Alberta’s American envoy sees trade relationships between the province and southern neighbour taking a positive turn

Washington is taking note as the bitumen belt in northern Alberta matures

By Gordon Jaremko

May 01, 2009

Bitumen belt tours for decision- and opinion-makers will continue. Often, they are private visits. Always, they include reviews of controls, protection, long-range reclamation planning and regulation that critics leave out of portraits of Alberta as a wild-west, dirty-oil frontier where anything goes.

At the same time, Mar roves the U.S. to spread the province’s version of clean oil from Maryland to Minnesota and California to Wisconsin – wherever energy trade issues crop up and he can obtain an audience. “We have a good story to tell,” he insists.

An industry visit to Washington after Obama’s Ottawa trip showed that Americans are still willing to listen, reports David Collyer, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. “CAPP has good access. Canadians generally do.” Among U.S. decision-makers, “people generally understand the roles we play.”

The winter talks between the American president and the Canadian prime minister built a solid foundation for future energy, environment and trade co-operation, Collyer believes. “They set the right tone,” by vowing to rely on technology for cleanups and agreeing at least implicitly that all energy forms will be needed to sustain the economy, he says.

“It is important for us to get the facts out there,” the CAPP president says. “Our challenge is to get the facts out objectively and communicate them in a way that resonates with the public.”

As the voice of the big companies responsible for more than nine-tenths of Canadian oil and natural gas production, CAPP is under no illusions. It takes a thick hide to promote Alberta resource development nowadays. “You have to think you’re doing the right thing, both in government and industry,” Collyer says. “We are. Everyone has a strong sense of responsibility.”

Over the past decade, fashionable opinion of the province’s role changed drastically. As late as 2007, the northern bitumen belt was a Disneyland for engineers. Fort McMurray tour bus services expanded and filled up with flocks of visiting technology admirers and investors. Then the source of Alberta’s emergence as a supply growth star on the global energy scene – complete with superpower images of colossal machines, mine pits and plant exhaust stacks – went through an especially sharp reversal.

Highly emotional protesters, rallying around symbols such as polar bear outfits worn by picketers as emblems of wildlife said to be imminently threatened by climate change, are not easily cooled off by statistical facts about the modest role of the oil sands in global greenhouse gas emissions and boreal forest disturbance. “We have to be prepared to be criticized because there are many who don’t agree with what we’re doing,” Collyer says.

“We have to be prepared to engage constructively with the public. We can’t retreat into our home in Alberta, put up walls and ignore the outside world,” the CAPP president says.

“If we’re defensive, negative or withdraw from our engagement, that doesn’t serve us very well. I’m an optimist. I believe logic will prevail. It usually does.”

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