The past year was a tumultuous one for oil sands developments in northern Alberta. The global economic crisis initially left proposed oil sands developments reeling, but this was followed by consistent and signi cant signs of recovery. New projects were started, stalled projects were restarted, and the oil sands became attractive for foreign investors including those from China and South Korea. The US Presidential administration publicly acknowledged the importance of the Canadian oil sands to US energy security, and as concerns mounted about declining conventional oil reserves, Alberta’s access to the world’s second largest recoverable oil reserve became a more important aspect of the global energy story. At the same time, the oil sands were subjected to growing environmental attack. Environmental organizations including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Rainforest Action Network and the Pembina Institute crusaded globally against the oil sands, drawing attention to their carbon footprint, water consumption, and impact on Aboriginal communities and Canada’s boreal forest. The tailings ponds associated with oil sands mining became the industry’s most visible and notorious symbol as the proponents of oil sands development competed with the brutal effectiveness of photos showing vast mining sites and dying ducks. Through conventional media and, more importantly, through re-posting on the growing number of environmental websites, news of anti-oil sands protests or research reports spread faster and farther than did defences of the oil sands from industry or government. The bene ts of the oil sands to Canada’s economy and North American energy security were certainly covered in the media, but proponents of development were clearly on the defensive throughout most of the year.
In short, the oil sands became a major and complex media story, one with important implications for their development and indeed for the North American energy mix. The Canada West Foundation tracked this story from May 2009 to April 2010 through monthly Oil Sands Media Monitor reports (All monthly reports are available for download at www.cwf.ca/V2/cnt/ oil_sands) that examined how Alberta’s oil sands were being portrayed in the Canadian, international and Internet media. Blackened Reputation pulls together those twelve reports and identi es broad patterns in media coverage that may have been obscured by inevitable monthly variations in the previous reports.