Oilsands companies will pay up to $50 million per year to cover the costs of a sophisticated monitoring plan of wildlife, plants, land, air and water around their operations, Environment Minister Peter Kent said Thursday.
The new elements of the monitoring plan follow through on pledges made by Kent in March to substantially improve scientific monitoring and address unanswered questions about the industry’s footprint on the planet’s ecosystems.
"As I said in March, we expect industry to pay," Kent said. "The feedback at the time was very positive and supportive and it continues to be. Fifty million dollars to most of us represents a very large amount of money, but against an industry that is expected to generate $80 billion next year, it’s a very small price to pay for – as we said – a social licence."
Kent noted that new monitoring was designed and reviewed by an eight-page long list of scientists from his department, the Alberta government and the academic world.
The plan noted that it was designed to address "deficits in current environmental monitoring in the oilsands" that fail to provide assurances that the resource is "being developed sustainably."
The Alberta oilsands, also known as tarsands, are considered to be the second largest oil reserves in the world, but require significant energy and water resources to separate the fuel from the sand in the ground.
Kent said the results of monitoring would be made public and answer what he described as "misinformation" and "disinformation" about the resource that is being spread around the United States and Europe, damaging the industry’s reputation.
"Not only will this plan have increased ability to detect change, but it will ensure a better understanding of natural variability and system responses to oilsands development activities," said the plan.
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