Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Personal tools
Sections
You are here: Home Breaking news Canada welcomes delay of EU oil sands decision

Canada welcomes delay of EU oil sands decision

23 February 2012, 18:22 CET
— filed under: , , ,

(OTTAWA) - Canada's resources minister said Thursday he is "pleased" that a key EU decision on whether to label oil from Canada's tar sands as highly polluting was postponed to June after European talks ended in stalemate.

"We understand the European Union Fuel Quality Committee today did not approve the implementing measures for their fuel quality directive," Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said in a statement.

"We are pleased to see that many EU countries are opposed to this discriminatory measure."

The issue has whipped up a controversy with Canada, believed to be sitting on the world's third largest oil reserves thanks to tar sands in Alberta whose extraction environmentalists say will wreck the climate.

Canada threatened to lodge a World Trade Organization complaint against the European Union if experts from the EU's 27 member countries meeting in a special committee voted to deem oil from tar sands as harmful for the environment.

"The committee failed to give an opinion, there was no qualified majority for or against," said European Commission spokesman Isaac Valero Ladron.

The question will now go to environment ministers who meet in June, he said.


Document Actions