With the multisided debate concerning greenhouse gas, the environment, and energy production, much of the language boils down to a “for or against” scenario. Even more depressing are the labels “clean” and “dirty” recently applied to alternative and conventional forms of power generation, respectively.

Unfortunately, many would-be saviors (of the earth) remain ill-informed on the exact parameters involved in producing the world’s mobility — for this case, the upstream sector of the oil and gas energy.

On May 5 a luncheon was held at Houston’s Hotel Za Za celebrating the renewal of the Bilateral Partnership for Business Growth and Cooperation between Houston, Texas, and Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The main message of the event was Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier’s urge for energy centers like Houston and Calgary to become leaders in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Bronconnier said, “Cities like ours have the most to lose and the most to gain.”

More salient points included the fact that, “The biggest user of solar power in Alberta is actually the petroleum industry, with solar panels providing power to even the most remote facilities,” Bronconnier said.

In addition, Bronconnier discussed Canada’s oilsands — the largest confirmed deposits of oil outside of Saudi Arabia. It is true; a barrel of oil from the oil sands produces about 15 to 20% more greenhouse gases than light conventional crude. One-fifth of the reserves require mining; new methods are being used to meet Alberta’s environmental goals such as transporting through pipelines instead of trucks to further reduce emissions as well as using hot air injection to allow for oil extraction.

Carbon sequestration is another area where Alberta’s oil and gas industry is providing environmental stewardship. Calgary-based EnCana Corp. currently has the largest
CO2 sequestration project in the world in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, about 50 miles (80 km) north of the US-Canada border on the eastern boundary of Montana.

The CO2 is pumped from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota and injected to an oil field. “Oil production at the site has improved by 60% and one oil field alone has the capacity to store up to 30 million metric tons of CO2,” Bronconnier said. This number would be equivalent to taking almost 7 million cars off the road for a year. Based on EnCana’s experience at Weyburn, scientists estimate that 10,000 billion metric tons of CO2 could potentially be kept out of the atmosphere if the technology were applied on a worldwide scale. “That’s like 425 years’ worth of global greenhouse gas emissions,” Bronconnier added.

So what is the bottom line? The oil and gas industry (along with coal) will remain a primary source of power for world economies for many generations to come. To label them as “dirty,” thereby discrediting the industry’s vast improvements in efficiency and sustainability within the past 150 years, is a mistake and results in less-than-productive perception on behalf of politicians, private citizens, and stake holders.

Where the environmental movement is concerned, oil and gas companies seem to be in opposition, although in reality, these companies actively pursue and develop solutions on a regular basis. Rhetoric should be asserted that reflects these positive attributes of the oil and gas industry, both upstream and downstream.

Renewable energy will play a role in providing a sustainable future. These methods are not yet scalable and contrary to popular belief will not subdue carbon intensive resources in the near future. Rather than define wind and solar as “clean” alternatives to “dirty” conventional resources, it might better suit to redefine “alternative” forms of energy as “supplemental.”