The Real Corporate Money Funding Anti-Oilsands Propaganda

[Anonymous]

Oil is essential for an advanced society. Canada does it better than any other country on the planet and Saudi Aramco(biggest oil company on the planet) funds big money NGO propaganda arms who in turn soul less shills like that homo Peaches to sell out our industry. The entire scam is mafiosi in style.

Anyone who's been closely following the organized lobby against Canada's ethical oil sands knows that many of the ENGOs (Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations) here in Canada that have been attacking oil sands development are really front groups for big American trusts.



Vancouver researcher Vivian Krause has done excellent work at her blog, Fair Questions, exposing the millions of American dollars that have been funneled northward to fill the pockets of The David Suzuki Foundation and other groups campaigning against Canadian industry. The National Post has written about it here and here.



Vivian Krause's latest exposé reveals just how much money we're talking about: $116 million for just the top 20 grants from U.S. interests to Canadian eco-groups. As Krause writes:



Most of these grants are not among the most telling, nor do they constitute the bulk of the money that American foundations have paid to environmental organizations in Canada. However, what this list does indicate is just how big some of these grants are.

The anti-oil sands Canadian Boreal Initiative alone received US$60 million from U.S. funders.



There's nothing to suggest any of these quiet arrangements where foreigners fund supposedly "Canadian" groups to attack and lobby against Canadian industry are illegal. Whether they should be is another matter. But at the very least, Canadians should know more about them: When groups pretend they're standing up for Canadians, but are actually funded from American billionaires, they're deliberately misleading our citizens. (EthicalOil.org, by the way, accepts no foreign funding

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/kathryn-marshall/anti-oil-sands-funding_b_1121071.html">https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/kathryn-m ... 21071.html">https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/kathryn-marshall/anti-oil-sands-funding_b_1121071.html

[Anonymous]

The Rockefellers are big financiers of anti-Alberta oil propaganda.



I will give Peaches, the benefit of the doubt and assume his heart is in the right place even if he has the facts wrong..



The real crony corporatists oppose Canada competing with Russia, OPEC and American shale..



The opponents have been successful in fooling people into believing the opposite is true..



And that pipeline spill in Northern Alberta was two hundred metres squared..



That's a temporary inconvenience at best especially when compared to hydro flooding and cement manufacturing.

[Anonymous]

The Rockefellers are big financiers of anti-Alberta oil propaganda.



I will give Peaches, the benefit of the doubt and assume his heart is in the right place even if he has the facts wrong..



The real crony corporatists oppose Canada competing with Russia, OPEC and American shale..



The opponents have been successful in fooling people into believing the opposite is true..



And that pipeline spill in Northern Alberta was two hundred metres squared..



That's a temporary inconvenience at best especially when compared to hydro flooding and cement manufacturing.

He doesn't  know anything about industry, but everything is horseshit. Libtards paymasters hate a strong, free middle class. The North American oil and gas industry, unlike say Apple or Amazon provides for a comfortable middle class.

[Anonymous]

I will give Peaches, the benefit of the doubt and assume his heart is in the right place even if he has the facts wrong..

Thank you.  You are correct about my heart, of course.  And it's quite possible I may have my facts wrong, since I only know what I read and my reading in this regard is more attuned to hydraulic fracturing, which poses a real risk to people like me who live in between two large faults.  



I'm not going to go looking for my own basis for the statement I made elsewhere about who pays for cleaning up oil spills in the US, because I am not here to try and educate anyone about such matters.  But at the same time, while it would not surprise me to learn that the OP is mostly true, I'll have to consider it for now as unsupported by any links or citations.

He doesn't  know anything about industry, but everything is horseshit. Libtards paymasters hate a strong, free middle class. The North American oil and gas industry, unlike say Apple or Amazon provides for a comfortable middle class.

You have no information about me upon which to draw your fantasy conclusion about my background in industry and business, but I know better than to go beyond an amused snort with your carryings-on.  And I suppose you're talking about the steadily declining "comfortable middle class" which is not going to do well at all under the present administration's tax policies.



I've actually known a lot of the "middle class" people face to face whose careers were in oil and gas extraction, and most of them were smart rednecks with no concern for where the money came from.

[Anonymous]

Peaches, like you I don't work in heavy industry either. But, I do know that right across this continent the polluter pays for all clean ups. That is everything from fly ash to rare crude oil spills. In the US, the rules about this are clear in the he Oil Pollution Act of 1990, one legacy of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, spells out that those responsible for the pollution pay for all costs associated with the cleanup operations.



Hydraulic fracturing has been the best thing for the environment in the US in decades. it disturbs the smallest amount of land of any energy source including solar to produce the greatest amount to energy. It has also helped the US reduce C02 emissions. As for seismic activity, that's caused by injecting wastewater, that is easily mitigated through recycling. It hasn't been  necessary so far because any seismic activity connected to injecting wastewater has been minor.



The oil and gas sector employs hundreds of thousands of Canadians directly and indirectly. It pays for pensions, hospitals, highways, rapid transit, Aboriginal development and green spaces. We have a very, very progressive pm. Since his regime came to power, $60 billion of investment in pipelines and LNG export facilities, and tens of thousands of mortgage paying jobs have been deliberately lost. It seems you are not really interested in facts about the oil and  gas sector, so I won't waste my time trying change your mind with facts. But, we will be using petroleum products for at least another century and beyond. I fail to see how offloading oil  and gas to OPEC and Russia benefits the environment or your country's middle class. It does makes sheikhs and oligarchs rich though.

[Bricktop]

You have no information about me upon which to draw your fantasy conclusion

Yet you felt inclined to opine about me in another forum on what was a private matter about which you had no information.

[Anonymous]

So Peaches didn't know that industry is required to clean up after themselves if there's a problem. Progs are unbelievable.

[Bricktop]

Peaches is rather inclined to make comment or pass opinion over matters he has no, or partial, information about.

[Anonymous]

Peaches, like you I don't work in heavy industry either. But, I do know that right across this continent the polluter pays for all clean ups. That is everything from fly ash to rare crude oil spills. In the US, the rules about this are clear in the he Oil Pollution Act of 1990, one legacy of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, spells out that those responsible for the pollution pay for all costs associated with the cleanup operations.



Hydraulic fracturing has been the best thing for the environment in the US in decades. it disturbs the smallest amount of land of any energy source including solar to produce the greatest amount to energy. It has also helped the US reduce C02 emissions. As for seismic activity, that's caused by injecting wastewater, that is easily mitigated through recycling. It hasn't been  necessary so far because any seismic activity connected to injecting wastewater has been minor.



The oil and gas sector employs hundreds of thousands of Canadians directly and indirectly. It pays for pensions, hospitals, highways, rapid transit, Aboriginal development and green spaces. We have a very, very progressive pm. Since his regime came to power, $60 billion of investment in pipelines and LNG export facilities, and tens of thousands of mortgage paying jobs have been deliberately lost. It seems you are not really interested in facts about the oil and  gas sector, so I won't waste my time trying change your mind with facts. But, we will be using petroleum products for at least another century and beyond. I fail to see how offloading oil  and gas to OPEC and Russia benefits the environment or your country's middle class. It does makes sheikhs and oligarchs rich though.

Thank you for taking the time to explain your views and beliefs more thoroughly.  My own beliefs and views are admittedly based on information I've processed over the decades, particularly the last one, and I make NO CLAIM to have all the facts.  In fact, I doubt that anyone claiming to have all the facts is really interested in truth, since many facts are not in public view and the ones that are, are often not very illuminating.  



The reason I'm here is that I am tired of posting in places where I only see posts that confirm my own biases and teach me nothing.  I do think my views, which are those of an literate, educated person, are of some value...and I'm willing to take a chance on you, SB, as a similar person who also understands internal bias yet is still curious enough to risk a civil conversation about things we see differently.  This is not the same kind of exchange trolls have on message boards, but one of mutual inquiry and evaluation.



I will post a few links at the end of this post as examples of the kinds of information I've accumulated over several years of NOT EXHAUSTIVE inquiry into oil spills, in order to show that while I'm probably misinformed, nevertheless there is a rational basis for my views.  I'm not a scientist, but rather a liberal arts graduate with interests in history and poli sci and anthro.  And my links are not a bibliography of all I've read, but merely a few examples.



I'm aware that good accurate news is hard to come by due to the degeneration and monetization of media, and consequently I don't believe everything I read.  I'm aware of the OPA of 1990, and I'm also aware of some of its faults and shortcomings which mostly exist due to US politics and the corporate bribery of legislators.  I'm specifically aware that the small tax on oil production which has mostly funded the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was scheduled to "sunset" at the end of last year, and as far as I know Congress has not acted to extend it.  Parenthetically, it is this fund, intended to pay for various cleanup-associated costs not paid directly by the companies responsible for the spill, that has sometimes (in my understanding) been used to pay contractors which in some cases have been the operators themselves.  Hence my earlier statement.  



Ultimately the cleanup of an oil spill can have far reaching ecological factors and is a complex and politicized matter which may not take the same shape if nobody is paying attention to it because it's fallen off the news cycle than it would take if the public's eye were focused on it.  There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of back and forth between the "regulators" and the "regulated" and there are plenty of places for graft to rear its head, which is just the way Americans like their politics.



I've been aware of hydraulic fracturing as a working technology since the late seventies, when I was gifted some stock in a production company which had been working several oil wells in West Virginia and was converting to natural gas production since the oil reserve was depleted to the point of no longer being economically viable.  At the time it sounded like a good way to extend the life of the holes.  As to your experience that seismic activity resulting from wastewater injection being minor, I can only say that friends living in Oklahoma have not found that to be so. I would like to know more about the recycling technology you mentioned in this context.  I'm also open to read and consider any other facts you find it worth your time to share.





https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/if-theres-an-oil-spill-whos-at-risk-canadian-taxpayers/article1390514/">//https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/if-theres-an-oil-spill-whos-at-risk-canadian-taxpayers/article1390514/



https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/paying-for-the-oil-spill-a-guide-to-who-s-on-the-hook">//https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/paying-for-the-oil-spill-a-guide-to-who-s-on-the-hook



https://newrepublic.com/article/74753/who-pays-the-oil-cleanup">//https://newrepublic.com/article/74753/who-pays-the-oil-cleanup



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052903783.html">//http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052903783.html



https://www.coastalreview.org/2015/06/who-pay-for-oil-spill-cleanup/">//https://www.coastalreview.org/2015/06/who-pay-for-oil-spill-cleanup/

[Anonymous]

Peaches is rather inclined to make comment or pass opinion over matters he has no, or partial, information about.

Yet you felt inclined to opine about me in another forum on what was a private matter about which you had no information.

I don't think your issue with me is about oil and gas production, and I find it unnerving that you would need to follow me around this forum like a lost puppy and piss on my ankles in this way.



I've already suggested that you take your issue to PM or come to another forum to discuss it.  I mentioned CBT but there are probably other fora that might suit you better.  In any case, this approach strikes me as unwholesome.

So Peaches didn't know that industry is required to clean up after themselves if there's a problem. Progs are unbelievable.

I don't think you're very good at dog-piling.  Reading and comprehending my prior comment rather than accepting someone else's summary of it would be a good place to start.  You can thank me later.

[Anonymous]

Peaches, In Canada liability and compensation for ship-source oil spills falls entirely on the shipowners.

https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/liability-compensation-ship-source-oil-spills-4512.html">https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/l ... -4512.html">https://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/marinesafety/liability-compensation-ship-source-oil-spills-4512.html



In Canada if there is a pipeline spill. the pipeline operator is considered the Responsible Party. The previous Conservative government passed the Pipeline Safety Act of 2015. The editorial you posted from the Globe and Mail was written prior to that. The old laws were based on oil production and export conditions at the time.



The Pipeline Safety Act requires federally regulated pipelines, such as Trans Mountain, to hold a minimum level of financial resources, set at one billion dollars for companies operating major oil pipelines, to cover liabilities related to an incident. Further, the Act requires a portion of each company's financial resources to be readily accessible to ensure rapid response to any incident. Under the Act, the National Energy Board (NEB) has the authority to order any company that operates a pipeline from which an unintended or uncontrolled release of oil, gas or any other commodity occurs to reimburse any government institution the costs it incurred in taking any action or measure in relation to that release.

https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/infrastructure/pipeline-safety-regime/16440">https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/infrastr ... gime/16440">https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/infrastructure/pipeline-safety-regime/16440



The Act was update in 2016 to reflect changing oil export needs.

NEB-regulated companies operating pipelines that have the capacity to transport at least 250,000 barrels per day of oil will now be liable for all costs and damages for an unintended release, up to $1 billion, regardless of fault. The remaining pipeline companies under NEB jurisdiction will have absolute liability limits set through regulations.

New regulations for damage prevention have been made, which lay out the obligations of those planning construction of facilities, ground disturbance activities or vehicle or mobile equipment crossings in the area of an NEB-regulated pipeline, as well as the obligations of pipeline companies.

https://www.canada.ca/en/national-energy-board/news/2016/06/pipeline-safety-act-provides-important-and-relevant-changes-to-the-neb-act.html?wbdisable=true">https://www.canada.ca/en/national-energ ... sable=true">https://www.canada.ca/en/national-energy-board/news/2016/06/pipeline-safety-act-provides-important-and-relevant-changes-to-the-neb-act.html?wbdisable=true

I'm specifically aware that the small tax on oil production which has mostly funded the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was scheduled to "sunset" at the end of last year, and as far as I know Congress has not acted to extend it.

That is the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. There is still interest on the fund, cost recovery from the parties responsible for the spills, and

any fines or civil penalties collected. But, does that mean if there's not enough money in the fund the American taxpayer is on the hook for cleanup costs?  Nope, the Oil Pollution Act states that parties that release hazardous materials and oil into the environment are responsible not only for the cost of cleaning up the release, but also for restoring any "injuries" (harm) to natural resources that result.

https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/who-pays-oil-spills.html">https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/a ... pills.html">https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/who-pays-oil-spills.html

The only costs borne by taxpayers could be emergency response personnel, but the same is true of international billionaires and corporations that finance anti-pipeline rallies.

the cleanup of an oil spill can have far reaching ecological factors

I disagree. While a large oil pipeline spill is ugly, it is only crude oil. It's a natural product and it is always cleaned up. Canada and the the USA are not Russia where they don't even bother trying to wipe up a mess unless it has an immediate impact on communities or industries.

[Anonymous]

Peaches, ...

... I have my doubts. Most of the Oklahoma quakes registered in 2015 were below 4.0 magnitude.

https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2016/03/14/Photos/NS/MW-EH833_number_20160314124203_NS.jpg?uuid=ae0d8300-ea03-11e5-8312-0015c588e0f6">

But, they will be happy to know things have changed in Oklahoma. Earlier this year, Oklahoma's Corporation Commission requested that oil and gas producers cut wastewater disposal amounts by 40% in large swaths of the state.

...

Seoulbro, thanks for this extensive reflection.  It will take me some time fully to absorb all the information you've presented.  The only comment I can make at the moment is that a magnitude 3-4 quake is quite noticeable, especially in soil with a lot of clay, and it's hard on masonry structures as well as road and bridge infrastructure.  I think the state of Oklahoma was slow to act on this, but at least there is progress with it.  



As an afterthought to my previous post, I'll disclose that I've lived most of my life in the west end of Greater Appalachia, which reaches all the way to the Mississippi river.  In my grade school years I lived in a "coal town" and my high school years were spent in another town which had come through the Great Depression due to a small oil boom, but even so there were well over a dozen people in my graduating class who had lost their fathers in a large mine disaster (of which there had been many in my part of the state.)  So I can well appreciate the idea of a middle class that stands largely on the shoulders of resource extraction, even though the capital driving said extraction comes from "outside."  And I also saw that there was risk and loss of lives in joining that middle class.  



But even so, I live among people who are anti-everything that is related to resource extraction, sometimes hysterically so, and I've noticed in comments around this forum that those people give Yanks a bad name generally, compared to Canadians.  



I'm considering the possibility that this difference may be a socio-cultural difference, owing much to differences between the two national governments.  More food for thought.

Whatever you think of Shen Li and Herman, they know the upstream oil and gas business. Perhaps they can fill in the blanks on processing plants being developed to conserve and reuse wastewater.

Perhaps they will take the time.  I hope so.

[Anonymous]

I can well appreciate the idea of a middle class that stands largely on the shoulders of resource extraction, even though the capital driving said extraction comes from "outside." And I also saw that there was risk and loss of lives in joining that middle class

Actually, you have it backwards, the capital spent on thwarting resource development comes from outside.

[Anonymous]

I can well appreciate the idea of a middle class that stands largely on the shoulders of resource extraction, even though the capital driving said extraction comes from "outside." And I also saw that there was risk and loss of lives in joining that middle class

Actually, you have it backwards, the capital spent on thwarting resource development comes from outside.

Sorry if i wasn't clear, but I didn't speak about "capital spent on thwarting resource development."  Seoulbro did mention that, but I haven't addressed it yet.  

I was talking about growing up in a fairly common situation where a big chunk of the middle class worked in mines that were owned by Easterners.  It's a capital vs. labor thing, I suppose, and a regrettable excursion from the OP's topic.

[Anonymous]

I can well appreciate the idea of a middle class that stands largely on the shoulders of resource extraction, even though the capital driving said extraction comes from "outside." And I also saw that there was risk and loss of lives in joining that middle class

Actually, you have it backwards, the capital spent on thwarting resource development comes from outside.