Alberta Energy Minister Diana McQueen toured key U.S. cities this week in an effort to gain the interests of major oil refiners and producers before an auction Wednesday will see the sale of 1,300 acres of new oil and gas leases. The leases overlap 650 acres of critical boreal caribou habitat as well as mountain caribou ranges. 

Caribou is an endangered species in the province, with a long history of being placed second to the province’s oil and gas priorities. Last week Alberta put 1,235 acres of mountain caribou range up for auction despite a recent Environment Canada report that called for the restoration of the region given the threat of local herds disappearing.

Both Alberta and the Government of Canada have consistently failed to stem the rapid decline of the province’s endangered caribou, a species now protected under the federal Species at Risk Act. An Environment Canada recovery plan, released in 2012, advanced habitat protection as one of the only means available to protect the vanishing species.

According to Carolyn Campbell conservation specialist at the Alberta Wilderness Association adequate habitat protection measures have yet to be put into place while oil and gas development continues to dramatically outpace conservation efforts.

“New leasing in caribou range should halt,” she said, “until there are real rules to prevent new footprint and restore old footprint.”

Although new project-level guidelines require industry to at times delay or coordinate new projects that will impact habitat, Campbell says the rules “still allow for a lot of harmful footprint.”

Both Alberta Energy and Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) were asked about the leasing of land in caribou habitat but were unable to provide comment by the time of publication. 

Caribou are naturally timid creatures, their grazing and mating patterns easily disturbed by human and industrial activities. The rapid expansion of Alberta’s oilsands, including open-pit mines and infrastructure-heavy in situ extraction, as well as far-reaching oil and gas exploration in the region including the creation of seismic lines cut through large portions of the boreal forest, has dramatically reduced safe caribou habitat in which herds can persist at healthy levels.

Oil and gas industry activity in caribou ranges. Map by Global Forest Watch.

According to Campbell, the linear footprint caused by seismic lines and other surface disturbance “stimulates populations of deer, moose and predators” and “provides easy access for predators to reach caribou.” But the overwhelming scientific evidence, she said, “is that loss of habitat is the ultimate cause of caribou population declines.”

In 2011 the Canadian government released a draft recovery strategy that was heavily criticized for recommending a province-wide wolf cull as a means of supporting flagging caribou populations without addressing habitat loss. The plan drew wide-ranging condemnation from the scientific and environmental communities as well as First Nations who held industrial development was to blame for caribou declines, not the province’s wolves.

An independent study later confirmed Alberta’s wolves eat very little caribou and sustain themselves on a diet of deer, moose and elk. Although the fragmentation and disturbance of caribou habitat put caribou and wolves in closer quarters. 

"Caribou and wolves have co-existed over thousands of years,” Campbell said, “but too much human footprint robs the caribou of their ability to minimize overlap with wolves.”

In late 2012, five years after it was due, Environment Canada released a revised recovery strategy that called the oil and gas industry and the government of Alberta to work together to ensure at least 65 per cent of caribou habitat remain undisturbed to ensure caribou survival.

Critics were quick to point out the federal recovery strategy did not outline how Alberta should implement the 65 per cent strategy, leaving the plan largely undefined. Since then industry in Alberta has continued to operate mostly unimpeded, putting the caribou on a “collision course” with oil and gas interests, as Simon Dyer from the Pembina Institute put it at the time.

“The provincial government has previously not followed it scientists’ recommendations, nor even multi-sector groups’ recommendations, to temporarily stop leasing and logging until range plans are developed that focus on habitat recovery,” Campbell said. 

Mountain caribou populations have declined by more than 60 per cent since 2002. Boreal herds are in a similarly precarious state. In 2011 the Canadian government placed 70 per cent of Alberta’s boreal woodland caribou herds in or on the border of a ‘not self-sustaining’ category.

Although caribou declines have been tracked by scientists and conservationists for decades, the province’s emphasis on oil and gas development, coupled with loose and undefined recovery plans, has left the species struggling. And according to Campbell, this could have wide-reaching consequences for the surrounding ecosystem, even across provincial boundaries.

“If you look at the attached Environment Canada map (above) of boreal woodland caribou across Canada, it’s Alberta where most of the herds are at highest risk of dying out under current policies. This affects the genetic diversity and viability of neighbouring B.C., the North West Territories and Saskatchewan caribou populations. 

Beyond that, caribou are indicators of whether the boreal and foothills forests are healthy. If we change how these forests are managed so that caribou populations can recover (which Alberta states is its policy goal), then our northern Mackenzie watershed will be healthier, and many other species will benefit too, such as migratory birds that depend on old growth forest and intact wetlands.” 

Under Canada’s new caribou recovery strategy Alberta is legally required to develop plans to preserve and restore caribou ranges within five years. The province has yet to demonstrate how these plans will move forward in the face of new energy leases and land sales.

Although some basic changes could make a bit difference, Campbell said.

“In 2012, in response to thousands of Canadians speaking up for a strong boreal caribou recovery strategy, the federal government did strengthen the strategy to be more habitat-focused. Second, to its credit, in 2013 the Alberta government stopped new energy leasing in two west central Alberta caribou ranges and deferred some logging in one of those ranges until range plans are developed for those caribou.

This is a start, and it shows how important it is for citizens to get involved.”

But, she added, these efforts need to be backed up by “real rules to reduce footprint” which might mean a “re-thinking of forestry and energy.” Ultimately, resource managers are going to have to work together to more responsibly manage industry impacts and reduce disturbance to caribou habitat, she said.

Image Credit: Zak Richter/NPS via Flickr

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Days after another delay by the Obama administration on TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, members of the Alberta government are hitting the U.S. circuit to promote the oilsands and boost their “green” credentials.

Three government officials are heading to key regions in the U.S. to push for continued market access and advertise what Albertan energy minister Diana McQueen calls “our commitment to clean energy development.”

Alberta hopes to showcase investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as part of a successful emissions reduction plan.

Critics say the Alberta government’s talk about “sustainability” and “clean energy” is not in line with reality.

“If you’ve been following the Canadian government’s sales pitch for the Keystone XL pipeline, you’ve probably heard this claim before: ‘Emissions per barrel have been reduced by 26 per cent between 1990 and 2011,’” writes P.J. Partington, senior federal policy analyst with the Pembina Institute.

However, the reality, Partington writes, is that “since 1990, oilsands production has quintupled, while GHG emissions from production and upgrading have quadrupled.”

Partington writes: "[The above graph] shows the close relationship between annual GHG emissions and the rate of production — especially in recent years."

University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach wrote this week that Canada's incoherence on climate change has killed Keystone XL.

"As an antidote to our lack of ambition on policies, our governments both in Edmonton and in Ottawa have decided to work on an ambitious program of wordsmithing," Leach wrote in Macleans.

Partington notes the oilsands sector already emits as much carbon pollution as the entire province of British Columbia, and production is projected to double within a decade. Trends in the sector’s GHG performance will therefore have a huge impact on emissions levels and major consequences for Canada.

The sales team

Cal Dallas, Alberta Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations, is in Seattle, Wash., this week to attend the Pacific Energy Forum (April 23-25). According to the Alberta press release, Dallas will use the opportunity to drum up foreign investment interests in the oilsands and advertise extraction technologies.

“We want to work with Asian partners to better understand how to unlock their unconventional resources in an environmentally sustainable way while encouraging investment in our energy resources,” Dallas said.

“Alberta is known to be at the forefront of responsible, sustainable and innovative energy development.”

Dallas will discuss the “importance of energy trade to future economic prosperity” although it is unclear how he will address Alberta’s emissions problems, or the threat climate change poses to heavy hydrocarbon assets.

As DeSmog Canada recently reported, ExxonMobil will soon begin disclosing the risk its carbon assets face given international pressure to address climate change.

Leach recently outlined how the oilsands will quickly become unviable in the face of carbon market policies the Alberta and Canadian governments will have little control over. According to Leach’s analysis the oilsands would become uneconomic with even $50/tonne price on carbon.

According to Nicole Leonard, Canadian oil energy analyst at Bentek, oilsands production is expected to increase by 400,000 barrels a day by 2017.

Concerns are mounting, however, that Alberta's failure to adequately address emissions output will create undue risk for potential oilsands investors.

“All leading energy system analysts agree that the oil sands, and other unconventional oils, should not be rapidly expanding,” said energy economist Mark Jaccard. International efforts are geared toward limiting global temperature increases below 2 °C.

Energy Minister Diana McQueen will also travel this week to Pittsburg, Pa., to deliver a keynote speech at the 13th annual Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Conference (April 28-May 1) and then to New York to promote Alberta to the investment community.

David Dorward, MLA for Edmonton-Gold Bar, will be in Washington, D.C., April 27 to May 2 to meet with the Port-to-Plains Alliance, a business and government consortium representing the economic corridor from Alberta to Texas.

Dorward will work to advance the “Building Alberta Plan,” a provincial project that hopes to strengthen trade by “opening new markets for Alberta’s resources.”

CCS uncertain

At the carbon capture event, McQueen will discuss how Alberta’s two CCS projects demonstrate Alberta’s “commitment to clean energy development.”

Alberta has committed to invest $1.3 billion over 15 years in the Shell Canada Quest carbon capture project to capture waste carbon from its Scotford upgrader and the Enhance Energy Inc. Carbon Trunk Line to capture waste carbon to be used in enhanced oil recovery operations. Shell is half-way completed its project and Enhanced said it would begin constructing its carbon pipeline this spring.

Despite the two projects moving forward, Alberta originally committed to investing in four CCS projects, but two were cancelled after the companies involved deemed the return on investment insufficient.

With only two CCS operations, Alberta is expected to sequester at best three or four million tonnes of carbon a year by 2020 — just a tenth of the province’s CCS target.

“Those two CCS projects are crucial areas of research that are necessary to develop the technology and it is great that the Alberta government has taken action,” says Andrew Read, technical and policy analyst at the Pembina Institute, adding that it was “unfortunate” the investment in CCS hasn’t come with other actions to help cut greenhouse gas emissions in Alberta.

Emissions still rising rapidly

Today, emissions from the oil and gas sector are the largest source of emissions in Canada, surpassing the transportation sector, according to a recently released Environment Canada report, covering the period from 1990 to 2012.

Alberta has also worked to develop a favourable regulatory framework for future CCS projects, but new projects are unlikely without either continued massive government support or a market-altering price on carbon. To be viable, Alberta needs a price on carbon of at least $70 a tonne for CCS technology on upgraders and rising to between $120 to $160 a tonne for CCS technology to be possible for new steam-assisted oilsands operations, according to ICO2N, a Canadian industry-funded group working to advance CCS technology.

“[CCS] is one of the tools in the tool box but it is at the bottom of the toolbox,” John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club Canada Foundation told DeSmog Canada. “There are a thousand things that are more cost effective and useful before we [employ CCS] and as long as it is used to extract more fossil fuels, it is not a solution to the problem.”

GHG regulations?

Since 2007, Alberta has required heavy emitters to pay $15 a tonne into a technology fund if they don’t reduce the intensity of their emissions by 12 per cent from baseline levels.

“Alberta’s plan allows companies to pay a small fee to put carbon into the air and then it gives them back the money, so it is not a system that is moving investments into alternatives,” Bennett says. “Any policy that allows the net amount of carbon dioxide emissions to increase is wrong.”

This time last year, Alberta shocked the federal government and the oil industry with a plan to demand a 40 per cent reduction in per-barrel emissions and a $40 per tonne price on emissions that exceed that amount. The plan has since failed to be implemented while Ottawa announced a delay of federal oil and gas greenhouse gas regulations until they can be done “in concert with” the United States.

“The reality of the situation isn’t aligning with [the Alberta government’s] speaking points,” says Read. “I am not sure what they are reporting to decision makers [in the U.S.] because there hasn’t been any progress on developing oil and gas GHG regulations.”

The environmental movement in the United States has seized on Alberta’s environmental record in opposing the Keystone XL pipeline. The $5.4 billion pipeline is proposed to pump 830,000 barrels a day from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Currently, the southern leg is in operation, but the approval of the northern leg crossing the border sits with the Obama administration for final approval.

After the recent delay, a final decision isn’t expected until 2015.

Image Credit: Julia Kilpatrick, Pembina Institute

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