Madagascar tar sands threat

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Madagascar is a biological treasure trove. According to Conservation International, the Indian Ocean island has ‘an astounding eight plant families, five bird families, and five primate families that live nowhere else on Earth’. Eighty-five per cent of its species are unique to the island.

The island is less known for the vast tar sands deposits beneath two-thirds of its surface. Bitumen and heavy oil deposits in the arid Melaky region of northwestern Madagascar cover nearly 30,000 square kilometres and contain an estimated 25 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Major petroleum companies are itching to get their hands on the stuff. It could become the largest tar sands project outside Alberta, Canada.

The British-based company Madagascar Oil is already producing heavy oil at Tsimororo, about 500 kilometres northwest of the capital, using a water-intensive steam injection process.

The massive Bemolanga tar sands deposit, north of Tsimororo, is 60 per cent owned by French energy giant Total and 40 per cent owned by Madagascar Oil. Total suspended operations in 2011 when the price of oil dipped below production costs but the company still aims to be pumping tar sands crude by 2020

More at: http://newint.org/features/2014/03/01/a-tsingular-beauty/

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Immediately at risk are 100 000 poor cattle herders and subsistence farmers, their only source of water, and the limestone forests in Tsingy de Bemahara National Park.

[lonestarnot]

1. Not one fucking thing is sacred to a greedy oiler.

[GliderGuider]

2. Not one thing is sacred...

To a corporation that has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. All corporations have a legal obligation to make a profit, and they examine the entire world through that lens. It goes all the way back to before the East India Company. "Greed" has nuttin' to do with it.

[lonestarnot]

3. Greed is the root. You said so yourself. The legal obligation was created without protections for

people or the environment due to fucking greed.

[GliderGuider]

4. "Greed" is an emotional judgement of the process.

I view the development of corporations and the rules surrounding them as a thermodynamic process - one that maximizes the social structure they are able to create, as represented through their products. If greed is to be imputed to the producers, it must also be imputed to the consumers. Their customers can't be removed from the equation.

My point of view diverges from the norm, especially on DU. My interpretation of what's going on is not based on politics or emotions. Instead I try to look at human cultural processes through the same lens that we look at other natural processes like hurricanes or other animals' social dynamics. I think we are simply executing the same prime directives of all life - survive, reproduce and grow. This makes my viewpoint an anomaly on an emotionally-driven political board.

Edit: sp.