Friends of the Earth held a meeting in Edinburgh last night to discuss a massive project to extract oil from tar sands in North Alberta.
The meeting was held to highlight the fact that the project, funded by the Royal Bank of Scotland, would cause major environmental damage. The 1,170 kilometre long oil pipeline will cross over 50 First Nations and 785 watercourses.
Ken O’Neill, Lothians’ newest independent candidate in the Holyrood election, who was at the meeting, said: “The plans to extract oil from the tar sands in Northern Alberta will cause widescale environmental damage. The public own the majority of RBS and I doubt many would want to see UK tax money used to destroy someone else’s land in the pursuit of profit. This is not the sort of project I want Scotland to be associated with and people should make their feelings known to the bank.”