ReturnToTheTarSands

The first day of the trip, we were confronted with ownership issues and how oil companies lease land from farmers to build roads and drill wells.  We were introduced to the situation from a farmer’s point of view.  He was pissed.
His lease hadn’t been paid for years and hadn’t been renegotiated since the 80’s.  Leases are supposed to be renegotiated every 5 years, but some farmers don’t even know this.  The oil companies had introduced foreign plants and substances that were toxic to his cattle and put his organic certification and ground water quality in jeopardy.  They also left “jewelry” aka pipes, foundations, rusty steel structures, and pools of unknown black liquid on his land.

Stories like this were common throughout the rest of the trip.  Only very few people in Alberta own subsurface rights to their land.  Everyone else has no control over what happens under their land and therefore on their land. 

The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board’s (EUB) mission is to ensure that the discovery, development, and delivery of Alberta’s energy resources and utilities services takes place in a manner that is fair, responsible, and in the public interest.  However, the majority of landowners that we met have little to no faith that the EUB acts in their best interest.  We met a political candidate running in the Edmonton area who is trying hard to bring in legislation that the EUB must be elected.

The Freehold Owners Association (FHOA) is a federally incorporated, non-for-profit corporation organized in 1999 with the help of Alberta Energy Department.  Freeholders are people who own their subsurface rights.  We met the president of the FHOA, Else Pederson, in Ponoka.  The FHOA provides a help line, seminars, and internet resources to help freeholders protect their valuable, non renewable resources.  They also conduct research on regulatory and leasing issues and provide a common voice for freeholders in western Canada.  Still, a lease may be assigned without the freeholders consent.  An oil company may drain the freeholder’s mineral rights from offsetting wells, without compensation.  Else has just been elected as president, and is very busy, trying to inform people about the existing legal mechanisms and how to proceed.
The rest of the night in Ponoka consisted of many stories about farmers, who received no compensation for the property damage, or groundwater hydrocarbon contamination that they weren’t able to blame on the oil company.  Some joked about the smooth talking “land men” who are dispatched by the oil companies to arrange agreements with landowners.  “Next time he sets foot on my property, I’ll…”

A column by Shelley Willson-Cross in the Calgary Herald, on August 17 discusses ownership.  She says
“We need to realize that we Albertans are landlords and the resource companies are our tenants – lets get the relationship right.  This isn’t anti-oil and gas, it is legal reality.  We, the citizens, own the surface and sub-surface resources through our provincial government.  So Albertans need to start to think like owners.” 
“A good start would be a genuine, binding, public consultation process about the future of what we want for our land of the wild rose.  As lawyer Steve Kennett of the Pembina institute says, since Alberta currently has no plan, Albertan citizens ‘need to make collective decisions about our future, and we need mechanisms to do that.’”
“And the oil companies would have more business certainty that their projects would be increasingly welcomed instead of opposed by local communities.  A slower pace of growth and generating options together to make things work better for everybody – as the owners of Alberta, its high time we demand it.”

Long term resource management and planning would mean that a long in the future, Alberta might still have clean water, productive and healthy land. This way, the government won’t have to assume the cost of a massive environmental cleanup, health problems, and a permanently compromised region, as has happened in so many other parts of the world when companies go bankrupt and have no way to fix the damage they’ve caused during the past non-renewable resource cash grabs.  This has happened recently, next door to Alberta with mining industry in Montana.

According to the Council of Canadians, through the Security and Prosperity Partnership, Steven Harper is signing over significant control of our energy to the USA.  Under the proportional sharing clause of NAFTA, we can’t cut exports to the USA unless we cut the same proportion of supply to Canadians.  We currently export 70% of “our” oil to the USA.  US companies own more than 50% of the tar sands, and are pushing for control of the electricity grid.  Canada has cancelled its previous policy of maintaining a 25 year supply of oil and gas to meet its domestic needs first.

Interesting, isn’t it, this whole idea of ownership?

Filed under: Commentary, Environmental Justice, TTTS, Trade on September 25th, 2007