Experts say Sask. premier's COP28 comments on oil and gas industry need fact checking
CBC
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe spent much of COP28, the international climate change conference, touting oil production in Saskatchewan and Canada, but experts say not all of his claims are accurate.
Moe posted a one-and-a-half minute video on X, formerly known as Twitter, from Dubai Friday morning. As of Monday evening, it had nearly 70,000 views.
In it, he claimed "Canada has the safest and the most reliable as well as the most environmentally sustainable oil production that you can find on earth."
Emily Eaton, the department head of geography and environmental studies at the University of Regina, told CBC's Morning Edition that's "very far from the truth."
"If it's definitely not one of the safest supplies in the world, and there's many different aspects to that and many different research reports that show that the claims that the government is making are simply not adding up in the field," she said.
She also said that while Canada touts its regulations, they're not well enforced or are based on self-reporting.
Eaton also contested other claims Moe made, including that "if all of the oil producing countries in the world adopted environmental regulations similar to what we have in Saskatchewan, greenhouse gas emissions from oil production globally would be cut by more than 25 per cent overnight."
A similar claim is posted on the Sustainable Saskatchewan website, though it states emissions from oil production would be cut by "almost a quarter."
In an email, the government said that claim draws from a 2018 research paper.
Eaton said those claims are false and draw from an erroneous Canadian Press article about the research paper. The news article was corrected in April 2023.
She said the research article actually states that Norway's regulations — if applied globally — could achieve 25 per cent lower emissions from oil production.
"That paper also calculated that Canada has the fourth most carbon-intensive oil on the planet, behind only Algeria, Venezuela and Cameroon," Eaton said.
As part of his social media post from Dubai, Moe said the federal government is trying to "shut down our oil and gas industry by kneecapping it with even more emissions regulations."
The cap and trade system, announced last week, is intended to cut upstream emissions by about 20 per cent by 2030.