Alberta warm to continental environment pact
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - The Canadian province of Alberta, the country's biggest oil producer, would welcome a continental accord on climate change but would demand a role in any negotiations, the province's environment minister said on Thursday.
Rob Renner said the province's Conservative government backs a federal scheme to negotiate a climate-change pact with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's incoming administration.
However Alberta isn't willing to give Ottawa a free hand and wants a role in any negotiations.
"The province is supportive of a North American agreement," Renner said. "But it needs to be a national initiative and the province needs to be at the table."
Alberta's oil sands hold the biggest reserves of oil outside the Middle East. The province, already one of the largest exporters of oil and natural gas to the United States, is looking to increase its share of that market as new projects in the oil sands region are completed.
The Bush administration welcomed new production from the oil sands, even though the massive projects emit large amount of carbon dioxide, in order reduce reliance on supplies from the Middle East and Venezuela. However Obama has already signaled a tougher approach.
During his campaign Obama said he was concerned about the excessive U.S. reliance on "dirty oil", much of which comes from greenhouse-gas emitting projects in the Alberta oil sands.
Alberta has already imposed caps and financial penalties on the carbon-dioxide emissions of large oil sands producers and power plants and earlier this year earmarked C$2 billion ($1.7 billion) to fund carbon capture and storage projects put forward by big emitters.
It wants to ensure that any climate change pact doesn't disrupt investment in the province and that its proposals are acknowledged in any national scheme to cut emissions.
"We would like to ... ensure there is certainty on the table for industry," Renner said. "We want to see harmonization between a federal plan and the provincial plan and there's no reason why we couldn't have that same sort of harmonization if we did expand it to a North American plan."
($1=$1.19 Canadian)
(Reporting by Scott Haggett; editing by Rob Wilson)
