Canada oil sands industry hits back at critics
By Bernard Simon in Toronto
June 9 2010
Financial Times
Alberta’s oil sands industry has vigorously defended itself against an attack by Lush, the UK-based cosmetics group, in a sign of a more aggressive approach being taken by oil sands producers towards their critics.
Dave Collyer, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (Capp), issued a statement accusing Lush of distorting the industry’s environmental record.
Lush has launched a campaign against the oil sands in partnership with Rainforest Action Network (Ran), one of the industry’s most prominent critics.
Lush’s website describes the oil sands – environmentalists call them tar sands – as “a dirty secret” involving “intrigue, big business, and a lot of scandal. Our governments have crawled into bed with big oil companies, and it’s creating a mess for the people of Canada, and the world.”
Lush said it would use only clean energy at its North American head office in Vancouver and its manufacturing and distribution facilities. It is donating to Ran a share of the proceeds from its bath product sales.
“It’s technology – not soap – that enables cleaner energy,” said Mr Collyer.
Projects to extract the bitumen-like oil sands have drawn tens of billions of dollars in investment from some of the world’s biggest energy producers including, most recently, Chinese companies. Covering an area the size of Florida, the oil sands, the largest of which are the Athabasca deposits, contain the world’s second-biggest oil reserves after those of Saudi Arabia.
The industry has faced a growing campaign over its impact on water supplies and wildlife and the scale of greenhouse gas emissions in what is an energy-intensive extraction process.
Campaign tactics have ranged from partnerships between retailers and environmental activists, to shareholder resolutions against oil sands operators.
Royal Dutch Shell and BP this year faced resolutions at their annual meetings which called for greater disclosure of their oil sands activities. US retailers Whole Foods Markets and Bed Bath & Beyond said in February that they would boycott fuel produced from the oil sands.
Increasingly concerned about its image, the industry has begun to take a more pro-active approach to its critics. “We have to look at it as an opportunity to get out there and tell our story,” Capp said on Wednesday of the Lush campaign. “It represents the direction we’re going to be taking over the next little while.”
Some analysts have suggested that the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could mute attacks against the oil sands, given their potential importance as a source of energy to the US.
But Jerry Bellikka, spokesman for Ed Stelmach, Alberta’s premier, said: “We do not see this in any way as an opportunity to seek a political or market advantage.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
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