Protests in oil sands raise anxieties
Oil companies say activists are most at risk, but one security specialist warns the oil patch is a sitting duck for terrorists
NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE
CALGARY — From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published on Monday, Oct. 12, 2009
The parade of Greenpeace protesters marching through the heart of Alberta's oil sands in recent weeks has provided an embarrassing glimpse at the state of the industry's security, says a former special forces operative who has helped safeguard Canada's nuclear plants.
Over the past month, Alan Bell watched as dozens of environmental activists snuck into three separate oil sands plants, two owned by Royal Dutch Shell PLC, one by Suncor Energy Inc., in a bid to disrupt operations and publicize climate change messages.
From a security standpoint, it was a shocking reminder of the vulnerability of a vital part of Canada's economy, Mr. Bell said.
"I am not surprised that anyone can get in there and do anything they like," he said. "We treat our oil sands, which is a major asset of the country, for all intents and purposes as nothing. As nothing."
The Greenpeace action has drawn new attention to oil sands security, prompting calls from politicians for greater provincial scrutiny, and from Shell for industry to "work even harder to strengthen our approach to security across the province and country." Shell also pledged that, for the short term, it will bolster security at its Scotford site, where Greenpeace broke into a heavy oil refinery construction site in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., earlier this month.
Some, however, argue that there is little reason to worry. The fact that determined people can get into the oil sands is "not surprising," said Bruce Smedley, a consultant who has conducted oil sands risk assessments. But neither is it particularly troubling, he said.
Fort McMurray operations "are constructed in such a way that they operate in independent pieces. It would be difficult to really disrupt the whole flow of things for any period of time," he said. "There's not a great incentive to blow up a tar sands plant, because short of shutting down production for a couple of weeks, you're not going to do much."
Suncor chief executive officer Rick George said his company is "not overly concerned" about security. It is more worried about the protesters themselves.
"What they are doing is dangerous, no matter what Greenpeace would like people to believe," he said. "Their personal safety is our main concern."
But Mr. Bell, a former British Special Air Service soldier who has worked in the Middle East to secure pipelines and oil facilities, said that industry needs a radical new look at securing itself. After 9/11, he helped a Canadian nuclear power plant operator train a civilian tactical response team, armed with automatic weapons.
Though oil sands mines are complex and geographically expansive facilities - Suncor, for example, operates over an area the size of 32,000 football fields - they are as important as nuclear facilities, and should be protected as such, he said. In part, that's because an attack on an oil sands tailings pond could result in the emptying of toxic effluence the size of a small lake into the Athabasca River, which would create an environmental and human health catastrophe over a large expanse of northern Canada.
That nightmare scenario occurred to Mr. Bell when he travelled to Fort McMurray with a team of international security experts in 2006. They came on a provincial government-supported trip, and wrote a report that found security consisted largely of unfit, underpaid and unarmed guards who would present little obstacle to a determined attacker.
They concluded: "An attack against any of the oil sands facilities could be easily achieved."
Though he has not returned to the oil sands, and does not know what changes have been made since his visit, the Greenpeace protests provide proof that those concerns were well-founded, Mr. Bell said. He is convinced Fort McMurray's importance as an oil supplier to the United States - Canada supplies 22 per cent of U.S. crude imports - has already drawn attention, and likely a visit, from terror cells. The fact that Greenpeace managed to drive a convoy of white pickup trucks into the heart of Shell's massive open pit mine is not, he said, reassuring.
"If people like [Greenpeace] can just drive in and climb up the infrastructure - if they can do that, what are the bad guys going to do?" he said. "It's a slam-dunk as far as the bad guys are concerned. There's no one to stop them."
Both Shell and Suncor, however, declined to answer questions on oil sands security, arguing that any discussion of specifics would jeopardize their ability to keep out intruders.
"We would follow standard security measures and standard security steps," said Suncor spokeswoman Sneh Seetal. "We also would assess each situation and adjust the level of security accordingly. This may include increasing security levels at certain access points."
But troubling questions remain. Ms. Seetal said the company allowed Greenpeace on to its premises to avoid a physical confrontation. Greenpeace said that's flat wrong.
The protesters, who scaled two large bitumen conveyor belts, "were well in place before Suncor knew they were there," said spokeswoman Jessica Wilson.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/protests-in-oil-sands-...
