Ottawa, ON — Greg McLean, Conservative Shadow Minister for Natural Resources, and Kyle Seeback, Conservative Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change, released the following statement in response to the NDP-Liberal government leaving the primary decarbonization strategy for Canada’s oil and gas sector out of the budget:
“Canada’s oil and gas sector produces 26 per cent of Canada’s overall emissions. One of the most effective tools used today to significantly decarbonize the sector is permanently locking liquified CO2 into the rock formations of spent oil wells.
“The NDP-Liberal government has banned this hugely important method from its new Carbon Capture tax credit. All because this process, called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), results in some oil production from the bottom of the wells.
“A carbon capture tax credit including enhanced oil recovery would have brought jobs and investment to Canada, but more importantly, it would have benefited our environment and global emissions.
“The Minister of Finance had a chance in this budget to make a difference and put ‘all tools on the table’ to help address greenhouse gas reduction. Unfortunately, the NDP-Liberal budget left out decarbonizing our energy production and they have allowed activist ideology to replace climate action.
“If the NDP-Liberal government means what they say about lowering emissions, then it makes no sense they are blocking the most useful tool we have to help lower emissions and produce the energy the world needs at the lowest possible emissions intensity.
“Despite the Minister of Natural Resources telling the International Energy Agency that Canada would implement a ‘regime to capture carbon’, this is yet another false commitment, and the Minister’s talk about ‘putting all tools on the table’ is just mere words in the air.
“Our international partners in addressing climate change will be disappointed. Those who care about tackling climate change here at home will be disappointed. And our engineers and environmental scientists will be disappointed.
“The NDP-Liberal government has shown that they are not serious about using all methods available to reduce Canada’s, and the world’s carbon footprint. The NDP-Liberal government have let everyone down by allowing ideology to interfere with real action and solutions for climate change.”
