Row over green status of oil from tar sands

Commissioners to discuss differences over environmental rules.

The European commissioner for climate action, Connie Hedegaard, will meet her counterpart for trade, Karel De Gucht, today to settle a row between their departments over tar sands.

De Gucht is accused by MEPs of holding up new environmental rules in order to avoid a rift with Canada, the largest producer of these unconventional fuels. At stake is whether the EU should put oil from tar sands in the same environmental category as oil from less-polluting fossil fuels.

The EU’s fuel quality directive requires oil companies in the EU market to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of their fuels by 6% by 2020 against 2010 levels, and the Commission had intended to complete the necessary implementing rules before the end of last year. The Commission’s climate action department had given tar sands an emission-footprint value 20% higher than conventional petrol – a value contested by producers. A new study close to this value was expected to be published by Hedegaard’s department as European Voice went to press.

The Commission’s trade department considers that the science is not strong enough to justify a separate value for tar sands. A spokesman noted the obligation “to ensure that any measure proposed by the Commission meets the requirements of the World Trade Organization – ie, that it is proportional, non-discriminatory and based on solid scientific evidence”.

Politics or science?

Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, a Dutch Liberal MEP, suggests that the trade department’s blocking tactics owe more to political reasons than to science. The EU and Canada are currently negotiating a trade agreement.

De Gucht responded in a letter to MEPs on 1 February that the ongoing trade talks with Canada would not affect the EU’s ability to act on oil and oil products. The trade department’s position is that it fully supports EU action to combat climate change.

MEPs view the dispute as a credibility test of EU climate legislation. Jo Leinen, a German Socialist MEP who chairs the Parliament’s environment committee, wrote to  De Gucht last week (25 January) calling for tar sands to be included in EU rules, and warning that his committee would be unlikely to support new rules that did not have a clear commitment to do so.

But Canadian officials are fighting EU “discrimination”, concerned that European rules could be copied by other countries.

Ron Liepert, the energy minister for Alberta, the Canadian province with a daily output of 1.5 million barrels of oil, meets MEPs in Brussels today (3 February) to discuss what he calls Alberta’s “clean energy strategies”.  He told European Voice: “There is no evidence to discriminate against oil from oil sands by putting it in a separate category.” 

Gerbrandy disagrees, citing “many reports that show that the additional emissions are higher for tar sands”. 

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