EU fuel legislation has Canada worried

A member of the European Parliament is in Montreal today to calm Canada’s fears about the European Union’s new fuel legislation. The legislation would rate fuels based on how energy intensive their extraction is.

With tar sands oil rated as almost 20 percent more energy intensive than conventional oil, it has made Canada nervous. While Canada does not currently sell to the EU, the Keystone XL pipeline project could provide a route by which Canada could sell to the EU in the future.

Canada says that the new legislation discriminates against Canadian oil and questions its scientific validity.  Both the government and the Canadian oil industry have been keeping busy the past two years by lobbying against the new legislation.

The EU hopes to drastically reduce carbon emissions by 2020 and says that the legislation has been put in place in order to achieve that goal. The EU representative said that if a Canadian company could come up with reliable data, the EU would be willing to change the tar sands oil rating.  The EU’s member states will begin to debate the legislation’s approval on December 2.