EDMONTON - The Alberta government offered a record number of oilsands tours to U.S. politicians, foreign diplomats, international reporters and others in 2011 to help curtail growing criticism.
“Oilsands tours over the past couple of years have sharply picked up,” government spokesman David Sands said Wednesday, pointing to 41 oilsands site visits officially hosted by the provincial government this year and an additional 23 to which the government contributed.
In the face of international criticism, the provincial government has often suggested people come north to see bitumen production for themselves, including tailings ponds and site rehabilitation.
Sands did not have comparable numbers available on visits to the Fort McMurray area in 2010.
But as debate grew louder in connection to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline expansion and European legislators considered a ban on fuel from the oilsands, Sands said Alberta’s invitation seemed to have more takers in 2011. In past years, the province had wrapped up all its tours by September. This year, they continued through December.
“It is our most effective tool for communicating on oilsands issues ... because you bring people up and let them see it for themselves,” he said Wednesday. “You realize the iconic image around the anti-oilsands movement, if you will, is simply a picture of an open-pit mine and how ugly that is. The only way to give people context for that picture they see is to bring (them) up there, to fly them over vast miles of boreal forest and show them where that picture was taken. There’s nothing more effective than that.”
Sands could not say what the total cost of the tours were in 2011, but noted the “highest tab” for any group hosted by the province’s communications staff — groups mainly of reporters — was $10,000, for four days and 16 people. Most tour guests, he said, paid their own way.
Most were also from the United States. In November, for example, government planes were used for three tours to Fort McMurray. A cross-section of state senators and U.S. reporters were on the flights, including South Dakota Republican Dan Lederman, who posted pictures of his tour on the website Flickr, and journalists from Fortune Magazine, CBS News and Americas Quarterly. Officials from Canadian consulates in New York, Houston and San Francisco, as well as industry officials, were also along for the ride.
The Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based think-tank focused on finding energy solutions, has been invited by the province to give presentations during the tours. Policy director Simon Dyer said they are sometimes called afterward by those who have taken the tours and have more questions about environmental concerns and downstream effects of oilsands development.
Like the government, Dyer said the think-tank has had more calls for information about Alberta oil this year, and the prominence of U.S. participation in government tours comes as no surprise.
“There have been some European delegations, but I think that reflects the fact that the U.S. is currently our primary market, ” Dyer said. “But there certainly is interest from around the world, from the EU and from other jurisdictions, too.”
Sands said he is “begging” European media to take part in upcoming tours. The province is also looking to Asian reporters, who, to date, have not spent a lot of time on oilsands issues. With the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal now on the agenda — if approved the pipeline would bring Alberta oil to tankers off the West Coast and on to Asia — the province’s Ministry of International and Intergovernmental Relations is working on lining up a tour for British Columbia’s municipal leaders.
Sands said he has never heard of oilsands critics like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club taking the province’s tour, but he would welcome the opportunity to shepherd them to the production sites.
