Canada brushes off oil sands article

The Associated Press
Published: February 26, 2009

TORONTO: Canada's Conservative government and the country's main opposition party defended Alberta's massive oil sands operations on Wednesday following the release of a 20-page critical photo-essay in this month's National Geographic magazine.
The article details the environmental and social problems around the oil sands.
The magazine has glossy photographs of sludge-filled toxic ponds and the grey, muddy moonscapes of the massive open pit mines around Fort McMurray, Alberta.
"In northern Alberta the question of how to strike that balance (between economics and the environment) has been left to the free market, and its answer has been to forget about tomorrow. Tomorrow is not its job," says the article.
The spread is the latest in a series of public-relations challenges for the Canadian and Alberta governments as they struggle to deal with the enormous carbon footprint of the oil sands. Environmentalists have mounted a campaign in the U.S. portraying the oil sands as an environmental catastrophe.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice dismissed the feature as "just one article." He emphasized the work Canada and the U.S. agreed to do on carbon reduction technologies for the coal and oil industries in North America.
President Barack Obama's remarks on Canada's polluting oil sands industry and an agreement to begin a clean-energy dialogue between the countries last week reassured Canadians worried the new U.S. president would restrict oil imports.
"The answer to all of this is technology, investments in technology, and that's why we'll be working together with the United States to that end," said Prentice, who heads to Washington next week to meet environmental advisers.
Opposition Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, who recently positioned himself as a supporter of the oil sands, was emphatic in his disdain for the National Geographic story.
"National Geographic is not going to teach me any lessons about the oil sands," he said.
"This is a huge industry. It employs Canadians from coast to coast. We have oil reserves that are going to last for the whole of the 21st century. We are where we are. We've got to clean it up, and we've got make it a sustainable place to work and live."
Industry officials estimate the oil sands in northern Alberta could yield as much as 175 billion barrels of oil, making Canada second only to Saudi Arabia in crude oil reserves. But the extraction process produces a high amount of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.