If you drew a map of the world based on concerns about pollution and climate change, the oil sands of Alberta, Canada would be marked in red.
Now, the province’s government has released a new plan that it says will keep oil production in the area going at a slower, more even pace than in the past. But some observers say the new plan doesn’t look all that much different from the old one.
The plan creates six conservation areas in the lower Athabasca region. Companies that want to remove oil or gas from these areas can only do it from outside—with horizontal drilling, for example. That means 19 energy companies will have to negotiate the cancellation of their leases in the area. The government promises compensation for them. It also says no new tenures in the protected areas will be allowed.
The plan also includes new protections for caribou habitat, expanding the Dillon River Conservation Region from 27,000 to 192,000 hectares.
This is Alberta’s third try at developing a formal plan for the use of oil sands. The province has been under pressure from other parts of the country and the world to improve its environmental track record.
Still, as columnist Stephen Ewart notes in the Calgary Herald, the plan still assumes that oil sands production will more than double—to 3.5 million barrels a day—by 2020. Over the past decade, the oil production from the provinces already doubled once.
Government regulation aside, the biggest issue around oil sands production is the proposed Enbridge pipeline project, which would bring sludgy oil sands bitumen to the coast for shipment to Asia. That plan just got a new twist with an announcement that newspaper multimillionaire David Black hopes to build a $13-billion oil refinery at the pipeline’s end near Kitimat. A refinery like that would avoid having to ship loads of bitumen overseas—something many worry could result in disastrous spills. But it’s far from clear that Black’s plan will go anywhere.
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