For a few more barrels.
A report by Patrice Lorton and Elodie Metge
It is the last frontier of oil, the last El Dorado for the giants Total or Exxon. The province of Alberta sits on colossal reserves, the second in the world after Saudi Arabia. Special Envoy investigated this “Canadian Texas”, where petrodollars are afloat and mushroom cities are emerging from the earth. Large spaces, 4 X 4 and predominantly male population: these remote regions are reminiscent of the Wild West. Here, it is the oil companies that clash, with billions of dollars. The French Total alone will invest ten billion dollars over the next ten years. In Alberta, you have to pay dearly for oil to flow. Stuck in layers of sand, it comes in the form of a heavy bitumen, impossible to pump. Oil tankers compete in ingenuity to root it out, but whatever the technology, they consume large amounts of water and energy. The equation amounts to burning the equivalent of one barrel, to extract two, with the passage a massive emission of greenhouse gases. The price of a barrel of crude oil had to soar in the 90s for the exploitation of these tar sands to become profitable. Today, at more than eighty dollars, it's the rush, and the environment comes second. Surface mines devour the boreal forest and refineries discharge polluted water. Downstream, the Indians of Lake Athabasca are struck with rare cancers. The Special Envoy's team gathered their testimony. The Eldorado attracts workers from across the country. Fort Mac Murray, the Mecca of the oil sands, sees its population double every ten years. Here, a novice welder earns five thousand euros a month, but life is rough and social protection reduced. Several hundred homeless people roam the streets, some of them victims of their crack addiction. The black gold rush is cruel.
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