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What are the odds the arsonists use energy oil to #1129057
01/16/09 01:18 PM
01/16/09 01:18 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
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Mira Trapper  Offline OP
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia

CAN oil exec's home firebombed (Edmonton Sun)‏


Edmonton Sun
Grandson's wail of outrage sums up feelings of loss after fire
destroyed ex-Syncrude boss's home, possessions
By ANDREW HANON
Tue, January 13, 2009
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2009/01/13/8005011-sun.html

Two-year-old Abraham expressed his family's anguish best.

When he arrived at the burned-out shell of his grandparents' southwest
Edmonton home yesterday, all Abraham could do was let out an outraged
wail.

His grandpa, former Syncrude president Jim Carter, was so emotional
that he could only read a prepared statement.

"My wife and I are deeply saddened by the loss of our home and our
personal possessions," Carter said after wiping tears from his eyes.
Then, as if trying to find the silver lining, he added: "We are
grateful to have been spared injury."

On Saturday, while Carter, who retired from the oil industry in 2007,
and his wife Lorraine Bray were out, someone threw two Molotov
cocktails at their home. Within minutes it was engulfed in flames and
by the time firefighters arrived, nothing could be saved.

As Carter and Bray sifted through the ashes of the life they built
together, investigators were trying to figure out what reason someone
would have to throw Molotov cocktails at their $850,000 home.

"At the moment," Carter said, "we have very little information about
what may have transpired or why. We may be in a position to comment
further when we know more."

Edmonton police spokesman Patrycia Thenu said yesterday that
investigators are still interviewing witnesses. One person reported
seeing four youths running from the area.

The attack, she said, seems to have no connection to any previous
arsons in the city.

But when the home of one of Alberta's most powerful energy-sector
executives is fire-bombed, it raises the ugly spectre of
eco-terrorism.

Saturday's attack comes one week after the fourth bomb attack on
Calgary-based EnCana's natural gas operations in northeastern B.C.

University of Alberta eco-terrorism expert Paul Joosse says it's far
too early in the investigation to say if Carter's house was targeted
because of his ties to Big Oil, but acknowledged that green radicals
have made similar strikes in the past.

Joosse said that in the U.S. the Earth Liberation Front, which
promotes guerilla warfare tactics to save the planet from polluters,
"has conducted a series of arson attacks against prominent companies
and members of society."

However, he highly doubts there's any link between the attack on
Carter's house and the EnCana bombings, which he says are more likely
being perpetrated by someone angry with toxic sour gas development in
a farming area than a radical ecological campaign.

And while it's the only one to be completely razed, Carter's home is
only the latest in a list of city homes firebombed in recent months,
some of which appear to be utterly random.

Last summer four homes in the same area of Mill Woods were hit with
Molotov cocktails. It started up again last week, when another home
was nailed twice in the same day.

Smaller, seemingly random arson attacks plagued the city last year. In
May and June, 22 small fires were set along a stretch of Stony Plain
Road.

But whatever the motive behind the attack on Carter's house - whether
it's eco-terrorism, sick thrill-seeking or any other excuse, one thing
is certain.

A family has been devastated, a lifetime of mementoes destroyed.

There's no way to adequately describe their sense of loss.

Just ask little Abraham.


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: What are the odds the arsonists use energy oil to [Re: Mira Trapper] #1129059
01/16/09 01:19 PM
01/16/09 01:19 PM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
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Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia

CAN oil co. offers $500K reward for bombers' capture (Nat'l Post)‏

National Post (Toronto, CAN)
Spooked oilpatch posts $500K reward
Pipeline bomber, arson at oilman's home fuel fear
Kevin Libin,
Published: Wednesday, January 14, 2009
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1173916

The key element differentiating the firebombing of an Edmonton oil
executive's home on the weekend from a pattern of similar ecoterrorist
attacks in the United States is that no one has taken credit for it.
So far.

Already police in Alberta have their hands full dealing with an
unsolved series of environmentally inspired attacks elsewhere in the
oilpatch.

Yesterday, Calgary's EnCana Corp., Canada's largest energy interest,
offered a $500,000 reward for information leading to the capture of
bombers who have been blowing up gas facilities in northeastern B. C.
Their most recent target, on Jan. 4, was an exploded shed, housing a
sour gas pipe.

"Whoever is responsible for these bombings has got to be stopped
before someone gets hurt," asid Mike Graham, En-Cana's executive
vice-president.

Investigators from Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver have hit a dead end
in tracking down the culprit behind four EnCana bombings since they
began in October.

They have questioned locals known for their antipathy to the industry
and other possible suspects. Certain people, authorities say, are
proving unco-operative. They appear to believe a reward might shake
something loose.

"They tried the stick," said Paul Joosse, a University of Alberta
sociologist researching eco-terror movements. "Now they're going to
try the carrot."

The next few days should determine whether the recently retired
president of Syncrude Canada, Jim Carter -- whose home was destroyed
by Molotov cocktails on Saturday -- is also treated as the work of
radical elements, or just a coincidence of arson.

Groups such as the Earth Liberation Front, which has claimed
responsibility for torching car dealerships, ski resorts and housing
developments in the United States, typically take credit for an attack
like this, Mr. Joosse says, though it may take a while.

"Vandals rarely claim responsibility for their actions, but terrorists
compulsively do," says Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Saboteurs: Wiebo
Ludwig's War Against Big Oil, which profiled the anti-oil activist and
his involvement in similar bombings of energy infrastructure in the
1990s. "It could even be the work of individuals trying to discredit
environmentalists."

But the fact that neighbours report seeing a group of people running
from the burning home, the planning involved in making bombs for the
attack, and the fact that Mr. Carter's Cadillac SUV-- licence plate
DRT 2 OIL -- had been previously vandalized, certainly don't rule out
the possibility that some organized group may be involved, Mr. Joosse
says.

There is no suggestion that the Encana bombings and the attacks on Mr.
Carter's home -- if the oil executive was, indeed, deliberately
targeted -- are linked. Police suspect the explosions, at Tomslake, B.
C., are the work of local landowners, angry about sour gas wells
nearby, which some claim poison their livestock and devalue their
property. Also, the bombers sent an anonymous warning to the local
paper ahead of time: "We will no longer negotiate with terrorists
which you are as you keep endangering our families with crazy
expansion of deadly gas wells in our home lands," it read.

But taken together, two cases arriving so close together have sent a
current of anxiety through Western boardrooms over a threat they have
rarely seen before.

Eco-vandals have been around for decades. But in the United States and
Europe, certain left wing, environmentalist and animal-rights groups
have in recent years ramped up the ferocity of their assaults on
corporate interests, says John Thompson, director of the Mackenzie
Institute, a Toronto-based security think-tank. "There's been more and
more of a hard edge to them," he says. "The current generation [of
activists] is really nasty. They'll pick on particular individuals;
target them."

The FBI recently fingered eco-terror groups as America's number one
domestic terror threat.

Given the loose affiliation of these sorts of activists, these are
often extremely difficult cases to solve, Mr. Joosse notes. To date,
Canada has been mostly spared such violence, though a number of
construction sites near Guelph were vandalized in 2006, with ELF's
Canadian chapter taking credit.

At the very least, the attacks on Encana and the former Syncrude
executive have awakened industry to the threat of environmental
extremists taking matters into their own, aggressive hands. Growing
international scrutiny and campaigns against Canadian oil for its
elevated carbon emissions -- as well as the death of 500 ducks in
April, who became stuck in an oilsands tailings pond -- remind
everyone here of the possibility that anti-energy protests have the
potential to turn vicious, if not deadly.


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: What are the odds the arsonists use energy oil to [Re: Mira Trapper] #1129359
01/16/09 03:33 PM
01/16/09 03:33 PM
Joined: Oct 2008
Posts: 83
S.W. Pa.
S
sixgunslinger Offline
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sixgunslinger  Offline
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Joined: Oct 2008
Posts: 83
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Maybe they can sue the oil companies because they produced oil that started the fire, kinda like the people who sue gun makers.

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