Yes! A setback for the Oil Patch, finally.

A Federal Court justice has put Imperial Oil’s Kearl tar sands project on hold, ordering the company to explain how it concluded that intensity-based targets will reduce the potentially damaging effects of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions to a level of insignificance.

Justice Daniele Tremblay-Lamer obviously wasn’t impressed with Esso’s hogwash. From The Edmonton Journal:

“The evidence shows that intensity-based targets place limits on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of bitumen produced. The absolute amount of greenhouse gas pollution from oil sands development will continue to rise under intensity-based targets because of the planned increase in total production of bitumen. The [environmental assessment] panel dismissed as insignificant the greenhouse gas emissions without any rationale as to why the intensity-based mitigation would be effective to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to 800,000 passenger vehicles, to a level of insignificance.”

Counsel representing the environmentalist groups who opposed Imperial were more than pleased with the result:

It sends a clear message that environmental assessments must be open, honest and transparent, said Sean Nixon, a lawyer for Ecojustice, formerly called the Sierra Legal Defence Fund.

Ecojustice represented the Pembina Institute, the Sierra Club of Canada, the Prairie Acid Rain Coalition and the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta.

“It will be interesting to see if the panel can explain in a rational way how intensity-based measures can lessen the impact of greenhouse gas emissions,” Nixon said.