The European Union's executive body will propose that oil extracted from sands should be treated as dirtier than conventional oil, a move set to add to an ongoing spat with Canada, a major producer of oil from sands.
The European Union's executive body will propose that oil extracted from
sands should be treated as dirtier than conventional oil, a move set to add to
an ongoing spat with Canada, a major producer of oil from sands.
The European Commission, which has executive powers within the EU, agreed
Monday to set a higher value for carbon dioxide emissions from tar sands
compared with crude oil extracted from conventional wells, an EU official told
Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.
This would discourage the use of oil from sands in
Europe
,
where companies have an obligation to cut their CO2 emissions by 2020. To do so
they will seek to use the cleanest fuels.
For this reason the issue has been highly controversial, and Monday's decision
is likely to inflame a dispute with
Canada
,
which is currently negotiating a free trade agreement with the EU and says such
a provision discriminates against one of its key exports.
Although
Canada
's
exports of oil sands crude to
Europe
are
negligible, it fears that any EU legislation singling out the fuel could set a
precedent and encourage oil sands critics in other jurisdictions--particularly
in the
U.S.
, the
Alberta
oil
industry's main export market--to push for similar measures.
The commission itself was divided on the issue, with trade and energy officials
opposing a separate reference to oil sands, and climate change officials in
favor.
If the commission's proposal are approved--it must be backed by the European
Parliament and representatives of EU governments before becoming law--oil from
sands would then be considered to have higher greenhouse gas intensity per unit
of energy produced than regular oil when considering the whole lifecycle, from
extraction to combustion.
Oil sands would have a value of 107 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of
energy, compared with 87.5gCO2/MJ for conventional crude. Other unconventional
fuels, like coal converted to liquid fuel, would also have specific values.
The oil buried just below
Alberta
's
boreal forest is a mixture of quartz sands and bitumen--a thick, tarry form of
crude. The western Canadian province is estimated to hold around 170 billion
barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world, after
Saudi
Arabia
and
Venezuela
.
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