Do Americans want "clean" oil from dirty regimes, such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, or do they want "dirty" oil from a clean regime such as Canada? That is Washington's multi-trillion-dollar question.
Scary..
Canada's oil sands operations are the world's biggest open-pit mining operations so they have become an easy target. Fortunately, Obama also understood that U. S. coal is a far worse issue, which is why he talked about both oil and coal in the same breath, along with conservation.
Scarier..
As of 2005, the United States consumed 25% of all the world's oil and its 1,522 coal-powered generation plants represented 30.1% of world coal production.
Negative publicity aside, the world needs oil in general and Canada's in particular for many years, so the goal is to clean up the impact as much as possible.
Equally important is the need for continental energy self-sufficiency as a long-term U. S. foreign policy and economic strategy.
Nightmare...
The new regime gets this and is promising to commit billions to help U. S. and Canadian companies devise technologies to capture and sequester emissions to free up greater use of oil sands and coal.