Alberta School of Business professor, Andrew Leach, says that at first read, the State Dept.’s Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement contains “a lot of good news” for Alberta. He notes that the report says that over the long terms, oil sands crude will look less-comparatively-dirty:

They find that, “it is likely that GHG intensity for future reference crude oils (i.e. alternatives to oilsands) will be trending upward while the GHG intensity for WCSB oil sands-derived crude oils will be relatively constant to slightly upward. If this is the case, the differential in life-cycle GHG emissions for fuels refined from these crude oils is likely to decrease.”  In other words, if you look ahead to the operational horizon of this project, other sources of crude will become more emissions intensive faster than oilsands.

You can read his full commentary on the report at his blog, Rescuing the Frog, here.