Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has championed the industry’s concerns, explaining that the oilsands are important to the Canadian economy as well as energy security, but only represent a fraction of global emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Photograph by: Tyler Anderson/National Post , x

OTTAWA — The federal government asked the oil and gas industry last fall to review its foreign climate change policies, which were then approved by lobbyists as “an elegant” approach, reveals newly-released correspondence.

The government was consulting the industry about European climate change legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels, according to an email exchange between senior bureaucrats at Natural Resources Canada.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, an oil and gas industry lobby group, is opposed to the European Fuel Quality Directive legislation, because it believes it unfairly discriminates against bitumen, the heavy oil derived from the oilsands sector, which the government describes as the “fastest growing source of (greenhouse gas) emissions in Canada.”

“I talked to (CAPP president) David Collyer about the possible Canadian position on the FQD that we discussed — everyone in same basket, at same level, until they prove otherwise,” wrote Mark Corey, an assistant deputy minister at Natural Resources Canada, in an internal email sent on Oct. 14, 2011. “He said his initial impression was that he liked it, but would confer and call me back.”

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has championed the industry’s concerns, explaining that the oilsands are important to the Canadian economy as well as energy security, but only represent a fraction of global emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Corey wrote in the email, sent to his deputy minister, Serge Dupont, that Oliver’s position would be crafted with industry input, explaining that Collyer had also discussed the matter with the association’s vice-president of markets and oilsands, Greg Stringham.

“He said they liked the proposal a lot,” Corey wrote in the email, released through access to information legislation to Environmental Defence, a Toronto-based conservation group. “He termed it as an elegant solution that is worth pursuing.”

The email also said that Collyer would “quietly talk to a few more players,” and that another senior bureaucrat would then “write the position up so that it could be raised with the minister, if you are comfortable, as a possible position around which we could try to build support.”

Under pressure from Canadian lobbying, Europe recently agreed to perform an impact study, postponing its decision until 2013.

“Of course it’s regrettable that there’s a delay, we want to have this legislation in place as soon as possible,” the European Union’s ambassador to Canada, Matthias Brinkmann told reporters last week.

Brinkmann that the legislation was designed with a “science-based” approach to assess the climate footprint of fuels used for transportation and their feedstocks. Bitumen from the oilsands, which requires large amounts of energy, water and land in its production, ranked among the most polluting sources of fuel, based on a life-cycle analysis of its emissions.

But the European assessment ranked oil shale and coal converted to liquid fuel as more polluting sources of energy in its proposed legislation.

Travis Davies, a spokesman for CAPP, said it was normal for bureaucrats to consult with industry about information, and that this doesn’t “sugarcoat’ the fact that there is an environmental component to oil and gas production. He also said CAPP supports policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as long as they are science-based and reward transparency.