Oil lobby group recruited Canadian minister for secret strategy meeting

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Fri, 2015-05-29 23:53

Debater

Natural resources minister Greg Rickford attended closed door meeting to deliver pep talk in 2014 to urge executives to spreading oil industry’s message

Thursday 28 May 2015

An oil industry lobby group successfully recruited a Canadian cabinet minister to deliver a pep talk and dispense strategic planning advice at a closed door meeting in a luxury Rocky Mountains resort, the Guardian has learned.

In the 21 October 2014 session, Greg Rickford, the natural resources minister, urged the 40 to 50 assembled executives to work harder to spread the oil industry’s message.

“You are fighting an uphill battle for public confidence,” he said. “Our messages are not resonating.”

The 2,900-word prepared speech makes no mention of climate change or the conclusions of studies that say most of the tar sands will have to stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic global warming.

Instead, Rickford commiserated with the executives about criticism of tar sands oil, suggesting it was misguided.

“Much of the debate over energy is characterized by myth or emotion,” he said, accusing scientists and campaigners of “crowding out the real facts”.

“You’ve heard them all: that the oil sands are a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/28/oil-lobby-group-recru...

Sat, 2015-05-30 12:11

quizzical

huh remessaging...slick new ads out here in BC, "and now you know", when you actually know sfa still, but feel good because you were told you now know..

Sat, 2015-05-30 17:09

Debater

Perhaps Howard Hampton can bring up this story when he is campaigning against Greg Rickford in Kenora.

Sun, 2015-05-31 12:22

iyraste1313

Let´s watch the rush to support the industry by the combined forces of the PCs Libs and NDPers (sic) after the next tied election, as the industry continues to fold...what with the deteriorating global economics......

In Face of Rising Climate Movement, Tar Sands on Life Support: Report

Evidence of struggling tar sands sector suggests opportunity to slow the rate of growth 'significantly'

byDeirdre Fulton, staff writer

Oil Change International credits a growing people's climate movement for slowing tar sands growth. (Photo: Chris Yakimov/flickr/cc)

With dozens of carbon-intensive tar sands projects delayed or on hold, a new report released Friday confidently declares: "The case for the tar sands is crumbling."

A new analysis by Oil Change International identifies 39 projects—representing more than 1.61 million barrels per day (bpd) of potential tar sands oil production capacity—that companies are currently unable or unwilling to invest in.

That's good news for the climate and the environment, as well as for frontline communities that bear the brunt of the toxic tar sands production.

And it's bad news for the tar sands sector, which now finds itself "struggling to justify many new projects," says Hannah McKinnon, senior campaigner on private finance at Oil Change International.

According to the report, On the Edge: 1.6 Million Barrels per Day of Proposed Tar Sands Oil on Life Support (pdf), the delayed and on-hold projects include three open pit mine projects with a combined capacity of over 450,000 bpd, and over 30 drilling projects with nearly 1.2 million bpd capacity. The total extractable tar sands oil in these projects is almost 13 billion barrels. If all of that resource was extracted and burned, around 7.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide would be emitted—equivalent to 40 years of emissions from 51 average U.S. coal-fired power plants.

Furthermore, the Oil Change analysis found that an additional 550,000 bpd of production capacity is owned by companies that have filed for bankruptcy—"another clear indicator of weakness in the sector," the authors write.

A number of factors have led to this decline, the report says, pointing to plummeting oil prices; shifting politics in the 'tar sands capital' of Alberta, Canada; and the rise of both alternative energy technologies and the grassroots climate movement.

"The combination of citizen action to block pipelines and development and the rising tide of climate policies and alternative technologies, which are together leading to lower oil demand growth and lower oil prices, signal very strong headwinds for an oil source that is both high cost and high carbon," the report reads. Should such conditions persist, it goes on, "the rate of growth may slow significantly in the coming years—potentially avoiding lock-in of a significant amount of [greenhouse gas] emissions."