SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Se­ri­ous en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues which may af­fect south­west Trinidad are on the front burn­er once again. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists are now con­cerned about the Gov­ern­ment's plans to ex­tract oil from tar sands in the La Brea area.

Kyle De Li­ma, who heads Earth­wise Ltd, said the peo­ple of south Trinidad could ex­pe­ri­ence se­ri­ous health and wa­ter prob­lems if the Gov­ern­ment fol­lows through with plans for ex­tract­ing an es­ti­mat­ed two-bil­lion-bar­rel oil re­serve from the tar sands at La Brea.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, on her re­turn last week from the Sixth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in Colom­bia, an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment was look­ing in­to the ex­ploita­tion of these tar sand de­posits. The PM al­so an­nounced that she had spo­ken to Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er about lend­ing his coun­try's ex­per­tise in this area.

De Li­ma spoke with the me­dia on Thurs­day, when his or­gan­i­sa­tion host­ed a sem­i­nar on this is­sue in Ch­agua­nas. He said Earth­wise was not about en­gag­ing in rad­i­cal protest ac­tion but plans to ed­u­cate peo­ple through the me­dia on the en­vi­ron­men­tal and health risks of tar-sand min­ing.

De Li­ma said there was a glob­al push to mar­ket tar sands as oil sands to meet the de­mand for oil, as pe­tro­le­um prices con­tin­ue to rise. He said the Unit­ed States was seek­ing to source oil from oth­er ar­eas than the Mid­dle East and Venezuela, and would be the largest con­sumer of the new source of oil.

The en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist said the process in­volved in­ten­sive strip min­ing to ex­tract the tar sands, and it took around two tonnes of mined ma­te­ri­als and two to four bar­rels of fresh wa­ter to ex­tract one bar­rel of oil. De Li­ma said this would de­plete the potable wa­ter re­serves un­less a de­sali­na­tion plant was es­tab­lished to ful­fil the wa­ter needs of res­i­dents.

The wa­ter used in the sep­a­ra­tion process be­comes heav­i­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and can­not be eas­i­ly dis­posed of: it has to be stored in ponds for as much as 600 years, he said. Mc­don­ald Stains­by, a Cana­di­an ac­tivist and an­ti-tar-sand blog­ger, said in his coun­try, tar sands pro­duce around 1.5 mil­lion bar­rels of oil per day and four times as much tox­ic wa­ter. He said Cana­di­an tar-sand pro­duc­tion al­so pro­duced high lev­els of green­house gas­es.

Stains­by, who runs the web­site oil­sand­struth.org, has worked as an ac­tivist against tar sand for the past five years. He said the re­fin­ing process pro­duces a pletho­ra of heavy met­als and oth­er, sim­i­lar poi­so­nous sub­stances. The land­scape is de­nud­ed and huge re­ten­tion ponds have to be con­struct­ed for the tox­ic wa­ter. Stains­by said he wants to ed­u­cate T&T on the dan­gers of tar sands.

"We in Cana­da were nev­er giv­en that choice," Stains­by said. He said vil­lages of in­dige­nous peo­ple near the tar-sand min­ing op­er­a­tions have suf­fered the most, and peo­ple are dy­ing at record rates from rare can­cers and var­i­ous lung, blood, car­diac and ner­vous-sys­tem prob­lems.

Stains­by said con­sump­tion of wildlife and fish near tar-sand op­er­a­tions is ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous since the meat shows dan­ger­ous lev­els of heavy met­als in­clud­ing mer­cury and ar­senic. Nev­er­the­less, he said coun­tries such as Mada­gas­car, Chi­na, Rus­sia and the Con­go have adopt­ed the Cana­di­an tar-sand min­ing mod­el. Stains­by said the Cana­di­an projects are go­ing ahead but the ac­tivists are mov­ing to­wards stop­ping tar sand min­ing.

Earth­wise has sched­uled an­oth­er meet­ing for Mon­day at 5 pm in the Chem­istry De­part­ment at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.