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Redford vs. Redford in oil sands debate
Gary Park For Petroleum News
At the ripening age of 77, one-time movie heartthrob Robert Redford has done quite nicely for himself playing fictional roles on the big screen.
A lot of Albertans think he’s now extended that make-believe world to his campaign against province’s oil sands in contributing to climate change.
In the process, he is tangling with another Redford — Alison Redford, the premier of Alberta.
There is some thought they might be distant relatives; more certain is the apparently unbridgeable gap between their political views.
Robert raised Alison’s hackles earlier in September when he launched a video as part of a new celebrity-studded climate change campaign in which he called the oil sands “the dirtiest oil on the planet.”
He declared on a video that “tar sands oil is exactly the type of dirty energy we can no longer afford. It may be great for oil companies, but it is killing the planet. There’s no energy security in that.”
His singing sidekick Neil Young had earlier joined the fray by declaring the oil sands region to be a “wasteland.”
Young compared Fort McMurray, the oil sands “capital,” with Hiroshima, without saying whether he was referring to the Japanese city after its atomic devastation in the Second World War, or the city as it stands today.
Premier questions credibility The premier retaliated by questioning how “people who are using energy, flying on planes, can make these sorts of comments and assume they’re going to have any credibility.”
“Celebrities being celebrities will never change, but at the end of the day, it is important for us to speak for the people whose lives are actually affected (by the economic development of the oil sands),” she said.
She and others noted that heavy crude produced in California and the heavy crudes the U.S. imports from Venezuela and Mexico contribute more greenhouse gases per barrel to the atmosphere than the bitumen extracted in Alberta.
On a 12-day trade mission to China during the thick of the oil sands debate, Premier Redford said the wrangling is doing nothing to erode Chinese enthusiasm for Alberta’s energy resources.
In a conference call from Shanghai, she said: “There’s a very clear understanding here that when we talk about oil sands development that we are seeing companies make tremendous progress with respect to environmental sustainability.
“And there’s very clear acceptance that when we do have economic development that there is environmental impact,” she said.
‘Long-term’ investments Redford said many of the Chinese companies, as part of their “very long-term” investments in energy, are confident that Canada will eventually allow pipelines from the oil sands to tanker terminals on the Pacific Coast.
Speaking in New York, Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver entered the public oil sands fray by trying to shift the focus to U.S. dependence on coal-fired electricity.
“Coal is the single largest source of (greenhouse gas) emissions in the world,” he said, noting that the International Energy Agency has cited the increasing use of coal-fired power as the “greatest threat to a low-carbon future and called on governments to take action to address it.”
Oliver said Canada has already moved on that front by leading major global coal users in banning construction of new coal-fired electricity plants using traditional technology.
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