A few weeks ago, within minutes of Bill C-59 – which strengthened the Competition Act on environmental claims – being passed, the oilsands Pathways Alliance and some of its member companies made swift and unusual moves. After three years of a prominent advertising campaign on the industry’s coordinated plan to reduce oil sands emissions; one that had spread far and wide across digital and traditional media platforms; Pathways suddenly removed its entire online presence – a vital sign of life for any organization. All that remained was a single webpage citing this as a “direct consequence” of Competition Act amendments.
In addition, the six Pathways member companies (CNRL, Cenovus, ConocoPhilips, Imperial, MEG, Suncor) deleted their corporate sustainability reports from their own websites, also apparently in response to provisions in the omnibus bill about a basic expectation that companies, of all shapes and forms, should be able to back up environmental claims with real evidence. This, despite the fact that these reports already referenced the types of internationally recognized standards and frameworks that the greenwashing legislation calls for, not to mention the fact that some of them are referenced in the companies’ regulatory filings – meaning they were already subject to securities regulators’ basic expectation of accuracy and completeness.
A month later and the sustainability reports are still nowhere to be found, but the Pathways website is back. And it is worth noting what has changed.
Where once there were claims about the companies working together to reduce their absolute emissions by 22 million tons (Mt) annually by 2030, and to net-zero by 2050, there is now a statement that Pathways is “focused on advancing environmental innovation and pursuing emissions efficiencies from our oil sands operations”. This indicates a renewed focus on emissions intensity – to reduce the amount of carbon per barrel of oil produced – rather than on the absolute emissions reductions that they had previously promised. In any case, even after many years of work in this area, only very modest gains in emissions intensity have been achieved – and oil sands’ absolute emissions have grown 142% since 2005.
What of their huge, world-leading carbon capture and storage (CCS) network, that they often stated they were working at pace to set up – and that would achieve around half of their 2030 22 Mt target? All that has been replaced by language indicating this proposed project is still at a relatively early negotiation stage: “We’re working with governments to ensure the appropriate fiscal support and regulatory approvals that will be necessary to make this project a reality.”
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It remains to be seen how and where Pathways will launch its next public advertising campaign, if it chooses to launch one at all. For now though, its slimmed-down website is, in our view, a more accurate depiction of the nature of the work that Pathways does, and the extent of its role as an organization. At Pembina, we have always supported the stated goals of the Pathways initiative, but have also tried to draw attention to the fact that Pathways never had the ability to act meaningfully on emissions reductions. It is not an oil sands operator hence it cannot file regulatory applications; it does not hold the “purse strings” nor have shareholders to steward to, hence cannot make final investment decisions. All Pathways could ever do is talk on behalf of the oil sands companies. As their new website shows, they don’t have much to say anymore – until, of course, some real action is taken to reduce oil sands emissions.
On that front, what has been missed in all the noise and furor of the last few weeks is the fact that Bill C-59 also contained the finalized provisions of the long-awaited federal investment tax credit on CCS projects. That is, of course, the very tax credit that Pathways and its members lobbied hard for and have spent the last couple of years saying was the missing piece of the puzzle they needed before they could reach final investment decisions on their projects. So, while less than a week after Bill C-59 was passed Shell announced their CCS project’s final investment decision, the Pathways Alliance and its member companies remained silent on theirs.
On the road to credible solutions for the sector, a very poor outcome would have been the industry taking this moment to withdraw from this conversation entirely. But given that we know Canadians and Albertans are interested in action – not just talk – on reducing emissions, we hope the new Pathways website won’t take up too much of the limelight. Public and government attention should instead be focused firmly on the real decision makers: the oil sands executives.
In a world that may soon be set to need much less oil, and with countries starting to make moves towards examining the carbon intensity of their energy imports, reducing emissions from our oil sands may shortly become an issue of market access, with clearly big implications for Alberta’s future economy. The stakes, in other words, could not be higher. Bill C-59 answered the executives’ questions on government support for their foundational carbon capture projects; they now have the information they have been asking for to move to final investment decisions. It’s time now for the member companies to let their actions do the talking.
MC Bouchard is the Pembina Institute’s oil and gas program director.
