Alberta Premier seeks help from US in extracting oil from tar sands

“Oil from the tar sands is about our energy past, not our future. Political and business leaders who want to fight global warming should be concerned about expanding U.S. imports of tar sands fuel.” - Liz Barratt-Brown, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
As reported in All American Patriots.com

Washington (January 16, 2008) -- Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is on a trade mission to Washington, D.C., today where he is expected to seek American support for, and investment in, one of the dirtiest sources of unconventional fuels – the Canadian tar sands. Tar sands oil production generates almost three times the global warming emissions as conventional oil production, due to the massive amounts of energy needed to extract, upgrade and refine the oil.

“Oil from the tar sands is about our energy past, not our future. Political and business leaders who want to fight global warming should be concerned about expanding U.S. imports of tar sands fuel,” said Liz Barratt-Brown, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “The U.S. should not rely on a dirty fuel that results in the destruction of Canada's biologically rich boreal forest for tar sands mining and drilling.”

Concern about tar sands fuel is growing in the United States. Last summer, British Petroleum (BP) was forced to table expansion plans to take more tar sands oil at its Whiting, Indiana, refinery after concerns about added pollution in Lake Michigan were made known to the public. Opposition is growing around plans to build the first new refinery in 30 years in South Dakota, a new 1,800 mile trans-boundary pipeline from the tar sands to the Midwest, and proposed expansions of many of the refineries in that region. Last week, NRDC asked the airline industry to publicly oppose the use of fuel made from highly polluting sources,including tar sands, and called on the companies to join a campaign seeking increased investment in cleaner fuels throughout the airline industry.

“Canada risks becoming an international pariah for promoting the tar sands instead of joining the fight against climate change” said Tzeporah Berman of ForestEthics in Canada. “The bottom line is Stelmach should put the brakes on tar sands expansion and address the rising environmental and social concerns instead of running around Washington like an oil salesman.”

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