Cites Beaver Lake Cree Nation legal action as key liability for investors.

Byline: Matthew Berger

Alberta’s sprawling tar sands region holds the second largest oil reserve in the world after Saudi Arabia, but investors lured by the promise of black gold should think twice about the environmental risks, a Canadian investment fund warns.

In a new report, Northwest & Ethical Investments LP describes how companies operating in the tar sands – including global giants BP, Shell and Total – are exposed to “litigious, regulatory, policy and social license risks.”

Lawsuit Risks

One risk is Aboriginal rights litigation since oil sands producers operate in areas overlapping Aboriginal traditional territories.  The Beaver Lake Cree Nation has already filed a lawsuit, citing a treaty written into the Constitution then ensured they would be able to continue hunting, trapping and fishing on their ancestral lands.  The Cree are seeking an injunction to end the tar sands operations’ destruction of those lands, damage to the wildlife, and fouling of the rivers.

To read the full article, click here. 

To read a summary of the Northwest & Ethical Investments report, click here.