Let’s cut through the hype and examine the science and facts around the oil sands and greenhouse gas emissions. Help us by joining our movement on Facebook and asking all of our politicians from every political party to become strong, proud advocates for our resources.
On a global level, Alberta produces transparent and progressive oil when it comes to worker safety, human rights, environmental protection and GHG emissions. Protesting pipelines in Canada is a net negative for the global environment and global human rights.
Below are 15 facts and quotes to set the record straight.
1. Andrew Weaver, Green Party MLA and climate scientist calculated that “If all 170 billion barrels of bitumen reserves in Alberta’s oil sands were extracted — a rather unlikely event, since that would take well over 200 years at current production rates — the cumulative impact on global temperatures would amount to between 0.02 and 0.05 Celsius.” – Source: Edmonton Journal
2. “Emissions from oil sands aren’t going to be the difference between stabilization and disaster” – Faith Birol, Chief of the International Energy Agency
3. “Climate change issues should not serve as barriers to stunt the growth of oil sands projects” – Financial Post on Fatih Birol Chief of the International Energy Agency
4. At least 6 countries and 13 oilfields in California have higher upstream emissions than the oil sands. “The dirtiest oil in North America is not produced in Canada, but just outside Los Angeles, where the Placerita oilfield generates about twice the level of upstream emissions as Canadian oilsands production.” The dirtiest oil in the world comes from Nigeria. – ipolitics on research from California Low Carbon Fuel standards research
5. Using SAGD with cogeneration to replace coal power in Alberta would reduce more emissions than using natural gas. Equivalent to removing more than 2 million cars from the road. – CESAR
6. Emissions intensity in the oilsands has been reduced by 30-50% per barrel over the last 20+ years. The industry cares about making constant progress so companies invest heavily in research and development to improve practices and procedures. One example is the recently launched satellite by COSIA to study and accurately assess emissions and the progress being made to reduce these emissions in the oilsands region. – Cosia, Alberta Energy
7. Alberta has had carbon regulations affecting the oilsands industry since 2008, another example of the leadership pipeline protestors claim they want, and that’s from almost a decade ago.
8. Alberta and Canada is the only top source of oil for the USA with carbon regulations in place as well as being the only top 10 oil reserve country. Alberta is also the only place where oil exports, all pipelines, and global free trade are opposed by these extremely well funded lobby groups. They don’t protest for foreign oil imports coming to Canada or any other nations that export to the USA.
9. Canada is a leader in carbon capture and storage in the oilsands and in the neighboring province of Saskatchewan. “One million tonnes of CO2 captured and stored each year at Quest in the oilsands is equivalent to the annual emissions from about 250,000 cars.”
10. A portion of new oilsands mining production is produced within a few percent of the average emissions of the average oil barrel refined in the USA. – Oil Sands Review
11. A portion Oilsands SAGD production is produced with emissions lower than many other sources of oil imported into the USA.- Jacobs
12. When the United Nations took into account the size of countries, Canada was the second lowest emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world. – Toronto Sun
13. “Until the rest of the world had policies that impose similar cost, you’re not actually reducing emissions you’re just displacing the emissions and the economic activity to other Jurisdictions.” –Andrew Leach, Alberta Climate change Panel
14. Today, Canada is responsible for about 1.6% of global emissions, the oilsands is about 0.15%. Canada as a country is less than the global airline industry, global data centre industry and global shipping industry. – NRCan, Guardian
15. Oil demand is growing and could reach 100 million barrels per day by 2018 according to Peter Tertzakian. Every barrel of oil that doesn’t come from Canada is ultimately produced elsewhere, for the reasons above and all of the other reasons detailed in these articles (11 facts about Keystone, 10 reasons the world needs Canadian oil,15 facts about Energy East) the world needs more Canada.
Email this to your friends and save the link so we can support a positive and respectful conversation about the truth – and overcome the fear and misinformation pushed by lobby groups like Greenpeace and from their employees.
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