For any other fellow Albertan Outdoorsmen who want this projected stopped, please let your voice be heard. Have your family, friends, co-workers, and fellow Outdoorsmen send letters to Premier Ed Stelmach and his government stating that you want this project stopped. A few simple sentences are all that is required. Massive public outcry last fall and earlier this year has stopped any seismic testing taking place this spring. Your letters make a big difference.
I can assure you that if this project moves forward all of the Alberta Lakeland area will be at great risk for future oil projects such as this. Beaver, Pinehurst, Siebert, Cold, Crane, Wolf are next in line. YOU NEED TO MAKE A STAND NOW if you want to protect your rights and your environment as an Outdoorsman, as an Albertan. Enough is enough.
Published: Thursday, July 12
EDMONTON - A bitumen mining technology pioneer is refusing to take no for an answer from a protesting lake cottage community that it proposes to tunnel under. Plans by OSUM Oil Sands Corp. at Marie Lake, 300 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, include test wells and a new target date of September for a marine seismic survey halted last spring by irate landowners. "We're certainly where we want to be," OSUM president Peter Putnam said in an interview as the company raised $45 million for its project with a private share sale in Canada and the United States.
The firm scooped up an oilsands sweet spot by buying 25 square kilometres of bitumen leases beneath Marie Lake at provincial auctions last winter, a new independent reserves audit said. Even limited data shows OSUM can count on pumping 252 million barrels of oil out from under the lake, says the technical review by GLJ Petroleum Consultants. Further surveys and drilling will raise the total to 435 million barrels, the firm predicts in its "management best estimate." At today's prices the oil in the Marie Lake leases is worth $18 billion to $31 billion if upgrader plants convert it all into light crude ready for refining into fuel products, or about $9 billion to $16 billion if it is sold as unprocessed raw bitumen. Investors responded well to OSUM's share sale and the fundraising drive will close soon, Putnam said. "The oilsands business is still of great interest. It's not just an Alberta story," he said. "It is a story of global materiality. Everybody of any size in the industry wants to be part of it."
But cottage owner Don Savard, a retired Edmonton oil pipeline executive and founding president of the Marie Lake Air and Watershed Society, said OSUM faces more public resistance than ever. Desire to protect natural beauty spots against the oilsands rush is spreading, he said. "People don't want that mine under the lake," Savard said. "People would look at it differently if it was the last oil in the province," he said. The $100-billion oilsands project lineup is moving too fast in the 140,000-square-kilometre bitumen deposit belt across northern Alberta from Cold Lake to Peace River, he said. "The biggest favour the Alberta government could do for people would be just to slow things down," Savard said. The province should refund OSUM's payment for the Marie Lake leases and take their tiny share in the estimated 175 billion barrels of oilsands reserves permanently off the market, he added.
OSUM, short for oilsands underground mining, plans the first use of a method devised in the 1980s and '90s by a former provincial Crown corporation, the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority. The $750-million project calls for production of 30,000 barrels per day by a vertical shaft, a honeycomb of horizontal tunnels and wells 400 metres beneath the lake, a pipeline web and a processing plant on the land surface. After refusing to grant a permit over protests by Marie Lake landowners for a planned June seismic survey, Alberta Sustainable Resource Development Minister Ted Morton is studying OSUM's latest proposal, department communications officer Eilish Lemieux said. The minister made commitments, when the conflict caused a political stir in the legislature, to ensure the work is safe and the company pays for any damage, Lemieux said. The contested plan called for 10 survey vessels to generate a three dimensional electronic portrait of the bitumen deposit with a month of marine seismic echo-sounding, including about 19,000 shots by 207-decibel underwater air cannons.
No target date is set for a government decision on whether to let the mini-armada set sail onto Marie Lake. OSUM could launch the survey after Labour Day if approval is received soon, Putnam said. Expanded company plans include drilling six horizontal wells across the oilsands formation beneath the lake over the next nine months. Well locations are not yet disclosed. Drilling rigs will be kept at least 300 metres away from the shoreline, using "long-reach" technology that explores oil targets beneath environmentally sensitive land by boring kilometres-long holes, Putnam said.
gjaremko@thejournal.canwest.com
Upset Outdoorsmen - Marie Lake
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