Canadian Official Defends Oil Sands

Green: Politics

Alison M. Redford, the premier of Alberta, said Wednesday that the debate over Canada’s oil sands development and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline was tainted by a campaign of “misleading and false information” from opponents.

Alison M. RedfordBloomberg News Alison M. Redford

Speaking at a breakfast for reporters in Washington, Ms. Redford said that Alberta was sitting atop the third-largest proven oil reserves in the world and said it was in the short- and long-term interests of Canada and the United States to extract it, ship it, refine it and burn it.

“This is a resource for which demand is only going to grow,” said Ms. Redford, a lawyer and politician who turned 47 on Wednesday. “There is no question there will continue to be demand for it. And there is no question there will continue to be questions about our province’s ability to produce it responsibly.”

She said that Alberta had some of the toughest environmental regulations in the world and that the land where the heavy oil is mined was being rapidly reclaimed.

Environmentalists contend that extracting oil from tar sands is an extremely energy-intensive enterprise that significantly worsens global warming. James Hansen, the well-known climate scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has said that fully exploiting Canada’s oil sands means “game over” for the global climate.

Ms. Redford acknowledged that mining the oil sands creates greenhouse gas emissions. “There’s no sugar-coating that,” she said, while adding that it adds only one-tenth of 1 percent to total global emissions.

Turning to the controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline, which a Canadian company wants to build to ship the Albertan oil to refineries along the Gulf Coast, Ms. Redford said that the project would provide mutual energy, economic and jobs benefits to Canada and the United States. She said that if the pipeline is evaluated on its merits, it will ultimately be approved.

President Obama first delayed and then rejected the project, saying that more environmental review was necessary. But he encouraged the builder, TransCanada, to resubmit its permit application and he has given every sign that he will approve the project after the November election.

Ms. Redford is willing to wait. “There is some political concern — I’m not denying that,” she said. She added that she was “very optimistic” that the United States would approve the plan, which is critical to Alberta’s oil-dependent economy.

“There really is an energy economy in Alberta, and we’re going to continue to build that economy,” she said. “We’re never going to be dress manufacturers in Alberta.”