Carbon-Spewing Alberta Oil Sands

Suddenly the superior attitude of the U.S. administration and its enthusiastic environmental supporters, in decrying the 'dirty oil' that Canada has aplenty in Alberta's oil sands looks rather curiously limp in the face of the stupendous size of the environmental calamity that that very same U.S. administration has brought down upon itself.

This is, of course, the same administration that so recently shocked its home-grown environmental supporters by launching an a 'all-clear' for further off-shore drilling along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the coast of Alaska. Suddenly it has due cause to do a severe re-think of the situation.

The seemingly insoluble - in the short run at any event; a longer-range potential solution looks three to four months down the road - solution to the current state of runaway oil shooting out of British Petroleum's site off the Gulf of Mexico with the collapse of their rented drilling platform translates to an environmental spill that should have been foreseen.

But there was no impetus to do that. If that Deepwater Horizon oil well had been drilled within Canada's territory, any oil drilling and refining company would have had to drill more than one well to ensure that in the event of a rupture, a relief well would be in existence to alleviate the effects of a spill. In U.S. coastal waters that was not required.

The U.S. government, while celebrating its green credentials as a forward-looking, responsibly environmental administration, actively sought bids from oil firms to drill in their Outer Continental Shelf. They did not, however, hamper the potential for mutually beneficial bidding by insisting on first enacting protective legislation.

To ensure that companies drilling on the ocean floor would first practise due diligence in conducting a thorough initial survey, in planning to drill supplemental wells, in being aware that their activities, should they result in an avoidable disaster, would make them liable for the results of accidents that would threaten fishing or tourism through ecological damage.

The U.S. Oil Pollution Act 1990, actually limiting the liability of offshore oil firms to a truly inadequate $75-million on top of clean up costs, must seem like a green light to any company wishing to avoid unnecessary expenses relating to costly backup systems. If the U.S. doesn't care enough about the kind of damage a runway well could wreak on its coastline and its economy, why should the oil companies?

Yet this is the very same administration - seeking to do things on the cheap-and-ready, determined to make themselves independent in energy needs from sources abroad - that decries the carbon emissions from oil sands extraction in Alberta. Where the Alberta government, concerned for its environmental reputation, is working with oil companies to ensure cleaner extraction and refinement methods are created.

Just look at the potentials, one exemplifying the real potential for danger, drilling on offshore rigs at huge oceanic depths, ensuring remediation using untried, theoretical measures to halt a disastrous spill has a real element of risk - as opposed to another, drilling on land, where risks are more readily manageable. And where overland pipelines to the U.S. guarantee an element of safe delivery.

Now, the long Atlantic coastline of the U.S. is awash with tarry oil, imperiling wildlife conservation areas, fisheries and tourism from Louisiana to Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, possibly Texas. Sensitive ecological areas stand directly in harm's way of the oil being slowly wafted ashore, while BP desperately attempts untried, unproven measures to staunch the flow.

Nature's balance is easily disrupted, not so readily mended.