New War Breaks Out Over Canadian Oilsands
Bill Mann

PORT TOWNSEND, Wash. (MarketWatch) - A new war has broken out over oil - Canadian oil, that is. Even though Middle Eastern "conflict oil" is central to a new media carpet-bombing campaign being waged.

You may have seen the more, um, refined part of this battle: The new TV ad campaign currently being run by Exxon /quotes/zigman/203975/quotes/nls/xom XOM +1.22% touting its Kearl oilsands project in northern Alberta, scheduled to come online late next year.

The U.S. TV ads (seen on many newscasts) feature a low-key narrator, and footage of a leafy suburban neighborhood, school kids on a bus, and lab technicians pouring what vaguely resembles oil.

"America is facing some tough challenges right now, says the sober announcer. "Two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. North America actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. A large part of that is oil sands. This resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. At our Kearl oil sands project in Canada, we'll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils, and that's a huge breakthrough. That's good for our country's energy security and our economy."

Then, there's the new hardball approach, about as subtle as a punch in the mouth.

A former Canadian government official, 27-year-old conservative activist Alykhan Velshi - a distant relative of bald Canadian CNN money anchor, Ali Velshi - has just taken over and revamped a site called EthicalOil.org. Among the ads posted on the site: One showing a distraught woman in a hijab buried up to her waist. She's about to be stoned. Over the shocking photo is the label, "Conflct Oil."

Next to that: A photo of a smiling Melissa Blake, mayor of a Canadian town, the label above her reading, "Ethical Oil."

I believe that's what my college philosophy professor called "dichotomous thinking," but it IS effective.

The ads have also been posted on You Tube with info on making donations using PayPal.

Much of this media counterattack is aimed at the growing critics of Canada's oil sands, which many environmental groups call "tar sands", and which are becoming a principal source of oil for the United States. Canada is already the U.S.' largest energy provider.

Right after the Gulf oil spill, as we reported last summer, a San Francisco-based environmental group, Corporate Ethics International started a billboard and newspaper ad campaign in Canada, the United States and Europe discouraging tourism to Alberta and showing oil-stained birds in the Alberta oil patch.

Alberta premier Ed Stelmach, an oilsands booster who's leaving office this October, was furious and countered with his own media campaign stressing Alberta's efforts to clean up the oil patch.

There's a lot at stake in all this. According to Statistics Canada, Canada's oil and gas industry employs 500,000 Canadians, directly and indirectly. Energy and oil are the engines of the Canadian economy, and Americans need this Canadian oil to fuel their own engines.

Says Velshi, himself a Muslim (albeit one born and raised in Toronto) "When Americans are thinking about the oilsands, they shouldn't be comparing the oilsands against some magical, plentiful, renewable, clean fuel that doesn't exist. Because at the end of the day when you fill up your gas tank, you're filling it up with an oil product."

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