Mr. Speaker, Friday marked a historic day for environmental and energy sustainability. The first barrel of oil flowed from Imperial Oil's new Kearl oil sands facility near Fort McMurray.
What makes this really historic is that Kearl produces a barrel of oil from the oil sands at a comparable greenhouse gas emission level to refineries producing conventional oil in the U.S. That is right. In fact, studies show that Kearl oil has a GHG level below that of California's heavy oil.
High-tech innovation is greening our oil sands. Kearl is Imperial Oil's finest achievement to date and its largest at $30 billion, showing that energy, the economy and the environment can work together to benefit all Canadians.
This is just one of the amazing innovative environmental achievements that our world-leading energy companies are using as they unlock our oil sands potential.