Low Carbon Fuel Standard – Air Resources Board Meeting

This document contains a transcript of the testimony heard by the California Air Resources Board on the proposed low carbon fuel standard.

Among the presenters were Rick Hyndman (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers – see page 142), Marc LePage (Consul General – see page 147), and Christopher Holly (Alberta Energy – see page 199).

The close relationship between the oil industry and the Alberta government is hinted at when Rick Hyndman refers to the as “my colleagues in the Alberta government.”

There is also a very interesting discussion among the Board Members, beginning on page 314. In response to the Canadians’ concerns, Deputy Executive Officer Scheible said “Well, I think it’s basically a challenge. I mean, we’ve heard testimony and gotten input how they are going to develop this resource, responsibly and caputre the emissions, get the emission low. And basically we’ve set up a program where [we] say make it as clean as the conventional basket of petroleum and it comes into the program, but you have to show how you do that. That’s not a plan on paper to investigate carbon capture and sequestration. That’s a plan that’s demonstrated and have it working,” (p. 315).

He goes on to say “unless they take extraordinary efforts to extract that very carefully and minimize the carbon emissions, that it will be a high-carbon source of petroleum, and we will have actually more carbon in our transportation system if we use that here rather than less,” (p. 317).