Group hopes release of “new” report filled with tired, old invective on the Canadian oil sands impacts LCFS policy debate in Washington
Though they may be separated by a border and an acronym, activists pushing for a Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) in the United States and those working to end the development of the oil sands in Canada are fighting two fronts in the same battle: namely, the battle against affordable, abundant energy.
Convince Congress to pass a nationwide LCFS in America, the thinking goes, and you’ve successfully imposed a de facto ban on those resources crossing the U.S. border – denying millions of Americans access to that secure energy. Eliminate the United States from the equation, the thinking continues, and getting Canada to end its work in the oil sands becomes a whole lot more manageable. After all, who wants to invest all that time, energy and money developing a market with no serious buyer in sight?
Last month, that line of reasoning went straight out the window. News out of Alberta of PetroChina’s involvement (financial and otherwise) in the oil sands eliminated all doubt, if any remained, that even if U.S. policymakers end our unique relationship on energy with Canada, those resources will continue to be produced for, sold to and used by millions (billions?) of grateful energy consumers in Asia – impacting America’s economic and strategic position, but doing nothing to limit the emission of carbon dioxide (in fact, according to one respected study, emissions may actually increase under an LCFS).
But don’t tell any of that to the band of activists who will high-stepping in front of the White House tomorrow afternoon during the Canadian prime minister’s visit with President Obama. Flush with cash, they’re running ads in some of the most expensive media markets in the country, according to CanWest newswire:
To coincide with Harper’s visit to the White House, [Forest Ethics], along with the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), have bought ads in the online editions of the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico.com, a website well read among lawmakers in the U.S. capital. …
In conjunction with Harper’s visit, the environmental groups are also distributing anti-oil sands DVDs to Capitol Hill lawmakers involved in negotiations on a final climate change bill. They also plan to hand out copies of the video to tourists outside the White House during Harper’s visit.
Ads, protests, fliers, DVDs – and, entirely coincidentally, a new anti-sands report issued just this week by Greenpeace Canada. Do these guys know how to coordinate their media, or what?
Titled “Dirty Oil” and authored by long-time activist Andrew Nikiforuk (whose broadsides include book-length polemics against trade, technology and, predictably, energy), the paper is filled with classic regurgitations related to the environmental record of Canadian energy, expertly cherry-picking key statistics and baseline figures (the GHG chart from a decade ago is our favorite, page 15) to make the case that Canadian oil sands energy is in a league of its own when it comes to the emission of CO2.
But is it? Any technician can tell you that Canadian energy has the same amount of carbon as you’d find in oil anywhere else in the world. And any fuel scientist can tell you that, once combusted, gasoline derived from the oil sands emits the same amount of carbon dioxide (19.4 pounds per gallon) as gasoline distilled from any other source.
Sure, some forms of Canadian crude require a little extra energy to bring to market, but remember: nearly 80 percent of carbon emissions come from the combustion of gasoline in the tank, emitting a volume of CO2 that is constant. Attacking the oil sands on the basis of its “lifecycle” carbon score? A lot like blaming the back-up tight-end for a season’s worth of turnovers.
But just in case you’re keeping score at home, the lifecycle content of oil derived from the Canadian sands is significantly less than activists from Greenpeace would want you to know. Consider the findings of a report released in June by the Alberta Energy Research Institute:
Life cycle well-to-wheels results from the Study … show that the [greenhouse gas] emissions from producing transportation fuels from oil sands bitumen are smaller than suggested by previous studies.
Our results show that the [lifecycle greenhouse gas] difference between Arab-Medium [oil] and bitumen [from the oil sands] is less than 18% for bitumen from SAGD and approximately 10% for bitumen from mining. … If shipped to the [American Midwest], the difference between Arab-Medium and bitumen drops to 15% for bitumen produced by SAGD. … The gap between [Nigerian light oil] and diluted bitumen sent to the [American Midwest] is only 6%.
Quite a difference from activist-funded studies suggesting that oil sands energy emits 40 percent more CO2 emissions than conventional oil resources, isn’t it? It turns out there’s more to this story than simply whether oil is heavy or light, sweet or sour, domestic or foreign. The real consideration is how these energy resources are being produced, what processes are in place to ensure efficiency, and of course: what sort of technology is being brought to bear to add to that efficiency. According to Alberta premier Ed Stelmach, emissions tied to Canadian oil sands work account for one-tenth of one-percent of the world’s GHG inventory.
None of which seems to matter to opponents of Canadian energy. This comes from yesterday’s (Toronto) Globe and Mail:
[A] documentary that premiered in Switzerland and is now playing at the Toronto International Film Festival depicts the [oil sands’] projects’ … environmental impact; and a delegation of Chinese journalists is planning a visit to the landscape of northeastern Alberta.
While those Chinese journalists are in town, maybe they can check out the work happening now in the Mackay River and Dover oil sands plays. These are projects in which the Chinese government, mentioned above, has taken a significant financial stake. And under LCFS policies currently being considered by Congress, that stake stands to grow even larger in the years to come.
The only difference from a GHG perspective? Instead of piping that energy a few hundred miles south, it’ll be piped west a few thousand miles, loaded onto a barge, and shipped a few thousand more miles half-a-world away to Asia. The difference from an American economic and strategic one? A lot more far-reaching than that.
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