<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">martin lukacs</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:martonlukacs@gmail.com">martonlukacs@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:14 PM<br>Subject: Dominion: Canada's Secret Oil Offensive in Europe & please support the Media Co-op<br>To: martonlukacs <<a href="mailto:martonlukacs@gmail.com">martonlukacs@gmail.com</a>><br>
<br><br><br>Hello friends,<br><br>This is an investigative article I just put together exposing how the Canadian government has been secretly playing salesman and PR agent in Europe for the Alberta tar sands: <a href="http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3991" target="_blank">http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3991</a>
<br><br>It's published in the Dominion, which is part of the Media Co-op network I work for as an editor and organizer.<br>We're trying to build a sustainable, alternative, grassroots media movement across Canada. We think we need this kind of movement now more than ever!<br>
<br>But none of our work would be possible without our member sustainers. It's our membership drive this month, and for as low as $5 a month, you can help make more of this kind of independent, investigative journalism happen.<br>
<br>Please consider becoming a sustaining member!<br><a href="http://www.mediacoop.ca/mmm_2011" target="_blank">http://www.mediacoop.ca/mmm_2011</a><br><br>in hope and in struggle,<br>Martin<br><br><h4><a href="http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3991" target="_blank">http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3991</a></h4>
<h4>May 25, 2011</h4>
<h1>Canada on Secret Oil Offensive: Documents</h1>
<h3>Foreign ministry's tar sands team rebranding Alberta oil in Europe </h3>
<p>
by <span><span><a href="http://www.dominionpaper.ca/author/martin_lukacs" target="_blank">Martin Lukacs</a></span></span>
<span><br><br>The Dominion - <a href="http://www.dominionpaper.ca" target="_blank">http://www.dominionpaper.ca</a><br><br></span>
</p>
<div><span><a href="http://www.dominionpaper.ca/images/3992" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.dominionpaper.ca/files/dominion-img/clay%20and%20IEN%20london.thumbnail." alt="" title="" height="166" width="250"></a></span>Clayton
Thomas-Mueller from the Indigenous Environmental Network during a
protest against the Alberta tar sands in London, England, in 2009 – part
of the "resurgence of highly critical public campaigns" that the
foreign ministry's secret team is monitoring.
<span> Photo: <span><span><a href="http://www.dominionpaper.ca/photographer/mike_russell" target="_blank">Mike Russell</a></span></span></span>
<div>
<div>
<a style="text-decoration:none" name="13027efb0ff25c53_fb_share" type="button" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dominionpaper.ca%2Farticles%2F3991&t=Canada%20on%20Secret%20Oil%20Offensive%3A%20Documents%3A%20Foreign%20ministry%27s%20tar%20sands%20team%20rebranding%20Alberta%20oil%20in%20Europe%20%7C%20The%20Dominion&src=sp" target="_blank"><span><span><br>
</span></span></a>
</div></div>
<div><em>"It would be a major contribution for the functioning
of a free society to have independent news sources, free from corporate
or state control, internally organized in ways that exemplify what a
truly participatory and democratic society would be. I was therefore
delighted to learn of the Dominion... an ambitious and impressive effort
to fulfill this urgent need. I know of nothing like it, and wish it the
greatest success, for the benefit of all of us."</em> --Noam Chomsky<br><br></div>
<a href="http://www.mediacoop.ca/join" title="Subscribe or Sustain" target="_blank"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/mediacoop.ca.themes/dominion/ads/subsust.png" style="border:medium none" height="148" width="250"></a>
</div>
<p>MONTREAL—The Canadian government has
been carrying out a secret plan in Europe to boost investment and keep
world markets open for the Alberta tar sands, collaborating with major
oil companies and aggressively undermining European environmental
measures, documents obtained by <cite>The Dominion</cite> reveal.</p>
<p>In 2009 the federal government launched a strategy to “protect and
advance Canadian interests related to the oil sands," fearing that
growing protest could curb European investment in the industry and that
EU restrictions on tar sands imports could be mimicked globally.</p>
<p>“Oil sands are posing a growing reputational problem [in Europe],
with the oil sands defining the Canadian brand,” states one document
released under the Access to Information Act. “Canada’s reputation as a
clean, reliable source of energy may be put at risk.”</p>
<p>Led by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT), alongside Natural
Resources and Environment Canada, the Albertan government, and involving
eight foreign missions, a European “Oil Sands Team” has gone on the
offensive against threats to the tar sands: they have monitored green
groups, responded to “significant negative media coverage,” helped
Canadian policymakers lobby European parliamentarians and organize trips
to Alberta, worked to “enhance cooperation” with oil companies, and
coordinated regular meetings between top European oil executives and
Albertan and federal ministers, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper.</p>
<p>The “pan-European oil sands advocacy strategy” was launched in
December 2009 around the time of the United Nations climate negotiations
in Copenhagen. Hundreds of civil society groups there gave Canada a
“Fossil of the Year” award for being "the absolute worst country at the
talks," fingering a powerful tar sands industry as the driving force
behind Canada’s hardline stance against ambitious greenhouse gas
reduction targets.</p>
<p>The extraction of Alberta’s vast deposits of bitumen, which hold the
second largest supply of oil after Saudi Arabia, has been widely
criticized as the world’s most environmentally destructive and
carbon-intensive industrial project.</p>
<div><span></span></div>
<p>One of the main targets of the strategy has been a EU
energy law—the Fuel Quality Directive—that would slap a dirty label on
tar sands oil as a way of promoting cleaner transportation fuel in
Europe. </p>
<p>Europe does not import tar sands oil from Canada, but Canadian policymakers are <a href="http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/10/20/EuropeDecidesFate/" target="_blank">worried</a>
a measure categorizing tar sands oil as an undesirable fuel could
spread to other continents. With the Albertan fossil fuel industry—and
supportive provincial and federal governments—increasingly looking to
Asian markets to sell their crude such precedents would spell trouble.</p>
<p>The obtained documents further reveal that the diplomatic campaign by
the Canadian government to “prevent discriminatory treatment of the oil
sands under the EU Fuel Quality Directive” was much more co-ordinated
than previously understood.</p>
<p>The mission in Brussels took the lead: lobbying the European
Commission, engaging in “regular information sharing with industry,”
organizing “high-profile events,” and Ministerial visits. The mission
provided “reporting with intelligence, analysis and advice” to the
Canadian and Alberta governments while the larger Oil Sands Team played a
“very useful coordination mechanism” in the campaign.</p>
<p>They appear to have been so <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/ottawa-fights-eus-dirty-fuel-label-on-oil-sands/article1958987/" target="_blank">aggressive</a> that a European parliamentarian told the Globe and Mail in March that Canada’s lobbying had been “unacceptable.” </p>
<p>The Canadian government was also concerned that a dirty label on the
tar sands could galvanize pressure to curb investment by European
companies who have been subject to increasingly noisy environmental
campaigns calling for divestment.</p>
<p>With the end of cheap, easily accessible oil, European oil giants
have scampered to extend their lifespans by turning to unconventional
gases and investing billions in the Alberta industry.</p>
<p>A mid-year report of the Oil Sands Team, covering activities between
January and July 2010, paints a picture of a Canadian government eager
to work closely with these companies to ensure the money keeps flowing.</p>
<p>One section reads less like international lobbying records than a
joint playbook. In Oslo, Canada’s mission “holds regular meetings” with
largely state-owned Norwegian oil giant Statoil to “update on each
others activities and co-ordinate where appropriate.” Statoil has
invested more than $2 billion in tar sands operations.</p>
<p>A Wikileaks cable has revealed that in November 2009, a month before
the European strategy was launched, then-Environment Minister Jim
Prentice described his shock to U.S. Ambassador Jacobsen on witnessing
Norwegian public sentiment against investment in Alberta’s “dirty oil,”
during a visit to the country. The experience had “heightened his
awareness of the negative consequences to Canada’s historically ‘green’
standing on the world stage,” and he believed the Canadian government’s
reaction to the dirty oil label was “too slow” and “failed to grasp the
magnitude of the situation.”</p>
<p>Each barrel of bitumen Statoil produced in the Alberta tar sands in
2010 released 85 times more carbon than a barrel of conventional North
Sea oil, according to company figures.</p>
<p>At Statoil’s annual general assembly last week, shareholders
representing nearly 20 per cent of private capital voted in support of a
<a href="http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/%3Cbr%20/%3Ehttp://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/recent/Major-European-investors-support-GreenpeaceWWF-anti-tar-sands-motion-at-Statoil-AGM/" target="_blank">resolution</a> calling for the company to withdraw from tar sands operations.</p>
<p>This was the third year in a row that motions campaigned for by
Greenpeace and the Indigenous Environmental Network have dominated the
meetings. In November 2010, Statoil buckled to campaigners' pressure and
sold 40 per cent of its Alberta tar sands portfolio.</p>
<p>When Prime Minister Harper flew to France for a few hours on June 4,
2010, to meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy in the run-up to the G8 and
G20 meetings in Canada, he found time for an unpublicized meeting with
Christophe de Margerie, the CEO of France’s oil major Total. Top Total
executives have also met with Canada’s Deputy Minister of Trade and
regularly meet with Canada’s ambassador.</p>
<p>The released documents do not reveal anything about the nature of the
PM's discussions. The company, however, recently announced they plan to
spend $20-billion in the oil sands by 2020 in hopes of boosting their
production to 200,000 barrels day. </p>
<p>In recognition of the tar sands' new importance to their portfolio, Margerie and the company's international advisory board <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/oil-sands-key-factor-in-global-pricing-head-of-total-says/article2029052/" target="_blank">spent</a>
last week in Alberta. During a speech to the Calgary Chamber of
Commerce, he acknowledged that environmental criticism has impacted the
company's reputation. "In terms of image, it's not good," he said.</p>
<p>Shell, the biggest energy company in the world, holds the most land
leases in the tar sands and plans to triple production to more than
750,000 barrels a day. They have been named in <a href="http://www.ienearth.org/archive_tar_sands_documents.html" target="_blank">five lawsuits</a>
related to environmental damages and violations of Indigenous rights,
and have faced shareholder resolutions demanding disclosure of the
social and environmental risks of their projects.</p>
<p>The Hague mission is “enhancing its engagement with the sector, and
with Shell recently.” The London mission is “in regular contact with the
private sector including meetings with Shell, BP, and Royal Bank of
Scotland [RBS] as well as Canadian oil companies,” and participated in
Shell’s Stakeholder dialogue where they were able to “gather
intelligence.” Brussels has “worked with Shell by hosting complementary
events” including a multi-stakeholder workshop and dinner.</p>
<p>The released documents indicate that government officials believe
their efforts have failed to fully “defend Canada’s image as a
responsible energy producer and steward of the environment including
climate change issues.” They cite tight budgets and a lack of resources.
The oil sands team, according to DFAIT, is composed only of 11
officials, working part-time, spread across Ottawa and the European
missions.</p>
<p>The report states that they will need an injection of “significant
resources” and also suggests that “a professional PR firm may be able to
assist us in moving forward strategically with the use of approved but
sharpened messaging.” With a "recent increase in the NGO campaigns
targeting public [sic], we anticipate increased risk to Canadian
interests much beyond the oil sands (e.g. recent campaign targeting
tourists to Alberta).”</p>
<p><a href="http://rethinkalberta.com/" target="_blank">Rethink Alberta</a>,
co-ordinated by an international network of green groups, has run a
billboard campaign in Europe and is mailing postcards to travel agents
and tourism operators to discourage tourists from visiting Alberta.</p>
<p>European countries have seen a “resurgence of highly critical public
campaigns,” including protests that “have become a regular occurrence in
London mostly towards BP, Shell and RBS but also towards the High
Commission.” </p>
<p>The report also points to “growing media attention to environmental
aspects of oil sands developments in Europe,” resulting in “enhanced
media monitoring” by most Canadian missions. Media coverage in Paris was
especially bad in their eyes: “the negative articles are essentially
about pollution, the wildlife, and the health of native peoples and the
destruction of the boreal forest.”</p>
<p>Their campaign against the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive law also
appears to be failing. The law aims to force fuel suppliers to cut
carbon emissions by six percent by 2020. In initial evaluations EU
officials assigned tar sands production a high carbon footprint, meaning
suppliers would shun tar sands oil in favour of lower-emission fuels
from conventional sources of petroleum.</p>
<p>Canadian policymakers jumped into action against the initiative
because they worried other countries like the United States and
China—who has previously mimicked European emissions standards on air
pollution in the 1990s—might adopt the model.</p>
<p>“Our fear is that if something happens in the EU and it is spread in
other countries—not only members of the EU—we could have roughly
one-third of the world’s population subscribing to regulation or
legislation that mitigates against our oilsands,” Alberta International
and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Iris Evans <a href="http://www.canadians.org/energyblog/?p=329" target="_blank">told</a> media in the fall of 2010. </p>
<p>Canadian and industry officials have vigorously contested that the
carbon footprint of tar sands is higher than traditional sources, but
European policymakers gained new ammo when an EU study released this
February concluded that production creates 23 per cent more emissions.</p>
<p>After aggressive lobbying from Canadian officials resulted in the
removal of the dirty fuel label on tar sands crude in the fall of 2010, a
re-emboldened European commission announced this spring that they would
move ahead with the plan to discourage tar sands fuel imports.</p>
<p>Ensuring open markets, however, is also the objective of the ongoing
free-trade negotiations between Canada and the European Union, which
would involve eliminating environmental “barriers” to trade like the
Fuel Quality Directive. Negotiators have frequently raised the issue of
the Fuel Quality Directive and recent media reports indicate they even <a href="http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE71K2FL20110221?sp=true" target="_blank">threatened</a> to scrap the agreement if the issue was not resolved to their satisfaction.</p>
<p>DFAIT officials told the Dominion that the advocacy plan is an
“official level” strategy at the departmental rather than ministerial
level, meaning Cabinet would not have any oversight.</p>
<p>The seeds for it may have been <a href="http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/rpp/2008-2009/inst/ext/ext02-eng.asp" target="_blank">planted</a>
in a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s (DFAIT)
planning document from March 2008. DFAIT's Report on Plans and
Priorities for 2008-2009 states that one of its priorities is to
“enhance international commercial opportunities for Canadian companies.”
It suggests developing an “energy advocacy strategy to brand Canada as a
leader in best practices for the development of oil sands reserves,
energy research and development, advanced energy technologies,
energy-efficient technologies, renewable energy and alternative
energies.”</p><p><br></p>
<p><cite>Martin Lukacs is an independent journalist and a member of the Dominion editorial collective.</cite></p>
<div>Own your media. Support the Dominion. <a href="http://www.mediacoop.ca/join" target="_blank">Join the Media Co-op today</a>.</div>
<a style="text-decoration:none" name="13027efb0ff25c53_fb_share" type="button_count" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dominionpaper.ca%2Farticles%2F3991&t=Canada%20on%20Secret%20Oil%20Offensive%3A%20Documents%3A%20Foreign%20ministry%27s%20tar%20sands%20team%20rebranding%20Alberta%20oil%20in%20Europe%20%7C%20The%20Dominion&src=sp" target="_blank"><span><span><span>Share</span></span><span></span><span><span></span></span></span></a><a style="text-decoration:none" name="13027efb0ff25c53_fb_share" type="button_count" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dominionpaper.ca%2Farticles%2F3991&t=Canada%20on%20Secret%20Oil%20Offensive%3A%20Documents%3A%20Foreign%20ministry%27s%20tar%20sands%20team%20rebranding%20Alberta%20oil%20in%20Europe%20%7C%20The%20Dominion&src=sp" target="_blank"></a>
</div><br>