Currently very little tar sands oil is flowing through UK petrol pumps. Yet few European citizens are aware that our governments are in the midst of free trade negotiations, known as CETA, that could significantly boost Europe’s involvement in the world’s most destructive project.
Luckily the EU is also in the process of passing the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD). This legislation could ensure tar sands are strongly discouraged from entering the EU because of their high carbon-intensity – an effective ban on increased imports of the dirty fuel. However, aggressive lobbying from the Canadian government and oil companies is aiming to block this move.
Valentine’s oil orgy from Starfish on Vimeo.
What is CETA?
The proposed Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) threatens to undermine stricter tar sands regulation in Canada and stronger climate policies in Europe. The deal could pave the way for increased tar sands oil imports into Europe and give dramatic new powers to Europe’s multinational oil companies. It could trample over Indigenous rights and undermine a range of social and environmental legislation on both sides of the Atlantic.
Perhaps most controversially, CETA includes an ‘investment chapter’ that would grant Canadian and European companies the right to sue governments when environmental policies interfere with their profits. Similar rules in NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) have already been used extensively by US firms to challenge environmental and resource-related policy in Canada. Canadian firms have also used these tools in other bilateral trade deals to attack environmental and mining-related decisions by foreign governments. Several EU-based oil companies including Shell, BP and Total already have major investments in the tar sands and would benefit from the proposed CETA investment rules. Under these rules, any attempt by a Canadian government to regulate the extent or pace of tar sands development by EU-based companies would be vulnerable to challenge.
Furthermore, Canada has been invoking CETA to argue that the Fuel Quality Directive, if passed to include tar sands, would be an illegal trade barrier. In order to protect the EU’s ability to make strong effective climate policy, CETA must include a clause that carves out the FQD and future EU climate legislation, so that it is protected from any such legal challenge.
Read more: Scott Sinclair from Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives explains how CETA could boost the tar sands industry and prevent future governments from enacting effective environmental legislation.
What is the Fuel Quality Directive?
The EU is negotiating a Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) with the aim of encouraging the use of low carbon transport fuels and discouraging the use of high-emission crude oil. It aims to reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions from road transport by 6% before 2020. A recent independent study carried out by Stanford University for the European Commission concluded that oil from tar sands leads to 23% higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional crude oil. Based on this research it has been suggested that the FQD be amended to label oil sourced from the tar sands as more polluting than conventional oil. With an explicit reference acknowledging tar sands as a high-emission fuel, the FQD would have the effect of closing off the European market to tar sands oil. Of most immediate concern to Canada is the precedent this would set for other important existing markets – such as US states. It could also have a ripple effect on preventing tar sands extraction in other parts of the world, such as Madagascar.
Unsurprisingly, the Canadian government, with the support of European oil companies, has been lobbying hard to prevent the EU discriminating between conventional oil and tar sands. Canada began by trying to call the science into disrepute, by insisting tar sands oil is no more polluting than conventional oil, and invoking the spectre of legal challenges for unfair discrimination under CETA and the WTO. Once the EU had secured a peer-reviewed study from Stanford University confirming the highly carbon-intensive nature of tar sands extraction, Canada switched tack. It is now stalling the FQD by claiming tar sands shouldn’t be singled out until every other source of possible transport fuel is measured for carbon-intensity – which could take years!
In the meantime, the decision over inclusion of tar sands – which has been approved by the EU Climate Commission – now has to go to member states for consultation. Currently the UK is supporting the Canadian position, and lobbying other member states to agree to an ‘alternative methodology’ which would not only further delay the process, but would be less effective at banning tar sands. It would be tragic if we allowed our own government to stand in the way of progressive climate legislation that would genuinely scupper the expansion of an industry which is devastating ecosystems, killing communities and contributing to climate change.
Read more: Oil sands imports could be banned under EU directive
Recent Action
- Emily cornered Norman Baker to ask why he refuses to support the FQD. His response was unhelpful, as usual.
- With our friends from South Coast Climate Camp, People and Planet, Lush, and Friends of the Earth Lewes, we targeted Norman Baker in his local constituency, complete with a roaming tar monster.
- Along with several other organisations we delivered an Avaaz petition containing 52,000 signatures to UK Minister for Transport Norman Baker, demanding the UK supports the inclusion of tar sands in the Fuel Quality Directive.
- We used International Stop the Tar Sands Day as an opportunity to call the UK government to account for bowing down to Canadian lobbying.
