Canada’s oilsands companies can’t handle the truth

The truth, it’s said, will set you free. That apparently doesn't apply to Canada’s oil and gas industry, though. Witness the furious overreaction from its various proxies to federal legislation that would require it to back up the promises it makes about its environmental achievements with credible evidence. Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz, one of its most enthusiastic (and ironic) proxies, described the federal government’s legislation targeting greenwashing by oil and gas companies as “an undemocratic gag order.” In a subsequent fundraising email she even suggested that it would “cripple our industry” if passed.

If holding the oil and gas industry to account for the promises it has spent many millions of dollars making to Canadians is “crippling,” it suggests those promises don’t hold up to any real scrutiny. Pathways Alliance executive chair Derek Evans more or less admitted as much when he told the CBC last month that “we've talked for 40 years about climate change… and we've done very, very little about it.”

The recent appearance by various oilsands company CEOs last week in front of the House Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development only reinforced the point Evans stumbled into making. Imperial Oil’s Brad Corson wasn’t nearly as candid about his industry’s long-standing habit of over-promising and under-delivering on emissions reductions, but he also invited the same comparison. “I think you just need to judge us by our actions,” he told the committee.

Let’s do that. Corson’s company, for example, has proudly trumpeted the application of a new solvent technology that could reduce the per-barrel emissions coming from its so-called “in situ” operations (oilsands reserves that have to be essentially steamed out of the ground rather than mined) by as much as 40 per cent. Sounds pretty good, right?

It might if you omitted every piece of relevant context. As the Alberta government’s energy war room — sorry, the “Canadian Energy Centre” — noted in a puff piece on the project, “it’s an oilsands innovation that’s been in the works for more than two decades.” That sort of wait might be worth it if the technology was being applied across the industry’s entire range of oilsands projects. Alas, it’s only making those reductions right now on 15,000 barrels per day, which is just over one per cent of the industry’s total steam-driven production and 0.45 per cent of its overall oilsands production.

For all of said industry’s talk about improving per-barrel emissions, they've barely budged on steam-driven projects like this since 2010. As the Canada Energy Regulator notes, the per-barrel emissions on so-called “in situ” barrels fell by just eight per cent between 2010 and 2020. This works out to an average improvement of less than 1 per cent per year. To hit the net-zero target these companies keep saying they intend to reach, they’d have to increase that rate of improvement by something on the order of 10 times. And the more they stall for time, the more dramatic that increase will have to be.

CEOs such as Corson don't seem bothered in the least by this glacial pace, though. “I’m quite proud of the progress that we’ve demonstrated in reducing the emissions intensity of each barrel we produced,” he told the committee. His company’s goal, he says, is a 30 per cent reduction from 2016 levels by 2030. What he won’t say is that 2016’s levels were 57 kilograms of CO2e per barrel, and a 30 per cent reduction from there still leaves the company with 40 kilograms per barrel to abate — and only two decades in which to do it if it's to reach net-zero by 2050. Slow and steady, the pace at which companies such as Imperial have been reducing their per-barrel emissions, will not win this race.

But this is why the oilsands CEOs always talk about relative improvements in emissions rather than absolute ones. Their relentless focus on reductions in emissions intensity, especially when they’re coming from such a high overall baseline, is a deliberate attempt to distract people with trees rather than the forest. That becomes especially obvious when you see the extent to which industry leaders oppose or object to policies that would actually force them to deliver the emissions reductions they keep promising.

According to InfluenceMap, which bills itself as “an independent think tank producing data-driven analysis on how business and finance are impacting the climate crisis,” the Pathways Alliance of oilsands companies “has opposed multiple Canadian policies that target the decarbonization of the sector, such as the Oil and Gas Emissions Cap, Clean Electricity Regulations, and Methane Regulations.” If someone insists they’re on a diet but then rejects every attempt to change the way they eat or exercise, you can be forgiven for doubting their sincerity. The same principle holds true here.

The truth is these oil companies are waiting for some industrial equivalent of Ozempic, the weight-loss wonder drug, to fall into their collective laps. Maybe that’s an even bigger government subsidy for the carbon capture and storage projects they refuse to build. Maybe that’s a Conservative government that will simply release them from their responsibilities on this front entirely. Either way, they clearly still think reducing emissions is an optional choice for their businesses rather than an existential one.

The federal government — and especially this federal government — can’t force these executives to face up to the reality of climate change. But it can and should force them to stop pretending they’re on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. If that “cripples” their businesses, well, that kind of says it all.