Home » News » Alberta’s ‘dirty oil’ suits U.S. security
News
Alberta’s ‘dirty oil’ suits U.S. security
News Articles | The Globe and Mail | Clark Campbell | September 23, 2009
Read the full article on the originating site
American environmentalists are campaigning for Barack Obama to spurn Alberta’s “dirty oil.” But the United States sees it as key to its national security – and will leave it up to Canada to figure out how the expansion of the oil sands can be squared with targets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
While U.S. environmental lobbies such as the Sierra Club were protesting against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s mission to Washington last week – accusing him of “dirty-oil salesmanship” – the U.S. President’s new special envoy on energy, David Goldwyn, was in Ottawa telling officials that Canada is a “pillar of U.S. energy security.”
“Part of my message here is that we recognize and value the centrality of Canada’s contribution to U.S. energy security,” Mr. Goldwyn, the U.S. State Department’s newly appointed co-ordinator for international energy affairs, said after the meetings.
It will be up to Canada, he said, to figure out how it can expand the high-emissions oil sands without exceeding targets in greenhouse-gas reductions, either by reducing emissions in other sectors or developing new technology.
“We have to have a system where we can rely on Canada for supply, and rely on Canada’s own commitment to be a steward of its climate-change targets.”
It’s no academic debate. In August, the U.S. State Department approved plans for a 1,607-kilometre pipeline from Hardisty, Alta., to Superior, Wis. – the Alberta Clipper – that will carry 800,000 barrels a day by 2015.
Environmentalists had lobbied against it, arguing the infrastructure that links the oil sands to U.S. consumers increases dependence on dirty energy that, in turn, reduces incentives for developing cleaner sources.
But the State Department judged it is in the U.S.‘s “strategic interest” to ensure supplies from a politically stable country that is not part of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
The decision did not quiet the campaign urging Washington to restrict the southward flow of northern Alberta’s heavy crude.
There is another pipeline in the planning stages, the Keystone XL, intended to link the oil sands to the Texas gulf. Environmentalists hoped the Alberta Clipper was a one-off, and that the Obama administration would turn against the oil sands.
“It’s unfortunate that this pipeline went through, but I think there’s a bigger-picture question about the direction of the administration in terms of tar-sands oil,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council’s Canada program.
Mr. Goldwyn, however, said the Alberta Clipper decision reflects the Obama administration’s intention to pursue “multiple goals” of taking climate-change action while securing access to oil and gas supplies that will be needed even as the U.S. moves to a low-carbon economy.
The Alberta Clipper decision, he said, was “a very public recognition that the United States has strategic interests in having diverse access, close to home, no long distances and marine transportation, to help propel our economy.”
Even so, expanding the oil sands makes meeting overall emissions reductions harder, of course.
A new international climate-change treaty is scheduled to be negotiated in Copenhagen in December.
Even if no deal is struck, the U.S. Waxman-Markey bill, now before the Senate, allows for punitive “border measures,” such as tariffs, against products from countries that don’t have comparable emission-reduction targets.
Mr. Goldwyn argued that given the closeness of the two countries’ economies it is “inconceivable” that Canada and the U.S. will not have similar emission-reduction policies.
But how Canada copes with specifics such as the expansion of the oil sands is up to Ottawa.
“If Canada’s efforts on renewables, on efficiency, on having most of its electricity come from non-emitting sources, to carbon sequestration, to promoting further technological change, enables Canada to meet its climate-change targets while producing supply for international energy security, then the United States will respect that,” Mr. Goldwyn said.
Tagged with: climate change, canada, alberta clipper, waxman-markey bill, climate security
