BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. — A U.S. senator who took a tour of the Alberta oilsands Friday says he can’t understand how anyone is opposed to using fuel that comes from it.
In an interview from his plane after it left Fort McMurray, Republican Saxby Chambliss of Georgia told The Canadian Press he was very impressed.
“When you have the opportunity to see what’s being done and the way the land is being reclaimed, it’s fairly hard for me to understand how anybody could object to the utilization of the resources that come out of the oilsands,” he said.
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach played tour guide for three senators — Chambliss, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kay Hagan, a Democrat from North Carolina.
It included visits to Syncrude’s oilsands facility, including its land reclamation projects, and Nexen’s Long Lake in situ project and upgrader. There were briefings from industry and government officials.
However, the senators did not talk to environmentalists, scientists or aboriginal people who live downstream from the oilsands who have voiced concerns about the adverse impacts of pollution.
“But to the credit of the folks we’ve been visiting with, they’ve been very open and honest,” Chambliss said.
“The river has got some health-related issues that have been dealt with and they are tracking the content of the river both above the oilsands area as well as below it.”
Graham said in a news release that he was “impressed with the environmental sensitivities and full speed ahead when it comes to oilsands development.”
On Thursday, world-renowned ecologist David Schindler showed slides of fish caught in the last two years in a lake downstream from the oilsands that had tumours, lesions, skeletal deformities and discolourations.
Earlier this month, Schindler published a study that he says proves the oilsands is emitting heavy metals including mercury and lead into the Athabasca watershed. That finding contradicts the position of government scientists, who have long maintained that such toxins are the result of the river eroding naturally occurring bitumen deposits.
In 2007, a study estimated that 12 per cent of Alberta’s forest soils are past their acid-carrying capacity, probably because of the oilsands. And the Alberta Cancer Board has found cancer rates about 30 per cent higher than anticipated in the downstream community of Fort Chipewyan, though the board did not address possible causes.
Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, with the New-York based Natural Resources Defense Council, said the three senators are on the U.S. armed services committee.
She believes they were invited to Alberta and Saskatchewan as part of the debate around what role the oilsands plays in the energy security of the United States.
“The debate how best to handle clean energy and the threat of climate change is still very alive within the senate,” she said. “I would hope they would come back from this visit to the tarsands understanding that this is really one of the most destructive energy projects on Earth right now.
“From our perspective, the biggest energy security issue is climate change, and so that means that the tarsands really does not fit in any secure energy plan.”
Chambliss noted the United States gets about 17 per cent of its oil from Canada, and that Canada is an important trading partner for the U.S. from an energy standpoint.
“We heard there is about an 80-year supply in the one field,” Chambliss said, referring to the oilsands.
“I’m impressed that energy sources coming out of Alberta are going to be there for years and years to come and the next generation is going to have the same benefits that we’ve been able to enjoy.”
Stelmach issued a news release saying the visit had gone “exceedingly well.”
“Experiencing oilsands development first-hand helped reinforce our message that Alberta is committed to responsible energy production,” he said.
Stelmach’s meeting with the senators was set up well before his meeting last week in Ottawa with U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The Alberta premier has said Pelosi came away with a better understanding of what was being done in Alberta, but Pelosi has refused to say since the meeting whether her concerns about the oilsands had been allayed.
Earlier this year, 50 U.S. legislators wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voicing concerns that a pipeline linking Alberta’s oilsands to Texas refineries will “undermine America’s clean energy future and international leadership on climate change.”
Chambliss and his colleagues were scheduled to meet Saturday with Premier Brad Wall in Saskatoon to discuss carbon capture and storage technology and nuclear energy.
Suncor Energy plans to announce next week that it is the first company in Alberta to successfully reclaim an oilsands tailings pond. The 2.2-square-kilometre area has been filled in and landscaped with 630,000 newly-planted trees, bushes and shrubs.