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Alberta takes beefs to U.S.
Gary Park, Petroleum News Calgary correspondent
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has never been known to duck a fight, least of all a big one.
Thus he is headed to Washington and New York to take on two towering giants — the Bush administration and The New York Times.
First, he had 30 minutes with Vice President Dick Cheney on June 25 to push the United States to reopen its borders to Canadian beef, one month after the discovery of so-called Mad Cow Disease in a single Alberta bovine saw the door slammed on millions of dollars worth of Canadian exports.
Since then Canada has slaughtered and tested more than 2,700 head of cattle, all of which have come up negative for the disease. But unless the United States resumes imports by Aug. 31, Canada has warned its beef industry will collapse.
What Klein hopes is that his written support for U.S. troops in Iraq — the only high-level political backing Washington received from Canada — plus Alberta’s vital oil and natural gas exports might persuade Cheney to press for a review of the beef ban. Burr with Big Apple The other burr under Klein’s saddle, which he carried to the Big Apple, was a Times’ article on June 18 challenging this year’s inclusion of Alberta’s oil sands in world reserves, boosting Alberta from 5 billion barrels to 180 billion barrels — second only to Saudi Arabia.
He called the article “hogwash” and assured Cheney the estimates are accurate, making Canada a “safe and secure and reliable supply source” for the United States.
The Times alleged the new reserves tally was “promoted by a Canadian energy trade group” (the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) and “upon further examination, turned out to be highly questionable.”
The article said the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers itself listed Canada’s oil reserves at a mere 12 billion barrels. What The Times didn’t report was that the association’s number was based solely on reserves reported by the handful of companies with projects that are under development.
The 175-billion-barrel oil sands reserve, now recognized by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, stems from assessments by the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, which also calculates the oil sands have 315 billion barrels that are potential recoverable, using current and future technology, not to mention an estimated 1.6 trillion barrels without factoring in technology.
Alberta Energy Minister Murray Smith and FirstEnergy Capital have both suggested that question marks hang over all global reserves — notably the political risks and security doubts now associated with Saudi Arabia compared with the certainty of supply from Canada.
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