Sharks, sea turtles, corals, wolffish — the 1,200 kilometre Laurentian Channel off the southwest coast of Newfoundland is home to tremendous biodiversity.

And that’s the reason it’s set to become Canada’s newest Marine Protected Area, a designation designed to conserve and protect vulnerable species and ecosystems.

There’s just one catch: draft regulations for the proposed 11,619 square-kilometre protected area allow oil and gas exploration and drilling for much of the year. In addition, the government has reduced the size of the protected area by more than one-third from what was originally planned.

Documents obtained by The Narwhal paint a picture of a disturbingly close relationship between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and provides clues of how a “marine protected area” ended up allowing offshore oil drilling.

Canada is in a hurry to classify more marine areas as “protected” to meet an international target to protect 10 per cent of its oceans by  2020. Whether an area that allows offshore drilling will even qualify as protected is the subject of heated international debate.

ICYMI: Is Canada Fudging the Numbers on its Marine Protection Progress?

But “high confidence estimates” of up to 257 million barrels of oil and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas put the Laurentian Channel in the crosshairs of conservation and resource extraction.

The documents — obtained by The Narwhal via access to information legislation — reveal that lobbying meetings took place between government and industry without being recorded properly in the federal registry and that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans provided the oil industry lobby group with an advance copy of a presentation.

CAPP received advanced copy of DFO presentation

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans conducted more than 30 consultations since mid-2014, when a proposed regulatory framework for the the Laurentian Channel was first distributed.

Stakeholders included the fishing industry, oil and gas players, the Shipping Federation of Canada, environmental organizations, academics, Indigenous groups and various governments. The last consultation of this kind occured on October 28, 2016, with the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Committee on Oceans Management.

CAPP is listed as only having two consultations with DFO as part of this process: once on May 19, 2016, and another on Oct. 20, 2016.

But on the morning of the second meeting, Stephen Snow — DFO’s manager of oceans for Newfoundland and Labrador — sent an intriguing e-mail to Jennifer Matthews, a policy analyst at CAPP.

Both parties indicated that a call occured on Oct. 19 between Snow and CAPP, with the DFO manager beginning his Oct. 20 e-mail as “a follow-up from our discussion yesterday.” Then, Snow explained that he was attaching a draft presentation about marine conservation targets that he would be presenting that afternoon.

“As we have now concluded consultations with all stakeholders, we have not been giving out the presentation as it contains sensitive information from a DFO perspective that needs to be accompanied with the ‘Presenter,’ ” Snow wrote.  Following that, he specifically requested that CAPP “not share or distribute the power point and delete it as we agreed.”

Excerpt from documents released to The Narwhal via Freedom of Information Legislation. The e-mail exchange shows Stephen Snow, DFO’s manager of oceans for Newfoundland and Labrador, requesting CAPP review, then delete, a presentation regarding marine conservation targets.

This communication raises some big questions, according to Gretchen Fitzgerald,  director of Sierra Club Canada’s Atlantic region chapter.

“It seems like there’s some advanced notice and even some discussions that are happening alluded to in the e-mail that would make you think there’s a little bit too much collaboration going on,” Fitzgerald told The Narwhal.

“It’s just worrying when you see people getting documents in advance of what’s supposed to be a public multi-stakeholder consultation, and being given more opportunity to prepare and an inside-track on these consultations that are supposed to put everybody on an equal footing.”

Stella Ruddock, communications officer for DFO, said in an interview with The Narhwhal that the presentation was sent out early as CAPP had employees in Halifax as well as on the ground in Newfoundland, where the meeting was held, and that it was an attempt to “try to speed up the process of getting the meeting going on time.”

She said that DFO requested that CAPP not share the presentation as “there were maps in the presentation that DFO felt might be misconstrued, I guess, if they weren’t accompanied by the presenter. They felt that if it got out, if it was circulated without the presenter, it might be misunderstood.”

Ruddock couldn’t comment on which specific maps were considered sensitive, or if it’s standard practice for DFO to send out a draft presentation to stakeholders prior to a consultation.

10 CAPP members meet with DFO days after draft regs published

On June 27, 2017 — only three days after the draft regulations for the marine protected area were published in the Canada Gazette — CAPP and at least six other industry heavyweights met with DFO for 45 minutes.

That list included senior representatives from BP, Shell Canada, ExxonMobil, Nexen, Suncor and Statoil. However, e-mails from both CAPP and DFO made reference to “10 CAPP members,” suggesting more may have been present in the room.

Only CAPP and ExxonMobil actually registered the communication in the federal lobbying registry.

ICYMI: BP Wants to Drill Underwater Wells Twice the Depth of Deepwater Horizon in Canada

All companies should have registered the meeting, regardless of it being organized by CAPP, said Duff Conacher, founder of Democracy Watch.

“My opinion is that the companies violated the Lobbying Act by failing to register the meeting in the monthly communications registry,” Conacher said.

BP wasn’t even registered to lobby the federal government (and hadn’t been since 2014).

DFO wanted voluntary commitment not to drill in conservation area

A scenario note prepared for DFO’s senior assistant deputy minister of ecosystems and fisheries management Kevin Stringer noted that CAPP members “will likely raise questions on the intention of the government to prohibit or limit current or future oil and gas activities in MPAs in general, but more specifically in the proposed Laurentian Channel Oceans Act MPA.”

It also noted that DFO’s main objective for the meeting was to ascertain if CAPP would be willing to “demonstrate its marine stewardship commitment” by supporting a statement that “no calls for bid on leases in the Laurentian Channel will ever be issued in support of the long-term conservation of the area.”

It appears DFO did not meet that goal.

A summary of the meeting e-mailed out on July 10, 2017, stated that “there was some discussion about Laurentian Channel but not in detail or in any conclusive way; there was agreement to have an ongoing dialogue.”

Fitzgerald of Sierra Club said in an interview with The Narwhal that it was “quite startling” to see the number of senior representatives who met with DFO on June 27.

“I actually didn’t realize they were so interested in this piece of marine seascape,” she said. “But I think to them, it’s about their right to all the oceans on the East Coast of Canada. That’s the only reason they would assemble such a cast of characters.”

CAPP’s submission claims no serious impacts on marine mammals

Following the publication of the draft regulations on June, there was a 30-day window for public comment.

On July 21, three days before the window closed, CAPP sent its final comments to DFO. Signed by Paul Barnes — the director of the Atlantic Canada and Arctic regions for the association — the letter outlines CAPP’s argument for why it thinks that seismic and drilling activity in the region wouldn’t be seriously harmful to species and ecosystems.

Specifically, CAPP emphasized there have been no documented marine mammal injuries or deaths as a result of seismic surveys. In addition, it noted that impacts of drilling and production at two large offshore sites in Atlantic Canada have had negligible impacts on sediment and water quality monitoring.

Rodolphe Devillers, geography professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and lead researcher at the Marine Geomatics Research Lab, reviewed CAPP’s final submission and said in an interview with The Narwhal that the facts presented appear accurate. However, he added the caveat:  “It’s just always a question of what facts they select in their letters and not others.”

For example, it’s true that there haven’t been any documented marine mammal mortalities as a consequence of seismic surveys, as it’s very difficult to relate deaths to specific sources.

It’s also consistent with the conservation objectives listed in the federal government’s draft regulations, with a particular focus on preventing “human-induced mortality.”

But as noted by Devillers, the overarching objective of the MPA is to “conserve biodiversity through the protection of key species and their habitats, ecosystem structure and function, and through scientific research.”

To him, and many other ocean scientists, that overarching objective requires the prevention of a wide range of disturbance and harms, not just deaths — something largely unknown due to a lack of scientific studies in the region.

“We do know as scientists that seismic activities do have a number of impacts, which can be loss of hearing, challenges to feed and communicate … Those affect the primary objective of the MPA.”

Seismic testing ‘serious’ pollutant: scientists

A 2013 report by Dalhousie University biologist Lindy Weilgart concluded that at least 37 marine species have been shown to be impacted by seismic testing, and that airgun noise “must be considered a serious marine environmental pollutant.”

On June 22, 2017 — incidentally, a single day before the government released its draft regulations — an article was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution that concluded seismic surveys can double or triple the death rates of zooplankton within a 1.2 kilometre radius. The authors wrote: “Significant impacts on plankton by anthropogenic sources have enormous implications for ocean ecosystem structure and health.”

Devillers voiced similar concerns about CAPP’s positioning on potential contamination.

In the final submission, CAPP said that no drill waste or petrogenic hydrocarbons have ever been detected “outside the 500 metre safety zone during drilling or operations phases” of nearby offshore projects. But Devillers noted that “even if it’s within 100 metres, it’s an impact on the ecosystem.”

“Sometimes things go wrong,” he said. “How willing are we to accept that things can go wrong? Even if it’s one chance in 50 years or something, that’s not acceptable. And they cannot guarantee that this will not happen.”

A simple fix could set clear standard for marine protected areas

A simple solution to all of this would be to amend the Oceans Act to prohibit all extractive activities in Marine Protected Areas, said Linda Nowlan, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.

Currently, each distinct protected area  is governed by an individual regulation, which can prohibit and allow certain activities. That’s why the Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area allows oil and gas activities while the nearby St. Anns Bank Marine Protected Area banned them.

In comparison, Canada’s “National Marine Conservation Areas” — which include Ontario’s Fathom Five National Marine Park and Quebec’s Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park — have a blanket prohibition of oil and gas activities.

Nowlan suggested the federal government should take advantage of its ongoing amendments to the Oceans Act to prohibit all “harmful activities,” including oil, gas and mineral exploration and development.

“It sets the bar from the start so industries can’t go into negotiations and whittle down protection, which is what seems to have happened in Laurentian Channel,” Nowlan said.

The government is expected to release the final regulations this year.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

At a speech given to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he intends to work with President-elect Donald Trump to approve the northern leg of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline. 

The speech comes as Trump revealed in a recent interview with Fox News that one of the first things he intends to do in office is grant permits for both Keystone XL and the perhaps equally controversial Dakota Access pipeline. Because Keystone XL North crosses the U.S.-Canada border, current processes require it to obtain a presidential permit from the U.S. Department of State, which the Obama administration has denied.

The next State Department, however, could be led by the recently retired CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson, who was just nominated to be U.S. Secretary of State and soon will face a Senate hearing and vote. Potentially complicating this situation is the fact that Exxon holds substantial interest in both tar sands projects and companies, which stand to benefit from the Keystone XL pipeline bringing this carbon-intensive crude oil across the border.

Exxon, along with its subsidiary Imperial Oil, owns both the Kearl Oil Sands Project and Cold Lake tar sands production facilities, and a 25 percent stake in the tar sands production company Syncrude.

According to Bloomberg, Trump's team has shown interest in getting rid of the Executive Order which created the presidential permit process altogether, which President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry used in November 2015 to axe the pipeline. 

On the campaign trail and during his post-election "Victory Tour," Trump has pledged to rescind all of Obama's Executive Orders. Unsurprisingly, Tillerson has stated his support for Keystone XL, as well.

As reported in a recent investigation by InsideClimate News, nearly a third of Exxon's global reserves is situated in Alberta's tar sands, an oil patch which covers about 55,000 square miles, or roughly the size of New York state. Alberta's tar sands represent the third largest oil reserves on the planet.

Image Credit: InsideClimate News

Processing and producing tar sands crude emits roughly 17 percent more carbon into the atmosphere than conventional crude oil, according to State Department figures cited by InsideClimate News. Exxon's website says that by 2040 the company will provide a quarter of the oil for the Americas via the tar sands.

It remains unclear what Tillerson will do pertaining to the 1.7 million shares of Exxon stock which will be deferred to him — "unvested," in corporate lingo — over the next decade or so. Some industry experts have called for him to either receive his stock payments immediately or divest completely in order to avoid the associated conflict of interest as Secretary of State.

"Keystone XL Clone"

Keystone XL North links Alberta's massive tar sands reserves to the oil hub mecca of Cushing, Oklahoma. From there, it connects with the southern leg of Keystone XL — now known as the Gulf Coast Pipeline — which carries the diluted bitumen (or "dilbit," the result of tar sands oil being mixed with lighter petroleum products to allow it to flow more easily) to Gulf coast refinery markets. 

Trudeau also recently gave a permit to the oil company Enbridge for its Line 3 Pipeline, which likewise crosses the U.S.-Canada border. That line to the Great Lakes connects to what DeSmog has called the broader "Keystone XL Clone" pipeline system, which like the Keystone Pipeline System, links Alberta's tar sands to Gulf Coast refinery markets. 

The southernmost piece of this Keystone XL Clone system, the Seaway Pipeline, which runs from Cushing to Gulf Coast refineries, had a spill in late October.

"Bring It On"

Even with the deck now stacked against those who have spent years fighting against Keystone XL, at least one environmental group responded with a simple message: "Bring it on."

"Keystone XL would imperil countless communities as well as our climate, and President Obama was absolutely right in finally rejecting it last year," Oil Change International's David Turnbull told the publication Common Dreams. "The movement to stop Keystone is one of the most inspiring and powerful collections of landowners, ranchers, Native Americans, and concerned citizens all across the county that we've ever seen. If Trump tries [to] undo President Obama's wise decision, this movement won't be standing idly by. In other words: Bring it on."

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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By John Cook, The University of Queensland

The fossil fuel industry has spent many millions of dollars on confusing the public about climate change. But the role of vested interests in climate science denial is only half the picture.

Interest in this topic has spiked with the latest revelation regarding coalmining company Peabody Energy. After Peabody filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, documentation became available revealing the scope of Peabody’s funding to third parties. The list of funding recipients includes trade associations, lobby groups and climate-contrarian scientists.

This latest revelation is significant because in recent years, fossil fuel companies have become more careful to cover their tracks. An analysis by Robert Brulle found that from 2003 to 2010, organisations promoting climate misinformation received more than US$900 million of corporate funding per year.

However, Brulle found that from 2008, open funding dropped while funding through untraceable donor networks such as Donors Trust (otherwise known as the “dark money ATM”) increased. This allowed corporations to fund climate science denial while hiding their support.

The decrease in open funding of climate misinformation coincided with efforts to draw public attention to the corporate funding of climate science denial. A prominent example is Bob Ward, formerly of the UK Royal Society, who in 2006 challenged Exxon-Mobil to stop funding denialist organisations.

The veils of secrecy have been temporarily lifted by the Peabody bankruptcy proceedings, revealing the extent of the company’s third-party payments, some of which went to fund climate misinformation. However, this is not the first revelation of fossil fuel funding of climate misinformation – nor is it the first case involving Peabody.

In 2015, Ben Stewart of Greenpeace posed as a consultant to fossil fuel companies and approached prominent climate denialists, offering to pay for reports promoting the benefits of fossil fuels. The denialists readily agreed to write fossil-fuel-friendly reports while hiding the funding source. One disclosed that he had been paid by Peabody to write contrarian research. He had also appeared as an expert witness and written newspaper op-eds.

The bigger picture of fossil-fuelled denial

Peabody’s funding of climate change information and misinformation is one episode in a much larger history of fossil-fuel-funded misinformation. An analysis of more than 40,000 texts by contrarian sources found that organisations who received corporate funding published more climate misinformation, a trend that increased over time.

The following figure shows the use of the claim that “CO₂ is good” (a favourite argument of Peabody Energy) has increased dramatically among corporate-funded sources compared with unfunded ones.

In 1991, Western Fuels Association combined with other groups representing fossil fuel interests to produce a series of misinformation campaigns. This included a video promoting the positive benefits of carbon dioxide, with hundreds of free copies sent to journalists and university libraries. The goal of the campaign was to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)”, attempting to portray the impression of an active scientific debate about human-caused global warming.

ExxonSecrets.org has been tracking fossil-fuel-funded misinformation campaigns for more than two decades – documenting more than A$30 million of funding from Exxon alone to denialist think tanks from 1998 to 2014.

Exxon’s funding of climate science denial over this period is particularly egregious considering that it knew full well the risks from human-caused climate change. David Sassoon, founder of Pulitzer Prize-winning news organisation Inside Climate News led an investigation into Exxon’s internal research, discovering that its own scientists had warned the company of the harmful impacts of fossil fuel burning as long ago as the 1970s.

Even Inside Climate News’s revelation of industry’s knowledge of the harmful effects of climate change before engaging in misinformation campaigns has precedence. In 2009, an internal report for the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing fossil fuel industry interests, was leaked to the press.

It showed that the coalition’s own scientific experts had advised it in 1995 that “[t]he scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO₂ on climate is well established and cannot be denied”. Nevertheless, the organisation proceeded to deny climate science and promote the benefits of fossil fuel emissions.

Ideology: the other half of an “unholy alliance”

However, to focus solely on industry’s role in climate science denial misses half the picture. The other significant player is political ideology. At an individual level, numerous surveys (such as here, here and and here) have found that political ideology is the biggest predictor of climate science denial.

People who fear the solutions to climate change, such as increased regulation of industry, are more likely to deny that there is a problem in the first place – what psychologists call “motivated disbelief”.

Consequently, groups promoting political ideology that opposes market regulation have been prolific sources of misinformation about climate change. This productivity has been enabled by the many millions of dollars flowing from the fossil fuel industry. Naomi Oreskes, co-author of Merchants of Doubt, refers to this partnership between vested interests and ideological groups as an “unholy alliance”.

Reducing the influence

To reduce the influence of climate science denial, we need to understand it. This requires awareness of both the role of political ideology and the support that ideological groups have received from vested interests.

Without this understanding, it’s possible to make potentially inaccurate accusations such as climate denial being purely motivated by money, or that it is intentionally deceptive. Psychological research tells us that ideologically driven confirmation bias (misinformation) is almost indistinguishable from intentional deception (disinformation).

The fossil fuel industry has played a hugely damaging role in promoting misinformation about climate change. But without the broader picture including the role of political ideology, one can build an incomplete picture of climate science denial, leading to potentially counterproductive responses.

John Cook, Climate Communication Research Fellow, Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Main image:  Flickr/H M Cotterill

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By James Hutt, Director of the Nova Scotia Health Coalition.

As Nova Scotia is forcing low income seniors to pay more for drugs and the province’s largest hospital is literally swimming in rodents and disease, tax payers are being asked to cough up $100 million to pay off one of the largest oil companies on the planet.

The CBC has revealed that the Nova Scotia government owes an additional $98 million to multinational oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil and its partners. The money will be refunded from royalties earned by the province for Canada’s first offshore natural gas project — the Sable Offshore Energy Project.

Meanwhile, Atlantic Canada’s only tertiary level hospital, the Victoria General Hospital, is falling apart and patients live in “nightmarish conditions.” The 67 year old hospital’s state became a crisis last September when one of the buildings flooded and cancelled 106 surgeries and forced the relocation of 50 patients.

But the hospital has been plagued with problems for decades. Tests found Legionnaire’s disease found in the facility in the early 80’s and it remained untreated until the death of a patient in 2005. It flooded previously in 2012 and again in 2013. In 2015, the Health Authority closed two floors due to bed bug infestations and cancelled operations when surgical instruments were contaminated with airborne debris.

Governments from all parties passed down the problem to their successors until it became impossible to ignore the mould and weird substances smeared all over nightstands. Yet, the provincial Liberal government has only earmarked $1.5 million for planning the replacement of the hospital. In contrast, the province budgeted $56.4 million to help build the new Halifax Convention Centre.

Even more striking, is the tab the province owes for the Sable Offshore decommissioning. While the province refuses to make public just how much taxpayers are on the hook for, it has said that it is responsible for the “vast majority” of the abandonment costs.

The Sable Project, located just off the National Park Reserve of Sable Island and 225 kilometres off of the coast of Nova Scotia, has been producing natural gas since 1999.

At its inception, the project was projected to have a lifespan of 25 years, while its partners promised new discoveries could extend that timeframe. For the first five years, the offshore site produced between 400 and 500 million cubic feet of gas a day. But soon after, production declined and the project struggled to operate at full capacity.

By the fall of 2012, production had fallen to 60 per cent, to 200 million cubic feet per day. By 2013, ExxonMobil had issued a tender to hire a company to plug and cap several of the project’s 21 wells.

Now, ExxonMobil and its partners expect to start decommissioning the Sable project in 2017.

Almost all of the gas produced over the 17 years has been exported to New England. In return, Nova Scotia earned $1.9 billion in royalties.

According to the private 1997 agreement between the province and the Sable project partners, a large portion of the cost of decommissioning the massive offshore site will be subtracted from the royalties the province has already collected.

In January, the National Energy Board forced ExxonMobil to disclose that $42 million has been allotted for abandoning the onshore Goldsboro gas plant, the Sable project’s processing facility. Decommissioning and abandoning the marine facilities is expected to be much more expensive.

Now, due to an unexpected increase in estimating abandonment costs by ExxonMobil, the province’s share of that bill jumped by $98 million. So whatever the undisclosed portion taxpayers are on the hook for, the price tag just became much more expensive and it could continue to grow.

The Department of Finance says it has been allocating funds over the past couple years for the projects decommissioning and will continue to do so. 

The Liberal government has admitted that there is no clear deadline for when a decision will be made about replacing the aging hospital. The only option the Liberal government seems to be considering is privatizing health services and facilities by rebuilding it as a private public partnership.

Nova Scotia’s experience with these kinds of partnerships includes a number of schools — which have been plagued by cost overruns, delays and issues surrounding community control of the schools. In health care, public private partnership hospitals have been a disaster, consistently running over budget and time, and often providing less services than promised.

The 1997 agreement precludes the current Liberal government, but it speaks to a culture that pervades all political parties in the province. The message is clear: Nova Scotia has plenty of room in its budget to bail out corporations, but none to keep patients in hospitals — or even above water.

@JamesRHutt

Image: Sable Offshore Energy Project via CAPP

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Blackmail. Deception. Public manipulation.

These are just some of the charges leveled against ExxonMobil at a mock trial that took place in Paris, Saturday to coincide with the ongoing international climate negotiations at COP21.

The trial, held in Paris, alleged Exxon’s work at funding climate science had put the planet, people’s health and communities from Texas to Nigeria at risk.

The trial was hosted by Canadian author Naomi Klein and climate change activist and author Bill McKibben and brought together key witnesses to discuss Exxon’s role in confusing the public about the dangers of human-caused climate change.

Two investigations by the LA Times and Inside Climate News revealed Exxon scientists warned the company about the impacts of burning fossil fuels in the 1970s.

But the trial heard how scientists were directed to keep that information secret from shareholders and the public.

Since the 70s Exxon was involved in trade organizations, think tanks and lobbying organizations that have misled the public about greenhouse gases, climate change and climate science.

The trial, titled Exxon vs. The People, was presided over by three judges including indigenous rights and 350.org campaigner Clayton Thomas-Muller, actor Peter Sarsgaard and Milañ Loeak, daughter of Christopher Loeak, president of the Marshall Islands.

Cindy Baxter, a lead witness and curator of the website Exxon Secrets, took the stand to testify how Exxon funded organizations that have cast doubt on climate science, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

Both organizations are represented in Paris and aim to cast doubt on climate science and the ‘global warming hype’ at the COP21 climate negotiations.

Texas environmental justice advocate Bryan Parras, born in 1977, told the trial a subsidiary of Exxon caused severe impacts on human and environmental health in the state where his community lives.

“Did it surprise you that Exxon has been studying climate change for you entire life?” Klein asked.

Perras responded: “Did anyone expect that they didn’t know or wouldn’t hide it?”

“I honestly don’t trust anything these companies say. We should cast seeds of doubt on their campaigns and in their markets.”

Parras said Exxon’s deception made him angry, adding: “What else did they know and what else are they saying? What did they know about toxicity and cancers? Why did it take us so long to get that information?”

Author and fracking expert Sandra Steingraber, biologist and author of Living Downstream, also took the stand.

She said: “Exxon is the world’s largest public natural gas producer and it extracts oil and gas via fracking all over the world, particularly in the U.S. but also more recently in Argentina.”

Klein said: “We’ve talked a lot about local health impacts of fracking, but I also want to ask you about climate impacts of fracking since we are here at the same time as climate talks.”

Steingraber replied that natural gas was a “catastrophe” for the climate and that Exxon had also pushed the idea that gas was climate friendly.

Steingraber is a member of Center for Health Professionals in New York, a group of scientists, physicians, nurses providing watchdog evidence on the harms and risks of fracking since 2012.  She said a review of more than 500 studies found fracking was a risk to human health.

“The climate crisis is a parenting crisis which means it’s a human rights crisis,” Steingraber said.

“For Exxon to be involved in a misinformation about the science of climate is a strike against parenthood, against human knowledge and scientific progress.”

Ken Henshaw, activist with Social Action Nigeria, described the social and political impacts of Exxon’s activities in Nigeria.

“Africa is sometimes described as a continent suffering from the effects of climate change. Have you seen these effects?” McKibben asked Henshaw.

“In the Niger Delta where I lived in 2012 there was massive flooding. Houses were completely submerged. An entire planting season was lost,” Henshaw said.

McKibben asked: “Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon, said if climate change happened to cause any inclement weather, we would find technological ways to adapt to that. Have people figured that out in Nigeria?”

“No,” Henshaw responded. “When the 2012 floods happened, the oil companies announced we should move to higher ground. What higher ground? To whose houses?”

Antonia Juhasz, journalist and energy analyst, testified to the quality of the reporting done around the revelations

“It wasn’t just that Exxon funded deniers outside government, it helped push policy inside government to change the course of policy inside so we would not have policies that addressed the climate crisis.”

In her closing argument, Klein addressed the trial’s judges.

“We aren’t asking you to put a price on that which is priceless. We have heard stories of life lost because of melting ice. We have heard stories of ancient cultures threat because of climate change. We have heard stories of Exxon’s discriminatory disregard of human life, well being and health.

“It is Exxon’s crime that it believes money trumps life,” Klein said.

“There is no price that can be placed on the Marshall Islands, on Arctic cultures, on our lives and what we pass on to our children. But we have a duty to seek justice.”

Judge Thomas-Muller said:“Given that as a court we lack ability to compel testimony of xon, we are unable to reach conclusion of guilt or innocence.”x

“We can ask that other courts in other jurisdictions that have the power to summon Exxon do so with haste.“

“We judge that this will represent one of and perhaps the biggest examples of corporate crime in history.”

Fellow judge Loeak said she knew the efforts of the world’s negotiators can be hampered by the denial and deception of the world’s major fossil fuel companies.

“Had Exxon merely stated 25 years ago what they knew —that climate change was real, perilous and required decision action — extraordinary damage could have been avoided.”

Actor Sarsgaard ended the trial on this note: “The burden of proof now rests squarely with this corporation that these documents don’t demonstrate what they seem prima facie to demonstrate: a profound disregard for this planet and its people."

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Thanks to a recent poll from ABC News and the Washington Post, we know that nearly two-thirds of American adults think global warming is “a serious problem facing the country.”

And now, thanks to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change (full study available at this link), we know exactly how many people are out there taking money from dirty energy interests to try and confuse Americans about climate changeto derail overdue action and protect the fossil fuel industries' profits.

Justin Farrell, a professor of sociology at Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the author of the report, studied both the institutional and social network structure of the climate denier movement and found that there are some 4,556 individuals with ties to 164 organizations that are involved in pushing anti-climate science views on the public.

“The individuals in this bipartite network include interlocking board members, as well as many more informal and overlapping social, political, economic and scientific ties,” Farrell wrote in the report. “The organizations include a complex network of think tanks, foundations, public relations firms, trade associations, and ad hoc groups.”

Farrell notes that while funding from ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have notoriously played a part in building the climate denial movement, there was very little empirical evidence demonstrating exactly how much influence these corporate benefactors had on the actual output of climate deniers and, in turn, how much they affected what politicians and other decisionmakers were saying about climate change.

So Farrell studied all of the written and verbal texts relating to climate change produced between 1993 and 2013 by climate denial organizations (40,785 documents comprising nearly 40 million words), as well as any mention of global warming and climate science by three major news channels (14,943 documents), every US president (1,930 documents) and the US Congress (7,786 documents).

He focused on Exxon and the Koch Brothers’ family foundations because, he writes, they are “reliable indicators of a much larger effort of corporate lobbying in the climate change counter-movement."

What Farrell found was that organizations taking funds from “elite” corporate funders of climate denial like Exxon and the Koch Brothers — groups like the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute — “have greater influence over flows of resources, communication, and the production of contrarian information” than other denial groups.

After performing a sophisticated semantic analysis, Farrell was able to show that climate denial organizations with ties to those two major funders were more successful at getting their viewpoint echoed in national news media. Presidential speeches and debate on the floor of Congress showed less of an impact.

According to Bloomberg, Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University who has conducted similar research but was not involved in the Nature Climate Change study, said that Farrell’s findings beg a very obvious question:

"Why is the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?”  

That is very similar to the questions posed by DeSmog's executive director Brendan DeMelle in his coverage of Justin Farrell's other recent study on this issue: Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media. DeMelle listed three questions for media outlets to ponder: 

Will this study, published in a highly authoritative journal, finally compel the newsrooms and boardrooms of the traditional media to take responsibility to undo some of the damage done by their complicity in spreading fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation?

Will false balance — quoting a distinguished climate scientist and then speed-dialing Pat Michaels at the Cato Institute for an opposing quote — finally stop?

Will editors commit to serving as referees to ensure the same industry PR pollution isn’t published any longer?

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Chevron made waves in the business world when it announced its October 6 sale of 30-percent of its holdings in the Alberta-based Duvernay Shale basin to Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KUFPEC) for $1.5 billion.

It marked the first North American purchase for the Kuwaiti state-owned oil company and yields KUFPEC 330,000 acres of Duvernay shale gas. Company CEO and the country's Crown Prince, Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, called it an "anchor project" that could spawn Kuwait's expansion into North America at-large. 

Kuwait's investment in the Duvernay, at face-value buying into Canada's hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") revolution, was actually also an all-in bet on Alberta's tar sands. As explained in an October 7 article in Platts, the Duvernay serves as a key feedstock for condensate, a petroleum product made from gas used to dilute tar sands, allowing the product to move through pipelines. 

And while Kuwait — the small Gulf state sandwiched between Iraq and Saudi Arabia — has made a wager on Alberta's shale and tar sands, Big Oil may also soon make a big bet on Kuwait's homegrown tar sands resources.

"Kuwait has invited Britain’s BP, France’s Total, Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron, to bid for a so-called enhanced technical service agreement for the northern Ratqa heavy oilfield," explained an October 2 article in Reuters. "It is the first time KOC will develop such a big heavy oil reservoir and the plan is to produce 60,000 bpd from Ratqa, which lies close to the Iraqi border [in northern Kuwait]…and then ramp it up to 120,000 bpd by 2025."

In the past, Kuwait has said it hopes to learn how to extract tar sands from Alberta's petroleum engineers.

Canadian Tutelage

Back in 2007, Kuwait had much more ambitious plans for the Ratqa oil field.

Though the current goal is to suck 120,000 barrels per day of heavy oil out of the field, back in 2007 the goal was 900,000 barrels per day by 2020. And Alberta's petroleum engineers would lend their expertise to the cause, or at least that was the plan for Kuwait Oil Company at the time. 

"Unless we seek the experience of the industry here, we will not be able to reach our target," Ali al-Shammari, at the time the deputy managing director for finance for the Kuwait Oil Company, told the Calgary Herald. "We will need [international oil companies'] help in developing the reservoirs and may also consider the options of signing enhanced technical services agreements."

Kuwait's entrance into Canada depicts how important Alberta's tar sands have become for the global geopolitical landscape. And Kuwait opening its doors to the oil majors depicts the country as an emerging player in the global oil market.

Geopolitics At Play 

The Islamic State — formerly known as the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL)— has established what it calls a Caliphate in both northern Iraq and large swaths of Syria.

Fueled by $25 to $60 per barrel oil sold on the black market, Kuwait has largely escaped from the day-to-day newscycle. But as the famous Mark Twain quip goes, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

The Ratqa oil field is the same geological formation as the Rumaila oil field, which sits in southern Iraq. Iraq and Kuwait fought a war over the field in early-1990s, in which the United States led the call to arms against former President Saddam Hussein: Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf War. 

In 2010, Iraq and Kuwait signed an agreement — an armistice really — to share the border oilfield. 

Further, Wikileaks U.S. Department of State diplomatic cables made public by whistleblower Chelsea Manning show that the U.S. government has kept a close eye on the Ratqa oil field, as well as on which U.S.-based oil companies stood to win and lose if developed. 

Though almost two and a half decades have gone by since Operation Desert Storm and Saddam Hussein is no longer even alive, one thing remains constant: oil still runs the show in the Persian Gulf region. And this time around, it's tar sands oil — the same oil running the show in Alberta.

Photo Credit: esfera | ShutterStock

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As production in Alberta's oilsands continues to expand, waste byproducts continue to build up as well, from petcoke piles to tailing ponds. Now the energy companies behind the oilsands boom are planning to dump their growing volumes of toxic wastewater into man-made lakes, in the hope that they eventually become natural habitats.

Jeremy van Loon of Business Week writes that Syncrude Canada, Royal Dutch Shell, and ExxonMobil affiliate Imperial Oil "are running out of room to store the contaminated water that is a byproduct of the process used to turn bitumen–a highly viscous form of petroleum–into diesel and other fuels."

By 2022 the monthly output of wastewater from these companies "could turn New York's Central Park into a toxic reservoir 11 feet deep, according to the Pembina Institute," writes van Loon.

To accommodate the growing volume of byproduct, the energy companies have reportedly "obtained permission from provincial authorities to flood abandoned tar sand mines with a mix of tailings and fresh water." According to van Loon, this would "transform northern Alberta into the largest man-made lake district on earth."

Syncrude's Base Mine Lake, on which work began last summer, will measure 2,000 acres when complete, and is expected by the company to "eventually replicate a natural habitat, complete with fish and waterfowl."

Non-profit environmental group Pembina describes these end pit lakes as "high-risk and experimental," noting that "historical data about using end pit lakes as toxic waste dumps are insufficient to determine whether or not they are a safe, long-term tool for reclaiming tailings waste as no example of a functional end pit lake currently exists."

There are about 30 end pit lakes planned for the Athabasca Boreal region, according to Alberta's Cumulative Environment Management Association.

"There's no way to tell how the ecology of these lakes will evolve over time," said Jennifer Grant, director of oilsands at Pembina. "It's all guesswork at this point. It's reckless."

"We're playing Russian roulette with a big part of an important ecosystem," said David Schindler, an ecology professor at the University of Alberta. "Nothing is going to grow in that soup of toxic elements except perhaps a few hydrosulfide bacteria. And all of the unforeseen events are being downplayed."

Syncrude began creating an end pit lake 30 miles north of Fort McMurray this summer, filling in a mine with fresh water from a dam to a depth of 16 feet to keep toxic tailings down at the bottom. According to company spokeswoman Cheryl Robb, trials involving "test ponds" resulted in naturally occurring ecosystems, with microbes helping to break down pollutants.

However, van Loon writes that the "largest test pond was 4 hectares–roughly 1/200th the size of Syncrude's lake."

"The big question we have is how long will it take before the water is clean, how long is it going to take before the littoral zones develop and the shoreline vegetation builds up?" said Robb. "But we're confident in the technology."

One of the major concerns surrounding end pit lakes is the possibility of contaminated water seeping into the boreal ecosystem. In October, "communities bordering Canada's Athabasca River were cautioned not to drink from the waterway after a breach in a coal tailings storage pond dumped 1 billion liters (264 million gallons) of contaminated water into an area west of Edmonton."

According to Pembina, the exact amount of seepage from tailings in Alberta is "either not known or has not been made public," but modelled estimates suggest that "11 to 12.6 million litres of tailings leak from tailings ponds each day."

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Major oil and gas companies like Chevron Corp., Apache, and ExxonMobil Corp., are eyeing British Columbia’s northwest coast as a potential export hub for the continent’s ample natural gas. The proposed export terminals are slated to transform natural gas, much of it from frack fields in both Canada and the US, into liqueified natural gas or LNG for sale in Asia.

But according to a new report from the Norwegian-based International Gas Union (IGU) “project costs in Canada far exceed counterpart projects in the United States where the natural gas market is much more liquid.” The IGU has more than 120 members that collectively make up 95 percent of the world’s gas market.

The high costs associated with transporting gas up to BC’s remote coast makes the benefits of fetching a higher price overseas “difficult to financially justify,” according to the IGU.

“The distance between the proposed export facilities and the North American gas pipeline grid is large, and connections are small in both capacity and number,” the report states.

Connecting the current gas infrastructure to export facilities on BC’s rugged coast, along with costs associated with drilling programs would cost billions, the IGU said, preventing North American producers from meeting discount demands from Asian customers.

Chevron, the company behind the five-million-tonne-per-year LNG export facility, proposed for Kitimat, BC, says the massive costs associated with developing export facilities makes the prospect of discounted gas prices untenable.

As the Financial Times reports, “the disagreement [over prices] has prompted delays reaching a final investment decision, as the company seeks buyers willing to sign long-term contracts based on the price of oil.” But the US benchmark price is volatile, says the IGU.

“This is a problem because Western Canada shale gas will likely be more expensive than the marginal acreage that sets Henry-Hub [gas] prices,” IGU said in the report.

Projects in the US, says the IGU, are much better positioned to take advantage of preexisting gas infrastructure.

The IGU report demonstrates just how unattractive BC’s remote coast is for the burgeoning LNG export market. And British Columbia might do well to leave its high ambitions for becoming a world exporter of LNG behind.

As DeSmog Canada revealed in May, BC’s proposed strategy for LNG will make it impossible for the province to achieve its legislated goal of a 33 percent reduction in emissions by 2020 under the BC Climate Action Plan.

As Stephen Leahy reported,

There are as many as 17 LNG export terminal proposals floating around but only three are likely to be built by 2020… Those three would likely double BC's natural gas output, mainly from shale gas from hydraulic fracturing operations which have higher reported levels of methane leaks.

Although the Province reported only 2.2 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) of methane emissions in 2010, the actual amount was likely between 15.5 to 77.5 Mt of CO2e, depending the Global Warming Potential (GWP) used. Doubling gas production means that in 2020 these emissions would be 46.5 Mt (using GWP of 33) to 155 Mt (GWP of 105) a year.

In 2010 the entire province's carbon footprint was 62 Mt. By 2020 it is supposed to shrink to 45 Mt.

Setting aside methane leaks for a moment, fracking, processing and pumping natural gas over long distances consumes large amounts of energy. LNG facilities are also highly energy intensive. One LNG facility would emit 2 Mt of CO2e from burning natural gas to power the operation.

In BC's LNG Strategy then Minister of Energy and Mines Rich Coleman committed to having the province’s first LNG plant up and running by 2015, with a total of three by 2020. Growing dissatisfaction with BC's remoteness, however, may prevent the corporate investment necessary to realize such development.

On a provincial website advertising BC’s Liquid Natural Gas Strategy BC Premier Christy Clark wrote “the advantages of an LNG industry in BC are clear. We have lower shipping costs thanks to our proximity to growing markets with a demand for energy resources. We also have a vast supply of natural gas to meet these demands.”

“We are on the verge of making our province a world-leader in natural gas production and supply,” she said.

BC's LNG website lists 5 major LNG projects currently proposed or undergoing construction on BC’s coast:

1.     Prince Rupert LNG – (BG Group and Spectra Energy Natural Gas Transportation System)

2.     Pacific Northwest LNG (PETRONAS & Progress)

3.     Kitimat LNG (Apache Canada Ltd. & Chevron Canada)

4.     LNG Canada – (Shell Canada Ltd., PetroChina Company Limited, Korea Gas Corp, Mitsubishi Corporation (KOGAS))

5.     Douglas Channel Energy Project – (BC LNG Export Co-operative LLC: LNG Partners (Texas) and Haisla Nation)

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DeSmog Canada recently revealed Andy Cobb and Mike Damanskis – two political satirists in the spotlight for their ongoing spoofery of the Alberta tar sands project – had an Indiegogo fundraising promotional video for their upcoming "vacation" to the Alberta tar sands ordered removed from YouTube due to an alleged copyright violation.

Alleged because under U.S. legal precedent (YouTube is a U.S. company), it's almost impossible to claim copyright damages for parody and/or satire. That won't keep Travel Alberta, the province's tourism bureau, from trying.

"The original inspiration for our project is that industry PR around the tar sands seems like a cross between a travel ad and oil company ad, inviting us to 'come to Alberta' and see for ourselves," Mike Damanskis told DeSmog. 

Demanskis has provided DeSmog with a copy of Travel Alberta's complaint, a screenshot of which can been seen below.

As the screenshot portrays, Travel Alberta is being represented by Denton for this complaint, a firm formed with the merger of international law firm Salans LLP, Canadian law firm Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP and international law firm SNR Denton in March 2013.

Under-explored thus far in the saga: the relationship between Denton and Big Oil.

A DeSmog investigation has revealed Denton is a major corporate firm representing Big Oil in all facets of its operations, from upstream, to midstream to downstream. Further, the attorney-of-record issuing the complaint, Jordan R.M. Deering maintains an attorney-client relationship with Big Oil. Fraser Milner Casgrain also formerly lobbied on behalf of Big Oil and also represented infamous climate change denier Tim Ball in court. 

Representing ExxonMobil Tar Sands Project, Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline 

Denton has "made the case" for many oil and gas industry clientele and works closely both with tar sands producers and also pipeline companies bringing the product to market. 

One of Denton's major clients for the past year and a half has been Enbridge, concerning the company's controversial Northern Gateway Pipeline set to carry tar sands crude from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia at Kitimat. From there, diluted bitumen ("dilbit") will be shipped to predominantly Asian export markets. Northern Gateway – by and large – is Canada's version of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and has encountered fierce resistance. 

Denton explains of its legal role for Northern Gateway on its website as "advising on all aspects of the proposed dual pipeline…and the marine terminal at Kitimat…Counseling the client during environmental assessments and National Energy Board proceedings and providing advice with respect to negotiations with aboriginal groups and governments, shipping and navigation reviews, commercial structuring, finance and construction." 

A dues-paying member of the Alberta Chamber of Resources and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Canada's largest oil and gas lobby, Denton also enjoys another powerful client: ExxonMobil, the "Private Empire."

Exxon's the subject of Cobb and Damanskis' first tar sands-centric satire poking fun at Exxon's massive Pegasus tar sands Pipeline spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, which aired on primetime on "The Rachel Maddow Show," as seen below.

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