CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada and the energy-rich province of Alberta are finding that nothing stains an oil supplier's environmental image, or emboldens its critics, like several hundred dead ducks.
With 500 waterfowl killed in oily wastewater at the country's largest oil sands plant this week, government and industry now face a new struggle to convince the world they are not just paying lip service to cleaning up operations.
The stakes are high as a new administration takes power next year in the United States -- Canada's biggest market -- amid growing environmental concern among Americans.
"A duck covered in oil -- it's the new symbol of the province of Alberta," said Keith Brownsey, a political scientist at Mount Royal College in Calgary.
The image, flashed on televisions and computer screens all week, oversimplifies the environmental impact of the huge oil sands development and ignores what's being done to lessen it.
"But it's still a symbol and will be used to great effect," Brownsey said. "And it represents more than that: I don't think the province or the oil industry understands the depth of feeling about environmental issues such as this. They just don't grasp it."
In some ways, Canada's oil industry is a victim of its own success in selling the United States on the oil sands as a safe, reliable alternative to crude imports from OPEC producers as U.S. drivers face ever-rising pump prices.
Companies are pouring more than $100 billion into oil sands projects to nearly triple output to 3 million barrels a day by 2015. But with that has come intense scrutiny from environment groups and politicians about the impact on air, land, water native communities.
Dead ducks put Canada oil sands impact into focus
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canada and the energy-rich province of Alberta are finding that nothing stains an oil supplier's environmental image, or emboldens its critics, like several hundred dead ducks.
With 500 waterfowl killed in oily wastewater at the country's largest oil sands plant this week, government and industry now face a new struggle to convince the world they are not just paying lip service to cleaning up operations.
The stakes are high as a new administration takes power next year in the United States -- Canada's biggest market -- amid growing environmental concern among Americans.
"A duck covered in oil -- it's the new symbol of the province of Alberta," said Keith Brownsey, a political scientist at Mount Royal College in Calgary.
The image, flashed on televisions and computer screens all week, oversimplifies the environmental impact of the huge oil sands development and ignores what's being done to lessen it.
"But it's still a symbol and will be used to great effect," Brownsey said. "And it represents more than that: I don't think the province or the oil industry understands the depth of feeling about environmental issues such as this. They just don't grasp it."
In some ways, Canada's oil industry is a victim of its own success in selling the United States on the oil sands as a safe, reliable alternative to crude imports from OPEC producers as U.S. drivers face ever-rising pump prices.
Companies are pouring more than $100 billion into oil sands projects to nearly triple output to 3 million barrels a day by 2015. But with that has come intense scrutiny from environment groups and politicians about the impact on air, land, water native communities.
