I think this article from the globe and mail this morning elaborates a bit on what you are saying mike

FROM 8BALL ON BQI SITE

The oil sands omerta

According to oil executives speaking at the World Heavy Oil Congress in Edmonton this week, a big challenge for the oil sands industry is to overcome adverse public perceptions of their work. To a man, the Canadian representatives speaking – including the chief executives of Suncor Energy Inc. and Nexen Inc. – referred to the need to do better in the PR battle, and emphasized that this was a priority.

It’s a fight that the companies aren’t winning, and it’s their own fault. While Canadian executives do a good job of showing up at events such as the WHOC, they don’t always answer the many questions their industry faces.

For example, on Monday The Globe and Mail reported that the federal government was about to announce new environmental legislation. Later that day, the new rules were released, indicating that all new oil sands plants must include carbon capture and storage technology from 2012 – a major policy shift that appears to make future oil sands development more expensive.

Despite the importance of this announcement, there has so far been no response from individual companies other than what reporters were able to collect at the WHOC – and even then the chief executives present largely refused to comment on the proposals, saying they hadn’t seen the details. (To be fair, they hadn’t, although they would have been able to read the Globe story.) But it is now Wednesday, and presumably the companies are now familiar with what the government intends. And yet, the only industry response has been from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the umbrella organization. (It said the targets and time frame set by the government are in question.)

 The oil sands companies, it seems, are happy to hide their light under CAPP’s bushel on one of the major federal issues they will face in coming years. Why aren’t the big oil sands companies standing up and saying, this is what the federal government’s move means, and this is what we think about it?

While there are many exceptions, a fair number of CEOs and senior executives of Calgary’s largest energy companies seem happy to limit their public appearances to annual meetings and quarterly conference calls, and restrict their contact with reporters to brief scrums. It doesn’t help them get their point of view across, and it doesn’t inform the public on the exciting things their companies are actually trying to do.

Yes, these are busy men. But it appears that they are too afraid to become associated with any negatives connected with oil sands development. That fear is preventing the message that companies want to put across – that they are responsible corporate citizens doing necessary economic development.