If Kyoto is ratified before the leaders of Canada's 10 provinces and three territories have a chance to discuss the issue at a special meeting, "Alberta will consider all of its legal and constitutional options," Premier Ralph Klein said, adding it may also devise unspecified "policy options."

"Ratifying the Kyoto protocol now would be like signing a mortgage for a property you've never seen at a price you've never discussed," Klein told a news conference. "We still don't know how much Kyoto will cost, how it will be implemented and what roles the different provinces will play."

In an open letter to Chretien this week, Klein said the federal government has not lived up to earlier promises of "meaningful and open" consultation on the issue.

Chretien told the Earth Summit in Johannesburg on Monday he would put Kyoto ratification to a vote in the House of Commons before the end of the year.

Under Kyoto, signed in 1997, Canada is committed to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, blamed for global warming, to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Burning of fossil fuels is a main source of greenhouse gases.

The move delighted environmentalists who had lamented Canada's foot-dragging on the issue, especially after its top trading partner, the United States, backed out of the accord.

OPENS OLD WOUNDS

But it reignited anger in Alberta, which equates the issue to Ottawa's protectionist National Energy Program in 1980, which set a ceiling price on domestic oil and sparked battles over which level of government controls natural resources.

The powerful oil industry stood behind Klein in saying the economic impact was still a mystery, and that ratification may be unconstitutional.

The industry is worried it will bear the brunt of emission-cutting costs, reducing its competitiveness and sending investment dollars to countries with no Kyoto commitments.

"We don't know what measures that Ottawa is thinking about, so we can't cost it and we can't determine its legality," said Pierre Alvarez, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the industry's main lobby group.

Federal Environment Minister David Anderson, pointing to polls he said showed most Albertans supported ratification, told reporters that Ottawa would continue consultations.

"I think they will find that things are not perhaps as described in the debate to try to prevent us from ratifying Kyoto," he said in a conference call from South Africa.

"If the prime minister ratifies Kyoto, then the debate will totally alter. It will be like the debates elsewhere in the world, where it has been (about) how to do it, cheaply and efficiently and with minimum or no impact on the economy."

In May, the government unveiled four possible ways of ratifying Kyoto without crippling the economy. Anderson said it was likely Ottawa would press ahead with the proposal that assumed Canada would be given credit under the scheme for clean energy exports to the United States.

The European Union hates this idea, pointing out that Washington walked away from the protocol last year.

Alberta Environment Minister Lorne Taylor stressed the province was concerned about global warming, but still favored a less-stringent "made-in-Canada" approach instead of Kyoto. He too said Ottawa was lax in its consultation.

Environmental groups blasted Alberta's position, saying it has tried to block Ottawa's response from the start.