Zahra Gor­don

Both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists have been warn­ing against the dan­gers of lo­cal tar sands min­ing for years. Tar sands or oil sands are clay, bi­tu­men and dirt de­posits which can be mined and re­fined to pro­duce syn­thet­ic oil.

The re­port Tar Sands in T&T? A look at the dirt­i­est oil from Cana­da to T&T, writ­ten by Cana­di­an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Mac­don­ald Stains­by, out­lines what he be­lieves is ev­i­dence that con­sec­u­tive T&T gov­ern­ments have planned and are plan­ning to be­gin min­ing tar sands lo­cal­ly. The re­port al­so out­lines the en­vi­ron­men­tal dan­gers as­so­ci­at­ed with tar sands.

Stains­by has vis­it­ed Trinidad four times since 2009.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, in a tele­phone in­ter­view, said the Gov­ern­ment has "no plans to de­vel­op the coun­try's oil sands."

Kyle de Li­ma, of Tri­ni Eco War­riors, who as­sist­ed with com­pil­ing the re­port, stands by its claims.

He said tar sand min­ing could lead to mas­sive de­for­esta­tion and pos­si­ble re­lo­ca­tion of com­mu­ni­ties.

Among the ev­i­dence cit­ed in the re­port are pub­lic state­ments from for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ters Con­rad Enill and Car­olyn Seep­er­sad Bachan and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar.

The re­port al­so cites the rein­tro­duc­tion of the Roy­al Bank of Cana­da in­to T&T, a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with an In­di­an en­er­gy com­pa­ny, Re­liance En­er­gy, for bi­tu­men up­grad­ing, the re­fur­bish­ment of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the con­struc­tion of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin high­way and the open­ing of a de­sali­na­tion plant in Point Fortin.

Ac­cord­ing to de Li­ma, RBC is the largest fi­nancier of tar sands in Cana­da. At­tempts to ob­tain a com­ment from RBC on any prospec­tive fi­nanc­ing of tar sands op­er­a­tions in this coun­try were un­suc­cess­ful.

De Li­ma said the main fo­cus of his or­gan­i­sa­tion was to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion and al­low peo­ple to make their own de­ci­sions.

There were 2,000 copies of the re­port print­ed and dis­trib­uted through­out Trinidad, in­clud­ing to the ar­eas in South­west Trinidad where there are high lev­els of bi­tu­men de­posits.

These ar­eas in­clude Ves­signy, La Brea, Guapo and Par­ry­lands.

Yet, whether or not this ev­i­dence leads to ac­tu­al tar sand min­ing is still up for de­bate.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port: "This is not to say all or even any of the pro­posed in­dus­tri­al projects in the south­west are specif­i­cal­ly or even pri­mar­i­ly for tar sands de­vel­op­ment.

"How­ev­er, every sin­gle one of these in­fra­struc­ture projects make tar sands cheap­er, more prac­ti­cal and more vi­able than with­out them."

Ram­nar­ine did not com­ment on state­ments made by Seep­er­sad-Bachan or Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

How­ev­er, he said the agree­ment be­tween Re­liance En­er­gy and the T&T gov­ern­ment is no in­di­ca­tion that there are plans to mine tar sands.

He said: "In the oil in­dus­try, bi­tu­men is not on­ly found in tar sands. Bi­tu­men is al­so a by-prod­uct of the re­fin­ing of crude oil. In fact, we cur­rent­ly pro­duce bi­tu­men at Pointe-a-Pierre and we are not min­ing tar sands are we?"

The ar­gu­men­ta­gainst tar sands

Stains­by's re­port used Cana­da as an ex­am­ple of some of the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects tar sand min­ing has on com­mu­ni­ties.

The Athabas­ca tar sands in Al­ber­ta, Cana­da, are wide­ly re­gard­ed as the largest de­posits of bi­tu­men in the world. In the re­port, he points to the Fort MacK­ay and Fort Chip­weyan in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties which are sur­round­ed by min­ing op­er­a­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, in Fort MacK­ay "a large num­ber of chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty are suf­fer­ing from breath­ing prob­lems such as em­phy­se­ma and asth­ma."

In Fort Chipewyan, which has a pop­u­la­tion of 1200, the re­port says a min­i­mum of two and pos­si­bly more than six cas­es of a rare can­cer­ous dis­ease, cholan­gio­car­ci­no­ma, have oc­curred.

Ac­cord­ing to Stains­by, this can­cer should ap­pear on­ly once in 100,000 peo­ple. Oth­er can­cers have al­so af­fect­ed res­i­dents and a study by the provin­cial gov­ern­ment con­clud­ed that can­cer rates were 30 per cent high­er than ex­pect­ed in 2009.

Can­cers are caused by the in­ges­tion or in­hala­tion of tox­ic ma­te­ri­als used in the process of tar sand min­ing, the re­port says. These ma­te­ri­als in­clude ar­senic, cad­mi­um, lead, nick­el, mer­cury and poly­cyclic aro­mat­ic hy­dro­car­bons.

These ma­te­ri­als con­t­a­m­i­nate wa­ter sup­plies, seep in­to soil and are re­leased in­to the air. Fort Chipewyan is 200 kilo­me­tres from tar sands op­er­a­tions but re­mains neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed.

In the area of South­west Trinidad, where fam­i­ly homes and small busi­ness­es are sit­u­at­ed on top of and sur­round­ing bi­tu­men de­posits, the health is­sues could be much more detri­men­tal.

La Brea MP Fitzger­ald Jef­fery be­lieves tar sand min­ing is a "bad idea" due to the neg­a­tive ef­fects on the en­vi­ron­ment.

But Jef­fery said in an in­ter­view that he's "weary of all these grandiose projects" which nev­er come to fruition in south­west Trinidad, par­tic­u­lar­ly La Brea.

In 2006, there were plans to build an alu­mini­um smelter plant in La Brea, which en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists al­so protest­ed against.

The plant, Jef­frey said, was one of 16 pro­posed projects that have failed to come through in re­cent years.

He be­lieves some ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al project is nec­es­sary to al­le­vi­ate un­em­ploy­ment in the area, how­ev­er.

A res­i­dent of the La Brea, Travis Joseph, said there should be a bal­ance be­tween de­vel­op­men­tal needs and en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Al­though Joseph said he still need­ed more in­for­ma­tion about tar sands be­fore mak­ing a de­ci­sion on its vi­a­bil­i­ty, he com­pared this to the pro­posed smelter plant.

"My ini­tial thought about the smelter was that smelters in oth­er parts of the world are away from hu­man oc­cu­pan­cy so that they pose lit­tle stress to hu­man life," he said in an in­ter­view.

"Based on the in­fo that I re­ceived when there were plans to build a smelter here though, once it was prop­er­ly main­tained there was a buffer sys­tem that would min­imise the ef­fects on hu­man life. I guess once it's prop­er­ly main­tained it would be al­right."

De Li­ma, how­ev­er, dis­agrees.

"We can't con­tain a tar sand mine in Trinidad and we need to un­der­stand the process. The sol­vent that they add to the tar sand brew when they're mak­ing it is ex­treme­ly tox­ic and we don't have the aquifers in the area to off­set it and pro­vide clean wa­ter. It (tar sands) can present a very se­ri­ous threat to the area," he said.

What is tar sands?

Tar sands or oil sands are bi­tu­men de­posits mixed with clay and sand.

Bi­tu­men is a black vis­cous ob­tained nat­u­ral­ly or as a residue from pe­tro­le­um dis­til­la­tion.

How is it mined?

Tar sands can be mined in two ways. The first is a 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 cleared of for­est cov­er­age then suc­tions off wa­ter 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. It is es­ti­mat­ed that three to five bar­rels of fresh wa­ter are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of one bar­rel of syn­thet­ic oil.

Tar Sands Talk in T&T:

In Feb­ru­ary 2009, then en­er­gy min­is­ter Con­rad Enill an­nounced that Cab­i­net had agreed to give Petrotrin li­cense 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.

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.

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.

At the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in Co­lum­bia in April 2012, 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.

Three weeks af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar's an­nounce­ment, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists warned against the dan­gers of tar sands. Tri­ni Eco War­riors host­ed the first of four sem­i­nars on the is­sue in Ch­agua­nas. Mac­Don­ald Stains­by pre­sent­ed at the sem­i­nar. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kum­baloi al­so spoke out against Gov­ern­ment plans for tar sands.

In Ju­ly 2013 a de­sali­na­tion plant opened in Point Fortin. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists such as Kyle de Li­ma be­lieved this was a sign that tar sands projects were in the works. De­sali­na­tion plants could pro­vide the heavy wa­ter sup­ply need­ed to re­fine bi­tu­men found in tar sands.

Protests Around The World

Protests against tar sands have grown in var­i­ous parts of the world, but main­ly in Cana­da and the US.

Most re­cent­ly, four mem­bers of the Michi­gan Coali­tion Against Tar Sands were ar­rest­ed and are fac­ing felony charges for their protest ac­tion.

The pro­tes­tors go to court next month.

In June, the UK Tar Sands Net­work host­ed a demon­stra­tion dur­ing the vis­it of Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er to Eng­land. Ear­li­er this month, pro­tes­tors demon­strat­ed at Se­ba­go Lake State Park in Que­bec, af­ter a train car­ry­ing crude oil from the north­ern US ex­plod­ed.

The pro­tes­tors want to put an end to tran­spi­ra­tion of crude oil and drew at­ten­tion to the threat posed to the Se­ba­go Lake and park.

To find out more about the glob­al move­ment against tar sands, you can vis­it Stains­by's Web site: www.oil­sand­struth.org. You can al­so fol­low "Tri­ni Eco War­riors" on Face­book.