U.S. Senator Says Canada’s Oilsands Won’t be Penalized by Restrictions

(The Canadian Press)

Canada’s oilsands won’t be penalized by American legislation that prohibits the U.S. government from buying alternative fuels with higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional sources, Senator Jeff Bingaman said Wednesday.

Bingaman, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, said he supports adopting a clarification like one in the House of Representatives that clearly exempts the oilsands.

Under that measure, restrictions wouldn’t apply to general U.S. purchases, only contracts drawn up specifically limiting a certain type of alternative, non-conventional fuel.

Extracting fuel from the oilsands is not a new technology anyway, said Bingaman.

And since Canadian oil is mingled with U.S. products, “it is hard to see how (restrictions) could be enforced against Canadian oilsands in any case,” he told a forum hosted by the Canadian American Business Council.

Canada has been worried that a major U.S. energy bill passed last year would affect future exports of crude from Alberta, which are expected to rise to three million barrels a day by 2015 from 1.3 million now.

The bill, which Bingaman helped write, prohibits the American government from buying alternative fuels that produce more emissions over the life of a project than other sources.

Environmentalists on both sides of the border support restrictions on the oilsands. They want Canada to slow development and take more steps to clean it up.

A coalition of groups, including the national Resources Defence Council, says Canada’s plans to address global warming will allow carbon dioxide emissions to triple by the year 2020.

The U.S. energy bill included restrictions over fear that the government’s purchasing power would be used to promote new technologies with worse emissions than current ones. Read the complete article.