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Canada on guard after Al-Qaeda threatens oil industry attacks
AFP
OTTAWA
Petroleumworld.com 02 15 06Canada is monitoring new threats to its oil patch after the Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda called Wednesday for attacks on installations that supply oil to the United States, Canadian officials said.
"We've always said that Canada is not immune to threats. We take this threat seriously," Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told reporters, adding "it's possible to protect all of our assets, both human and structural."
Earlier, Day's spokeswoman Melissa LeClerc told AFP Canadian authorities were "aware of the threat and (were) monitoring the situation."
The threat hinted that Canada, Mexico and Venezuela were targets.
"In the long term, the United States will not need the Middle East (for oil) or it will reduce its dependency on it, and will be satisfied with oil from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela," the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula said.
"Oil interests in all regions (of the world) from which the United States benefits should be hit, not only in the Middle East," the group said in an article in its online monthly magazine, Sawt al-Jihad (the Voice of Jihad).
Greg Stringham, vice president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in Calgary, Canada's energy headquarters, said oil companies were taking the threat "very seriously" but alert levels in Canada remained low.
"It does not look like it's something new, although we're paying good attention to it and we have heightened the awareness among the folks that may be directly affected," he told AFP.
"This is not one that has caused extra (security) mechanisms to kick in ... but we want people to be aware of it so that they can pay extra attention to what's going on around their specific facilities," he said.
At an estimated 179 billion barrels, Canada's Alberta oil sands rank second behind Saudi Arabia in petroleum reserves. However, due to high extraction costs, the deposits were long-neglected, except by local companies.
While crude is pumped from the ground, oil sands must be mined and bitumen separated from the sand and water.
Since 2000, skyrocketing crude prices and improved extraction technology have persuaded foreign companies to invest billions of dollars in projects.Canada is already the biggest energy supplier to the United States.
Its oil sands production is expected to continue climbing to 3.5 million barrels per day by 2015, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in its annual report in June 2006.
AFP 14 2126 GMT 02 07
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