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Alberta claims victory in EU’s ‘backing off ’ from oilsands rules
News Articles | Calgary Herald | Jason Fekete, Lisa Schmidt | March 25, 2010
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CALGARY – The provincial government is chalking up a victory in its oilsands campaign as the European Union looks at weakening proposed environmental standards for the fuel.
Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert said Wednesday the EU appears to be “backing off “ on tougher rules for oilsands-derived crude in response to a lobbying effort to protect the oilsands by Canadian governments.
A new discussion paper to be debated by a panel this week suggests that European officials will remove restrictions on fuel from the oilsands in its draft legislation, pending “further review.”
“We’re having an impact,” Liepert said in Edmonton on Wednesday.
“We’ve got the European Union starting to look at how they need to reassess some of the initiatives they’ve taken, based on, I would say, not the best information, so we just got to keep up the campaign.”
The EU standards must still go through a period of consultations and several months of debate prior to being adopted by the European Parliament, but the concerns raised in the meantime by Canadian offi-cials appear to have prompted a change.
Canadian ambassador Ross Hornby raised the issue in a Jan. 25 letter to the EU.
“In the original consultation document, oilsands-derived fuels (erroneously labelled as ‘tar sand’) are treated as a distinct fuel source, separate from all other crude pathways for petrol and diesel fuels,” the letter said.
Hornby warned the reporting requirements of the original European standards, as proposed in 2009, would “create barriers to trade, particularly in light of the highly integrated nature of the North American oil industry,” Hornby wrote.
The 2009 standards include a chart estimating oilsandsderived fuel produced more than five times the greenhouse gas emissions than fuel from conventional oil. The new proposal has removed those references to the oilsands, infuriating environmental groups.
Travis Davies, spokesman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said the EU decision is a “positive” one for the oilpatch, but noted it hasn’t been a pressing issue.
“The EU is not a market for Canadian crude at the moment, but it’s about the future,” Davies said.
CAPP believes the decision reflects the fact that producers are reducing the environmental footprints from developing the resource, arguing the so-called “life cycle” emissions from oilsands are no more than 15 per cent higher than conventional oil.
“Market access is going to be based on performance. Canadian oil can and will continue to compete,” Davies added.
Environment Minister Rob Renner said the EU move is a sign that message is starting to resonate.
“With the existing technology, and more specifically with the opportunity for new technology to be applied, oilsands can compete very favourably with virtually any other source of fossil fuel,” he said.
But Simon Dyer, director of the oilsands program at the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental think-tank, insists greenhouse gas emissions from oilsands development are as much as three times higher than conventional oil production.
Canadian governments are more worried about their environmental image than actually trying to reduce greenhouse gas reductions from the carbon-intensive resource, he said. Ottawa must implement greenhouse gas regulations that would establish solid environmental benchmarks for oilsands producers, he added.
“This is not an image problem. It’s actually an issue problem,” Dyer said. “What we need to see is improvements across the board and that’s only going to come through regulation.”
Liberal energy critic Dave Taylor said the Stelmach government has already lost the public relations battle, which could create market access problems.
“We do need to be concerned,” he said.
“The environmental lobby got way out ahead, these guys were asleep at the switch. The oil industry as well, you know, (they were) maybe a little too busy looking for the oil to keep an eye on the ball.”
jfekete@theherald.canwest.com
lschmidt@theherald.canwest.com
Tagged with: low carbon fuel standard, calgary herald, alberta government, european union, carbon footprint
