From May 11th to May 20th, Greenpeace Canada communications officer Jessica Wilson will be in Scandinavia to help take our fight against the tar sands to northern Europe.

Greenpeace Canada and Greenpeace Nordic will be travelling across Scandinavia to bring the reality of tar sands expansion to a new audience.

The Canadian delegation: Dr. John O’Connor; Andrew Nikiforuk, journalist and author of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent; and Melina Laboucan-Massimo, representing the Lubicon First Nation; join Greenpeace campaigners and communications officers on a tour of Oslo, Norway, Stockholm, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark.

The delegates will be speaking with media, hosting film screenings, presenting to MPs and meeting with investors. The tour will conclude in Stavanger, Norway, on May 19, where the delegates will present at Statoil’s AGM before stakeholders vote on a motion to withdraw investments from the Alberta tar sands. Follow the delegates and track their progress at greenpeace.ca

Greenpeace Nordic activists hand out information to Statoil employees across Scandinavia

StatoilHydro, Scandinavia’s largest corporation, brands itself as an ethical company, committed to renewable energy.

And yet, it’s has invested heavily in the tar sands. Sitting here in the Greenpeace Nordic office in Oslo, it occurs to me that this is sort of like being a spokesperson for Jenny Craig and running a Tim Horton’s on the side.

As my colleagues here point out on banners, T-shirts and brochures, dirty oil and sustainability don’t mix.

Greenpeace Nordic activists hand out information to Statoil employees across Scandinavia

This awareness campaign is part of the lead up to Statoil’s AGM on May 19th. A Greenpeace team will travel from Oslo to Stockholm to Copenhagen and eventually to Stavanger, Norway, for the AGM. As a stakeholder, Greenpeace has put forward a motion to pull out of all tar sands investments. And Statoil will vote on that motion before our very eyes.

If the shareholders vote in our favour, this will be a huge landmark in the Greenpeace tar sands campaign, and will send a clear message to our government back home.

Norway is a beautiful country and in many ways, quite similar to Canada. Both countries are part of that same Boreal belt in the Northern Hemisphere, so we have comparable vegetation, ecosystems and wildlife (though the moose here are smaller).

As I landed Saturday afternoon in Oslo, I thought, if a Canadian company was heavily invested in a project that threatened to destroy Norway the way the tar sands are destroying Canada, I would hope the citizens would tell us.

And that is precisely why we’re here — to bring that message of needless destruction to Statoil’s doorstep and convince them to withdraw from their investments in the tar sands.

The biggest project in Statoil’s portfolio over the next 10 years is the Alberta tar sands, a staggering statistic for a state-owned energy company that prides itself on maintaining a “green” image.

This morning, while Canada was still sleeping, I attended a press conference at Statoil’s headquarters in Oslo, where chief executive officer Helge Lund was scheduled to announce Statoil’s quarterly earnings (down $12 billion from the same quarter in 2008, a familiar tune in the oil and gas world this year).

As far as oil men go, Lund is rather charming. As the CEO of Statoil, Lund is at the top of the largest corporation in Scandinavia and one of the largest energy companies in the world. Still in his 40s, he is young to know such power. Perhaps it was this youth that gave him the chutzpah to speak with two Greenpeace communication officers after the news conference. Frankly, I expected to be turned away at the door, never mind allowed to meet the man himself and to question him on Statoil’s tar sands projects.

“From Canada!” he greeted me with surprise. “You’ve come a long way just to talk to us.”

And indeed we have. I told him that I’m not alone, that over the coming days, I’ll be joined by renowned Canadian journalist and Tar Sands author Andrew Nikiforuk; Dr. John O’Connor, the famous medical whistle-blower from Fort Chipewyan, an affected community that lies downstream from the tar sands; and Melina Laboucan-Massimo of the Lubicon First Nation and Greenpeace’s newest tar sands campaigner.

“Where in Canada do you live?”

“Vancouver, British Columbia,” I answered. “But I spend a lot of time in Alberta.”

“I bet you do,” he said, smirking.

Indeed, for an environmentalist in Canada, Alberta is the last frontier. Lund visited the tar sands earlier this year himself, making time for an aerial tour. Fantastic, I thought. He must know how bad it is! He must’ve seen the extent of the devastation as it can only be seen from above.

So I asked him what his impression had been and waited for the reaction of shock and horror that I knew would surely come—that look of disgust, as though he’d just smelled something terrible (and if he was on the ground by the tar sands, he did). It was the reaction I’d seen so many times on the faces of colleagues, journalists and experts upon their return from Fort McMoney.

But it didn’t come. Instead, I was met with a blank stare (not to mention a fidgeting communications officer, ever present at Lund’s side). I had to wonder, as my Norwegian colleague Frida later did: Did he not look down? I mean, we’re not talking a “blink and you’ll miss it” kind of sight here — we’re talking the biggest, baddest industrial project on the planet.

“Well, we focused mostly on the projects we’re involved in,” he said, meaning In Situ or SAGD.

Granted, the cosmetics of In Situ projects are not as visually staggering as that of open-pit mines, but they’re no less destructive. In fact, many experts, including Nikiforuk, argue that In Situ will have a bigger footprint than open-pit mining.

It is that argument that the Canadian delegation will make over the coming days, to an informed press corps, to MPs, to investors, to the public, and finally to Statoil executives and owners themselves.

We have a full week ahead of us, and much work to do. But if today was any indication, Statoil is, at the very least, willing to listen. With a little luck, they’ll listen — and act.

Nikiforuk being interviewed by Norwegian journalist Kjetil Hovland

Nikiforuk being interviewed by Norwegian journalist Jostein Løvås for the Financial Times

Taking the tar sands fight to Scandinavia

Categories: Greenpeace, Tar Sands

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