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No convincing Pelosi
Opinion | The Calgary Herald | Don Martin | September 08, 2010
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When the third-highest-ranking politician in the Obama administration comes to Canada with her energy sidekick, oil sand producers and royalty-addicted premiers rush into line for an arm-twisting opportunity.
But House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s voting record, her iffy re-election prospects, her meeting mix of aboriginal and environmental delegations along with her choice of political tagalongs suggest the fix is in.
A suspicious observer would think Wednesday’s visit to Ottawa will be more about gathering input for a future trash-talking of the Alberta and Saskatchewan oil sands than a unbiased hearing of the facts.
Pelosi has consistently voted against oil interests domestically, be it offshore drilling or Alaskan wildlife refuge exploration, which is arguably a good thing.
She’s facing a difficult bid for re-election in her San Francisco congressional district on Nov. 2, in a city which leads the nation in opposition to oilsands imports and support for a low-carbon fuel standard, which could exclude non-conventional Alberta crude. To come out in favour of the oilsands now would be political suicide.
The Massachusetts Congressman she’s bringing along is Edward Markey, chair of the influential energy subcommittee and co-author of a clean energy bill now in the Senate which, while it stops short of imposing restrictions on oilsands imports, is clearly hostile to a fuel source they consider dirty.
And both Pelosi and Markey have refused repeated invitations by the Alberta government to visit Fort McMurray for an up-close look at the energy megaproject’s environmental safeguards, plans for large-scale carbon sequestration and reclamation sites populated by buffalo. Add it up and oil sands would appear to share the molecular characteristics of snakeoil to this political pairing.
Even though you can bet Pelosi will stick to diplomatic niceties when she emerges from meetings with Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall, it’s doubtful a whisper of oilsands support will find a way to escape her tight lips.
If Nancy Pelosi wants data to support her end-to-oil campaign, an energy reality most experts say is still decades away from becoming even a theoretical possibility, she’ll hear nothing new from either side today. But at least the punch-drunk oilsands producers and government beneficiaries must make a strong case to counter a recent series of national and international black eyes.
The industry has been hit by an American fly-by smear campaign called Rethink Alberta, which inexplicably tars Alberta’s legendary parks as unworthy of visiting just because they’re in the same province as duck-killing tailing ponds. A new research paper from widely respected biologist David Schindler implicates the oil sands in polluting the Athabasca River. And public opinion hasn’t been helped by a major Enbridge pipeline leak into a Michigan river last month.
Yet Americans need to think long and hard about demonizing a non-conventional oil resource which represents more than 10 per cent of all their fossil fuel imports.
The fact of U.S. energy life is that there’s no viable import alternative which doesn’t depend on approval from unstable Venezuela, or Middle East regimes, or require an environmentally questionable tanker trek across an ocean before being pumped into American gas tanks.
Pipelines aren’t environmentally infallible, but they’re not going to trigger a prolonged gusher of crude into, say, the Gulf of Mexico, the California coast or the Beaufort Sea.
Nancy Pelosi and Ed Markey are undeniably influential enough to complicate life for an oilsands that’s without alternative markets until that distant day when a second pipeline carries the crude to the west coast and onward to thirsty Asian markets.
Democrats are campaigning against government approval for the final stage of the Keystone Pipeline project linking the oil sands to Texas refineries. She has the power to expedite or delay clean energy legislation currently before the Senate. She could even tuck a low-carbon fuel standard inside a larger bill.
Whatever her plans, Nancy Pelosi is not coming to Canada for a back-to-school lesson on the oilsands as America’s safest and most secure energy supply. Her mind is made up. The Alberta oilsands are a necessary evil, a last-resort fuel for Americans best eliminated as quickly as possible.
Tagged with: pelosi-markey, oil sands, stelmach, energy future, talk
