"What is remarkable about this is how unremarkable it is, actually," Mr. Browning, vice-president of the Consumer Energy Alliance, said after touring the project's site, located off a dirt road about 200 kilometres south of Fort McMurray.

What he expected was a moonscape with monster trucks ravaging the land, toxic ponds, dead wildlife and trees, the prevailing image of the oil sands in Washington. What he found is a modest plant, staffed in part by aboriginals, including steam generators and oil storage tanks, a log house, wellheads and pipes.

Overall, the installations cover about 5% of the company's lease and are surrounded by wilderness.

They are typical of projects using Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD), a technology developed at the University of Calgary that will be used to extract 80% of the bitumen in the deposits, unless even less invasive methods prove successful.

While it's true there are large open pit mines in the region, the future of the oil sands is in SAGD, and "this environmental footprint is no bigger than that of a methanol plant in Chile," Mr. Browning said. "It's not the bogeyman I thought it was going to be."

Devon, based in Oklahoma City, is among a growing number of local oil-sands operators fighting back the "dirty oil" label by taking an "open book" approach to the business that involves encouraging opinion makers to visit their projects.

As the only U. S.-based independent with active oil-sands operations in Canada, "we need to get into the debate," said Devon spokesman Chip Minty.

While a novel strategy for the usually tight-lipped industry, it could give the environmental movement some p. r. problems of its own, considering its portrayal of the oil sands as disaster that involves cutting down large swaths of Canada's forest, depleting rivers and causing global warming is wildly exaggerated.

Some of Devon's counterpoints: the company uses only saline water drawn from local aquifers to produce steam to mobilize the bitumen, and recycles 90% of it; SAGD is an efficient way to extract bitumen because it yields more than 1,000 barrels per well, rather than 40 for the typical Alberta well; the company wants to integrate carbon capture technology as soon as it can to minimize greenhouse gas emissions; it is bound by its permits to revert the land to its natural state.

Devon is a significant oil sands developer. Its Jackfish project will eventually produce 100,000 barrels a day from three phases.

Mr. Browning said the environmental movement has been successful in swaying policymakers and in shaping U. S. public opinion. He points to policies under development such as the low carbon fuel standard in California and a federal proposal to ban oil from the oil sands in federal vehicles.

Having seen the deposits up close, and heard about mitigation measures, Mr. Browning said he's comfortable urging his members, including U. S. truckers, airlines and chemical plants that have been adversely impacted by high oil prices, to support the oil sands.

"We'd like to see growth of this industry," he said. "Our motto is we want it all. We want oil and gas, we want new technologies, we want conservation, we want a robust renewables fuels program, and we want energy produced here in North America, where it's secure and safe."