New threats on the horizon, at least for oilsands producers who may have dodged the royalty bullet (for now):

Canadian oil sands producers should brace for further bad news - this time from south of the border, as the U.S. government moves toward a national climate change policy that could target dirtier fossil fuels such as the oil sands bitumen, a former U.S. energy official said yesterday.

His warning was issued yesterday at a conference on Canada as an energy superpower, and came as a new poll suggests Canadians want to protect the country's natural resources from voracious U.S. demand for energy.

David Pumphrey, a former official in the Department of Energy and now a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said that prominent U.S. environmental groups have identified the oil sands as "threat No. 1" in North America's growing battle against greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course everyone wants a clean environment; however in the light of the possibility that the planet may be at peak energy production we must also think about where future energy supplies will be coming from.