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Oct. 5 - Oct. 11, 2011
By Art Mantell
Unreported oil wars scoop grates on former frontliner
By Ian Huggett
Hwy 5 project a ‘a shameful destruction of the Earth’ Re: coverage on A5 extension between Chelsea and LaPeche The Low Down in my experience ranks as one of the country’s foremost investigative, informative and entertaining weekly newspapers. Trevor Greenway’s recent piece on the ongoing construction of the A5 highway is no exception to the paper’s long reputation of journalistic excellence . The facts are exposed in both quotes by construction crews and graphic air photos by Marshall & al. Readers are left to form their opinions like the letter scribed by Teresa Bandrowska’s. Written with both clarity and courage over the shameful devastation this Ama-
zonian highway project has unleashed on the natural world... Bandrowska’s passion is shared by many. Alas, their is no shortage of cynics lacking the insight to probe beneath the surface of this mindless project sardonically accusing opponents as hypocrites against progress. This issue is not about improved transportation, traffic safety nor injecting economic prosperity into western Quebec. It is about a former elected conservative MP who proudly secured federal funding and announced the continuation of a dinosaur project prior to the last election- believing it would retain his seat in parliament. It is about an urban population in the Outaouais who for reasons
of self-interest applaud shaving off 5 minutes in their commute to cottages north/west of Wakefield. In the past only faith could remove mountains. But today faith is weak and greed is strong. The A5 highway is nothing short of an “abomination of desolation”- a shameful destruction of the Earth- of Creationwhich will only bring ruin to the human enterprise. The complacent, faithless, and discouraged are also party to this crime- for only in direct action is redemption achieved. This issue transcends all religions, philosophical dispositions and belief systems. It is simply biocentric genocide.
All my working life I have been fighting to be first with a news story, first with the three daily newspapers wherein I slaved, and then on the two weekly newspapers I created, then edited. To me, to be first if even only by hours was the Holy Grail of newspaper reporting and, when it happens, life becomes a lot sweeter. It happened a few times. Now I sit and wait for the two weeks between my Low Down editorials to come up with 500 interesting words. I long ago forgot about being first. That was for frontline newsroom staffers. In my current isolation, a scoop is unattainable. But several years ago, while indulging in my hobby/vice of investing in the Canadian stock market, I detected a potential firstrate news story building and nobody seemed to have spotted it. I got excited. It was the attack of the American Big Oil industry on unsuspecting Alberta. Several years ago, plans were announced to build a pipeline from Alberta to Cushing, Okla. The city is the inland terminal for current oil pipelines, including Alberta’s, and it is currently at overcapacity. So much oil is coming down now through existing pipelines that it is stacking up in storage tanks. The result has been a huge discounting of Canadian oil to the profit of U.S. refiners. The problem magnified when Transcanada Pipe tried to run another line down to Cushing, and Enbridge planned to run a pipeline from Cushing to the Texas Gulf to handle oversupply. Suddenly, Canadian environmental groups that were distinguishable by their use of the phrase Tar Sands in place of Oil Sands were being financed by a variety of American foundations, some easily traceable to old oil money. Environmental groups north and south were energized. Protest movements sprang up; Hollywood celebrities and Nobel Prize winners were enlisted. Together they went to war against Alberta and the Canadian oil industry. The battles intensified when Enbridge announced it was planning a pipeline to the West Coast at Kitimat, B.C., for a terminal where Alberta oil could be shipped to Asia. Oil to the Chinese? That put the cat in among the pigeons for sure. Call it the oil wars, with people marching and protesting. Now it was a news story big time (see Gary Marsh in the Sept. 29 edition of the Globe and Mail). And I could have written it before anybody. Just ask the wife. She had to listen to me for months, until the words “Cushing, Oklahoma” sent her running from the room. I’m only telling you readers this because I just had to write something – even if it isn’t a scoop. Sorry about that.
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