A recent proposal by Suncor Energy addresses environmental concerns and has gained the support of activists, but at least one other energy company has stated that they will not follow suit and do the same. Suncor has proposed leaving some of the oilsand reserves in place when these resources are too difficult or expensive to produce, and this would reduce both the costs involved and the carbon emissions produced. A request to the Alberta government to let Suncor strand some of the oilsands resources that they have access to has been confirmed by company CEO Steve Williams. Williams explained during a conference call that “We are advocating in a modest way to work with government so that we can strand some of the oil in the oilsands.”

The Suncor Energy proposal will address some environmental concerns, and change how the company does business. According to Williams “Our regulation is written so that we take to a very high percentage the last piece of oil out. That tends to be the most expensive both economically and environmentally. What we would like to do is leave that last piece in (the ground). I’m very optimistic we are making some breakthroughs with government to do that.” Clean energy think tank Pembina Institute researcher Simon Dyer explained that “We would agree that Alberta’s historic focus on maximizing oilsands production … rather than optimizing production on the highest quality ore may be having unnecessary environmental impacts on things like greenhouse gas intensity and tailings production and lowering returns to Albertans as the owners of the resource.”