It was only a matter of time that the corporate media and their owners used resistance to tar sands destruction and death to raise the spectre of "terror". Let's hope that people are able to defend their civil liberties from this utter nonsense.
--M
Greenpeace protesters breach “secure” oilsands site
By Richard Warnica, edmontonjournal.com
September 15, 2009
EDMONTON — Alberta’s vast oilsands operations could be vulnerable to terrorist attack, analysts said Tuesday, after more than 20 Greenpeace activists infiltrated Shell’s Muskeg River Mine, prompting the company to shutter its 155,000-barrel-a-day operation for several hours.
Activists from the environmental group seized two giant dump trucks and a shovel at the Albian Sands open-pit-mine an hour north of Fort McMurray at about 8 a.m. They remained chained to the equipment into the late afternoon and vowed to stay on the site until their message was heard.
Nathan Jacobson, an Israeli-Canadian businessman who led a security assessment of Alberta’s oilpatch in 2007, said the breach reveals serious flaws in oilsands security.
“For 25 Greenpeace people to get in there — boy is a that a red light going off,” he said from his home in Tel Aviv.
Jacobson, who is not a security expert, led a team of international analysts — including James G. Liddy, a former U.S. Navy SEAL and chief of the U.S. Navy’s counter-terrorism force protection plan, and Alan Bell, a 22-year veteran of the British SAS — on a fact-finding trip through the oilsands two years ago at the request of then-transportation and infrastructure minister Lyle Oberg.
Jacobson said the team found a security structure that relied far too heavily on individual companies. One that, based on Tuesday’s events, remains too vulnerable to potential attack.
A spokesman for Shell, though, said their facilities are safe.
“These oilsands operations are some of the most secure facilities around, frankly,” said Paul Hagel.
Hagel said it was too early to consider any larger security implications from the incident, since the company did not yet know how the protesters got in.
“I can only speculate as to how they did this,” he said.”
Jerry Bellikka, a spokesman for Alberta Energy, which monitors the security plans each oilsands company is required to file, said the minister will expect Shell to explain how something like this could happen.
“From personal experience, you don’t just stroll through the gates at these oilsands plants,” he said. “Something happened (Tuesday), in this incident, at this particular plant, that needs to be looked at.”
As for Greenpeace, they wouldn’t say how the activists got onto the site, other than to offer assurances that no property was damaged.
Videos of the protest that were posted online Tuesday show activists dressed in workers’ coveralls chained to the two-story high machines. In some of the clips a giant banner reading: “Tar Sands: Climate Crime” can be seen.
RCMP were at the site most of the day. But there was no indication from either side that things could turn violent.
Paul Joosse, a researcher at the University of Alberta who has studied eco-terrorism, said what happened Tuesday was a protest, not an attack. But the oilsands could be a natural target for groups more extreme than Greenpeace.
“Up to this point, these companies have relied on being remote — they think they’re invulnerable,” he said.
Al-Qaida and other extremist groups could also target the developments, said Nathan Jacobson.
“Considering that the province of Alberta is the major supplier of energy to the United States, you would think that it would be a major target,” he said.
Based on the work Jacobson’s team conducted, he believes the individual companies have not done enough to secure their own sites.
“Are we a target? Yes. Are Canadian law enforcement bodies concerned? Absolutely. But there’s a lot of bureaucracy between the concern of those people in the field and what is happening. And as long as it’s going to be money running it, these companies will do the minimum. The government needs to step up and demand security. Or, put in security and bill these companies.”
Sharon Lopatka, a spokeswoman for the provincial solicitor general, said individual companies are responsible for their own security, but Alberta does have a comprehensive plan in place to protect critical infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the protest at the Albian mine showed no signs of ending late Tuesday.
Mike Hudema, one of the Greenpeace activists at the site, said the group was ready to continue the protest until its message is heard.
“We have supplies to be here for an extended period of time,” Hudema said of the group, which included members from the U.S., Canada and France.
“We have over 25 people on the site all dedicated because of the tremendous environmental and human rights price tag associated with the tarsands.”
Hudema said the action was timed to coincide with today’s meeting in Washington between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama. It also came less than three months before Copenhagen 2009, the next major global summit on climate change.
Shell officials temporarily shut down operations at the site when they learned of the protest. They restarted at about 2 p.m.
The company’s Paul Hagel said the protesters had been invited to come down and discuss their grievances with company officials but had so far declined.
rwarnica@thejournal.canwest.com
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