002, and in the Socialist Studies Bulletin, No. 66, January-March
2002.
To obtain any of the Green Web publications, write to us at:
Green Web, R.R. #3, Saltsprings, Nova Scotia, Canada, BOK 1PO
E-mail us at: greenweb@ca.inter.net