Charles Kong Soo

Cana­di­an ac­tivist Mac­don­ald Stains­by says T&T could be turned in­to a tox­ic waste­land for hun­dreds of years if the Gov­ern­ment goes ahead with its plan for tar sands min­ing. He said the ef­fects of the nox­ious smoke em­a­nat­ing from fires set in the Beetham Land­fill in Jan­u­ary that en­gulfed Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons forc­ing the clo­sure of sev­er­al com­pa­nies, schools, send­ing peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es to the hos­pi­tal and the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect on the en­vi­ron­ment by Petrotrin's oil spills in the south-west penin­su­la would be mag­ni­fied many times over if T&T fol­lowed Cana­da's tar sands min­ing mod­el.

Stains­by is au­thor of the re­port Tar Sands in T&T? A Look at the Dirt­i­est Oil from Cana­da to T&T.Cana­di­an singer-song­writer Neil Young com­pared the ef­fects of tar sands min­ing in Cana­da to Hi­roshi­ma in terms of its de­struc­tion on the land­scape and peo­ple.Young is cur­rent­ly hold­ing a se­ries of ben­e­fit con­certs to raise mon­ey to sup­port Athabas­ca Chipewyan First Na­tions' le­gal bat­tle to halt the ex­pan­sion of the Athabas­ca oil sands in north­ern Al­ber­ta and oth­er sim­i­lar projects, which they con­tend­ed had caused can­cer rates to rise in their com­mu­ni­ties and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed their lands and wa­ter.Speak­ing in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian from British Co­lum­bia, Stains­by said the neg­a­tive im­pact on an­i­mal life, liveli­hood and health of res­i­dents from those two in­ci­dents in Trinidad paled in com­par­i­son to the eco­log­i­cal dam­age be­ing wrought in Cana­da from tar sands min­ing.

Mas­sive tox­ic im­pacts

The an­ti-tar sands ac­tivist and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist said this could lead to wa­ter and soil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with high­ly tox­ic car­cino­genic chem­i­cals for hun­dreds of years, wa­ter short­ages, black­outs, mas­sive de­for­esta­tion and pos­si­ble re­lo­ca­tion of com­mu­ni­ties.Stains­by said, "What is hap­pen­ing now is on­ly a pre­cur­sor to what would be the long term po­ten­tial be­cause a re­quire­ment of tar sands min­ing would be the col­lec­tion of the tox­ic residue waste wa­ter with all the heavy met­als."Some of them are mer­cury, ar­senic, lead, zinc, cad­mi­um, ura­ni­um, eth­yl­ene gly­col, ra­di­um, methanol, hy­drochlo­ric acid and formalde­hyde, as well as poly­cyclic aro­mat­ic hy­dro­car­bons col­lect­ing in gi­ant tox­ic hold­ing ponds."He said at the end of 600 years, a good chunk of the wa­ter will have set­tled enough that it could be re­turned to the reg­u­lar wa­ter ta­bles, but in the mean­time La Brea will need to have some­thing like a gi­ant pit to con­tain that con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter.

Stains­by said on av­er­age four bar­rels of fresh wa­ter were need­ed to pro­duce one bar­rel of oil from tar sands.

He said if T&T's out­put was es­ti­mat­ed at 40,000 bar­rels of oil a day, they will have to use 120,000 to 160,000 bar­rels of fresh wa­ter a day in a re­gion where peo­ple need­ed it in their taps.

Stains­by said tar sands waste wa­ter stored in tail­ings ponds in Cana­da leaked out; if there was a small earth­quake, it could con­ceiv­ably trig­ger a crack in the dams and burst with cat­a­stroph­ic ef­fect. He said if that tox­ic waste wa­ter was re­leased at one time in an area like La Brea, it would be in­hab­it­able al­most im­me­di­ate­ly as it was dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed.Stains­by said if the tail­ings ponds were near the coast in the south-west­ern penin­su­la, and there was even a slight rise in the sea lev­els for a short pe­ri­od of time, it could pull all of the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter in­to the Gulf of Paria.He said it wouldn't just im­me­di­ate­ly flow straight in­to the ocean but would set­tle in the out­ly­ing com­mu­ni­ty ar­eas.

Peo­ple get­ting can­cers

Stains­by said the waste wa­ter had caused health con­cerns in peo­ple who lived much fur­ther away from the de­vel­op­ments of the Athabas­ca tar sands in Al­ber­ta, wide­ly re­gard­ed as the largest source of bi­tu­men de­posits in the world.He said First Peo­ples who lived 200 kilo­me­tres down­stream of the tar sands were sick and dy­ing from the wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, suf­fer­ing from breath­ing prob­lems such as em­phy­se­ma and asth­ma and de­vel­op­ing can­cers.Stains­by said it was es­ti­mat­ed that it will take 600 years for the ponds in Cana­da to set­tle enough where the met­als can break down nat­u­ral­ly.He said the min­ing of tar or oil sands quar­ries in the south of Trinidad can be de­scribed as en­vi­ron­men­tal rape as it will en­tail strip min­ing two to four tons of soil in gi­ant con­vey­or belts to pro­duce one bar­rel of oil for such a small coun­try.Stains­by said the area mined in Cana­da was the equiv­a­lent of Eng­land and Wales put to­geth­er, while T&T was on­ly 12 to 13 square kilo­me­tres.

In Oc­to­ber 2013 a Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed (TGU) pow­er gen­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ty lo­cat­ed on the Union In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Ves­signy Vil­lage, La Brea, was opened.In Ju­ly 2013 a de­sali­na­tion plant was opened in Point Fortin. Stains­by said tar sands min­ing need­ed large amounts of clean wa­ter; the de­sali­na­tion plant could pro­vide the large wa­ter sup­ply need­ed to re­fine bi­tu­men from tar sands.He said such a large sup­ply of wa­ter doesn't ex­ist on land be­cause it is a very dry re­gion and the rivers were too shal­low for the pur­pose.In April 2012 at the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in Colom­bia, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar par­tic­i­pat­ed in Cari­com-Cana­da talks with Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er. On her re­turn from the sum­mit, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment was look­ing in­to a tar sands ven­ture in which Cana­di­an ex­per­tise would be ap­plied.

In Ju­ly 2011, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with Re­liance Group, of In­dia, for a bi­tu­men up­grad­ing plant to pro­duce syn­thet­ic crude oil. The pro­posed site for the plant was the La Brea In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.In a Feb­ru­ary 2011 ad­dress at the open­ing of the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Pol­i­cy con­sul­ta­tions in San­gre Grande, then en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan men­tioned tar sands as a vi­able so­lu­tion to in­creas­ing crude oil pro­duc­tion in T&T. In the ad­dress, she ac­knowl­edged the en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges to tar sands, but not­ed that there were in­ter­na­tion­al ex­am­ples of safe min­ing.On Au­gust 8, 2000, then prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day of­fi­cial­ly opened the re­fur­bished Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.Stains­by said the re­fin­ery hasn't been op­er­at­ing any­where near ca­pac­i­ty for a long pe­ri­od of time and the Gov­ern­ment had spent bil­lions on re­fur­bish­ing it sev­er­al year ago and now it has a caulk­er that can han­dle bi­tu­men bet­ter.

In Feb­ru­ary 2009 then en­er­gy min­is­ter Con­rad Enill an­nounced that Cab­i­net had agreed to give Petrotrin a li­cence to ex­plore tar sands in south Trinidad. Es­ti­mates sug­gest­ed that al­most two bil­lion bar­rels of crude oil could be ex­tract­ed from the ex­ist­ing bi­tu­men de­posits.Stains­by said the con­struc­tion of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way will play an in­te­gral role and would be the first step in open­ing up the re­gion to ex­tract­ing oil from tar sand de­posits.He said the high­way will by­pass most of San Fer­nan­do and reach al­most all the way to the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.The Roy­al Bank of Cana­da (RBC) re­turned to T&T in 2008. RBC is the largest fi­nancier of tar sands in Cana­da. Stains­by said all these de­vel­op­ments may or may not have any­thing to do with the min­ing of tar sands but they were the same com­po­nents in place for tar sands min­ing in Cana­da; and all of a sud­den, they were show­ing up with­in a few miles of each oth­er right by where the tar sands ex­ist­ed in Trinidad.

These ar­eas in­clude Ves­signy, La Brea, Guapo and Par­ry­lands.Stains­by said what was hap­pen­ing in the south-west was al­most like a warn­ing to change di­rec­tion. But that de­ci­sion should be made by the peo­ple in T&T, he thought, and he said he was just giv­ing in­for­ma­tion based on what Cana­da went through.To find out more about the glob­al move­ment against tar sands, you can vis­it Stains­by's Web site: http://oil­sand­struth.org and http://www.tarsandsworld.com/You can al­so fol­low "Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion" on Face­book.

What is tar sands?

Tar sands or oil sands are bi­tu­men de­posits mixed with clay and sand. Bi­tu­men is a black vis­cous mix­ture of hy­dro­car­bons ob­tained nat­u­ral­ly or as a residue from pe­tro­le­um dis­til­la­tion.

How is it mined?

Tar sands can be mined in two ways. The first is low im­pact sur­face min­ing. The sec­ond is called in-situ. In-situ is pri­mar­i­ly a process called Steam As­sist­ed Grav­i­ty Drainage. In this process, ar­eas are com­plete­ly cleared of for­est cov­er­age, then wa­ter is suc­tioned off from the sur­face area. Af­ter all wa­ter is re­moved, "over­bur­den" or soil, roots etc, are re­moved and col­lect­ed. The bi­tu­men is ex­tract­ed (dig­ging can get as deep as 600 feet) and tak­en to a slur­ry. The slur­ry us­es nat­ur­al gas to heat fresh wa­ter and mix tar sands un­til the clay and dirt are sep­a­rat­ed from the bi­tu­men.

How much wa­ter does it con­t­a­m­i­nate?

It is es­ti­mat­ed that three to five bar­rels of fresh wa­ter are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of one bar­rel of syn­thet­ic oil.

Ves­signy Vil­lage res­i­dent Anslym Carter, who protest­ed against the smelter, said that the im­pacts of tar sands min­ing would be far worse than those of a smelter. Carter said ar­eas in La Brea would be­come bar­ren and noth­ing would grow there for years.Carter said he was shown what the land looked like in Cana­da af­ter tar sands min­ing and de­scribed it as "very fright­en­ing."

No con­sul­ta­tions

He said some peo­ple had very short mem­o­ries and there were no con­sul­ta­tions with res­i­dents for the pur­pose of the in­dus­tri­al plants be­ing set up in the vicin­i­ty of the Pitch Lake; al­most as if au­thor­i­ties were try­ing to sneak in tar sands min­ing projects.He said La Brea res­i­dents must be con­cerned with what was tak­ing place in their com­mu­ni­ty and they must not sac­ri­fice their health to "eat ah food" and for tem­po­rary work and mon­ey.Carter re­vealed that sev­er­al res­i­dents hired by Petrotrin to help clean up the oil spills were get­ting sick with res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es as they were not equipped with the prop­er safe­ty equip­ment and breath­ing gear.

Petrotrin li­cenced to ex­plore for tar sands

Stains­by re­vealed that Petrotrin has been grant­ed a li­cence for tar sands ex­plo­ration.Ja­maludin Khan, Petrotrin's vice pres­i­dent of ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion, did not re­spond to the e-mail sent to him up to pub­li­ca­tion time.En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine al­so did not re­ply to the emails sent to him and could not be con­tact­ed.Ram­nar­ine was re­cent­ly in Chi­na as part of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's T&T del­e­ga­tion to hold bi­lat­er­al talks with the Chi­nese Pre­mier and top of­fi­cials of the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment.Among the pro­pos­als is the re­moval of as­phalt from the Pitch Lake in greater ca­pac­i­ties.