In Situ Oil Sands Alliance battles Alberta’s dirty oil image

Start-up advocacy group represents the next wave and long-range future of oil sands development

By Gordon Jaremko

September 03, 2009

Alberta industry has recruited a star communicator. Pat Nelson, the province’s first woman energy and finance minister back when she held a Calgary seat from 1989 to 2004, has stepped up as vice-chair and chief voice of the fledgling In Situ Oil Sands Alliance

Nelson delivered a strong performance in her first practice run as an industry advocate in a brief speech to TD Newcrest’s annual unconventional oil forum for investors. For the Canadian industry and investment audience, her talent will be on display again Oct. 6, when she will address a popular annual Calgary event called the PLS Playmakers Symposium and E&P Summit.

In case there were any doubts left, the industry’s need for a master of political communications showed on Aug. 20 when the U.S. State Department granted a permit to Enbridge Energy for the American leg in its $3.7-billion Alberta Clipper oil export pipeline project. Publicity agents for a California-based environmental coalition immediately fired off a press release that was loaded with misinformation, ignored Washington’s explanation and threatened a protest lawsuit.

Virtually all the construction will be in an existing pipeline right-of-way that has made Alberta a mainstay supplier of U.S. energy needs for half a century. The state department called the project “a positive economic signal, in a difficult period, about the future reliability and availability of a portion of U.S. energy imports.” The announcement added that “this shovel-ready project will provide construction jobs for workers in the United States.” The approval followed a review of greenhouse gas emissions, which the Obama administration believes “are best addressed through each country’s robust domestic policies and a strong international agreement.”

But the green groups the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, Indigenous Environmental Network and Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy called the permit support for “the dirtiest oil on earth.” They recited a disaster image that protesters work hard at spreading: “Tar sands development in Alberta is creating an environmental catastrophe, with toxic tailings ponds so large they can be seen from space and plans to strip away the forests and peat lands in an area the size of Florida.”

Nelson’s job is to spread truth on behalf of IOSA, which represents the next wave and long-range future of oil sands development. She has plenty of facts at her fingertips.

Just for starters only one-fifth of the oil sands are close enough to the ground surface for mining. All of that is concentrated in a 3,450-square-kilometer area north of Fort McMurray which is just two per cent of the 142,000-square-kilometer, Florida-sized northern bitumen belt. In 42 years of production, mines to date have disturbed 500 square kilometers. Of 91 projects in the long-range oil sands development lineup, 85 are in-situ or underground extraction projects with wells, pipelines and comparatively modest above-ground plants. The in-situ processes involve around one-tenth as much land disturbance as the open-pit mines, mostly use undrinkable and recycled water from geological deposits in steam-injection processes, and have no tailings ponds.

But Nelson does better than talk up facts in vivid political style. She isn’t just acting. She speaks with genuine personal feeling.

“I started out in the oil sands,” she said when I talked with her for the latest Alberta Oil. “It’s an absolute passion for me.It’s just a dream. You can go up there and with your bare hands pick up the richest crude in the world. You pick up the sand, squeeze it, smell it and realize that’s the richest crude in the world. That’s the jewel of Alberta.”