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The Oilympics

28th February 2010

British activists mark the Vancouver Olympics with a "race to the tar sands"

Today marks the end of the Vancouver Olympics, the start of which were marked in London’s iconic Trafalgar Square a fortnight ago by activists staging their own version of the games: a race between British oil companies and banks to reach the Canadian tar sands.

The deposits in Northern Alberta, heavy bitumen mixed in with sand and rock, are estimated to be the second largest reserve of oil in the world. As it requires large amounts of energy and water to mine, the sands are considered by some to be the largest industrial project – and the most ecologically problematic one – in the world.

The Suncor Milennium operations in Alberta, Canada, July 2009. Photo Credit: Jiri Rezac, Courtesy of Greenpeace

From a Canadian perspective, the project is environmentally controversial due to deforestation, aquatic pollution, and health impacts (including cancers) in First Nations communities downstream. From a global – and British – perspective, the sands are significant thanks to their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2008, very few people in Britain had heard of the Canadian tar sands. September 2009 saw the very first public demonstration. Six months later the Climate Camp, a highly visible focal point for British environmental activism, named the tar sands a key campaign target for 2010. The Alberta provincial government has a 100 year plan for the sands, and British companies look to play a significant and increasingly active role.

The Vancouver games may be over, but this is likely just the start of a contest of a different sort – and one that promises to be a very long one. Certainly an afternoon of satire and sport isn’t going to shut down an operation as huge and economically entrenched as the Athabasca operations. But it is significant that it happened at all.