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It has been a very challenging past few years for Canadian oil sands producers and their investors. Even Canadian officials are having a rather difficult time defending the expansion of the country’s oil resources against what I like to call the Hollywood environmentalists.

In my opinion, introducing punitive environmental legislation will do little to appease those looking for the total abolition of production from Canada’s oil sands. This is not to say that nothing should be done, because there is clearly a lot of room for improving our environmental track record.

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But there is also a positive to take away from all the green opposition to oil sands development and the resulting delays in the infrastructure build out: It’s spawning potentially creative solutions for improving the oil sands environmental footprint.

Some of the potential solutions were highlighted this past Friday at the Calgary CFA Society’s Western Energy Summit, where a number of excellent speakers touched on oil and gas fundamentals and electricity, as well as equity and venture capital investing in the sector.