Read this article by Mitchell Anderson at The Tyee about an interview with Rolf Wiborg, a principal engineer for the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. Excerpt: “I never figured out why such a resource-rich nation would let foreign companies come in and take most of the profits.” (August 22, 2012)
Read more: http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/08/22/Rolf-Wiborg/
Gordon Gibson used to be Liberal until he fell in with those proponents of consensual slavery, The Fraser Institute. While I find myself in great sorrow saying this, Gibson has become a all out capitalist suck.
Witness his article today on the op-ed page of the Globe and Mailas he talks about David Black’s idiotic plan to build a $13 billion oil refinery near Kitimat.
The Gibson I knew would never have allowed this Gibson to utter such tripe.
Gordon waxes lyrical about this “project”, uncritically accepting the numbers put out by Black’s flacks (neat little rhymer, don’t you think?)
Here’s paragraph 2:
The startling development is a proposal; for a $13 billion oil refinery… that would provide 6000 construction jobs for five years and 3000 direct jobs thereafter, as well as thousands of service soon-offs. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenues be generated annually. In effect, our resources would have value added here instead if China. No government could ignore that kind of opportunity”.
This is precisely what Black’s flacks said.
Gordon, had I made such a statement in the Legislature when you were a member of the opposition, you would have eaten me alive. You would have demanded to know what research developed these figures.
The thing that separates a journalist from a flack is the search for proof of statements made. You take these numbers as a given – what the hell has happened to you? Your column today should have been a paid advertisement for David Black.
You go on to say:
“On the environment side, there idea would vastly reduce concerns about tanker accidents. No longer would the floating behemoths be carrying heavy bitumen. Instead the cargo would be diesel, gasoline our jet fuel which evaporate quickly after a spill. Environmentalists should be overjoyed.“
The Exxon Valdez didn’t carry bitumen.
As to environmentalists being overjoyed – let me explain things to you, Gordie.
I can only speak for myself though I believe that most of your despised environmentalists would agree on these points.
I’m not against development per se although like Jeff Rubin in his recent best seller The End Of Growth, I believe that we had better get rid of the notion that we must always develop or fall far behind. There are limits, this pipeline and tanker traffic being just that.
What I’m against is this entire exercise, on environmental grounds.
Pay attention, Gord:
1. Spills from the pipeline are not risks but certainties. Enbridge admits that.
2. Spills from tankers are inevitable – I know of no one whom would say different. And even diesel, gasoline and jet fuels do colossal damage, especially to fish, birds and other wildlife.
3. And here, take off your Fraser Institute dark glasses, for this is the crunch –
We are talking about 1100 kms. through two mountain ranges and the Great Bear Rain Forest – all areas unreachable by clean-up equipment. Even if they could be reached, the Kalamazoo horror teaches us that if nothing else, bitumen spills can not be cleaned except by cosmetic efforts like putting turf over the bitumen to make it look OK for awhile.
Moreover we’re talking about a company, Enbridge, that averages more than a spill per week. Moreover, because these spills cannot be cleaned up, we’re talking ongoing piling of one disaster upon another – a serial environmental crime.
Is it unreasonable to stand 100% against a project that will do this permanent damage – despite all efforts to avoid it and clean it up if they don’t?
The tendency is to demand compromise and mitigation (a despicable weasel word) but what is there to compromise? It’s rather like striking a happy balance between life and death.
As a piece of journalism your article is a piece of shit.
As an act of the Fraser Institute kissing the ass of environmental despoilers, it is a masterpiece worthy of being in the public relations hall of fame.
Erratum: Gordon Gibson is no longer associated with the Fraser Institute.
In this piece, the first of a series of three, we explore why a National Energy Program is political suicide, yet something called a National Energy Strategy is all the rage.
Decades ago Canadians were treated to a strategy that involved the oil and gas industry called the National Energy Program – its implications still resonate today. The program entailed Canada getting its fair share of the abundant natural resource wealth while establishing Petro-Canada as a vertically integrated, well to pump, crown corporation and an integral component of the industry. At no point did this move represent nationalizing the industry, as most of the world’s industry is, but instead simply aimed to have Alberta’s resource bounty diversified throughout the nation, while working in conjunction with private industry and its major players. What James Laxer explains as a “Canadianization” of the industry.
Through price controls that kept domestic consumption affordable and taxation on exports, which filled coffers in Ottawa by targeting foreign-owned players in the Canadian oil and gas patch, the federal government was able to offer a wide array of attractive incentives designed solely to encourage the upstart, growth and stability of wholly owned Canadian firms, while at the same time developing the public crown corporation to serve Canadian domestic needs and Interests.
This allowed for a threefold approach which involved: limiting the excessive dominance of foreign oil majors, creating “Oil independence” from the international – OPEC led – market, and encouraging development of private Canadian owned oil companies while nationalizing some of the benefits in an effort to facilitate a strong Canadian stake in the game, important operational inroads into the industry, and a handle on its reserves and future direction.
Since Harper’s regime was installed by the oil giants operating in Canada, a much diminished and demonized Petro-Canada was quietly privatized for a song (marking the single largest share divesture in history). Five years later, in what was billed as a bid to bolster Canadian Nationalism, Suncor, the Tarsands behemoth, sucked up Petro-Canada in a merger that saw share prices rise once again, a reoccurring event after the public divesture of the remaining 45 million plus shares. The 2004 dumping of Petro-Canada marked the end of reasonable policy making in the oil and gas patch and the final victory for an unbridled global corporate free-for-all.
Under the NEP of old, foreign operators such as CNOOC would not be anywhere near the Tar Sands control-and-command centre, let alone slowly becoming a dominant player. Instead, they would have a place in developing the resource and exporting it but that would come at a significant cost in the form of export taxes going directly to Ottawa, something domestic companies could avoid. Moreover, had we still run with NEP-style policies, domestic prices would be capped and Canadians would enjoy both a secured supply into the future, eastward flowing supply lines (limiting our reliance on imports) and affordable petroleum products, while at the same time encouraging wholly owned and private Canadian companies to be at the very center of the growing industry, with the resulting fiscal rewards remaining within our borders and in the pockets of Canadians.
That is the fundamental difference between a National Energy Program stickhandled in Ottawa on behalf of Canadians and a National Energy Strategy stickhandled by oil majors on behalf of Global Corporate interests and executed by our politicians. Fundamentally speaking, the NEP goal was a fully integrated domestic industry shielded from the whims of the global market place, while a National Energy Strategy is the exact opposite. It is instead fully integrated with the global markets and largely owned and operated by foreign interests. One offers the people of Canada an integral role, adequate returns and a myriad of perks, while the other is a complete capitulation to some of the most powerful forces on earth in lieu of governments standing down and implementing the strategy drafted in corporate board rooms and rolled out by the EPIC corporate “think tank” (the secretive group of energy and political power-brokers previously detailed in these pages).
It is not difficult to comprehend the stark contrasts between the two approaches and why the rhetoric resulting from them is drastically different. When governments implement policies such as the NEP of old, people will benefit in the form of stronger public budgets, greater control over the resource and its extraction processes and policies, secure energy supplies into the future and a greater share of the pie, not to mention perks like affordable petroleum by-products and a much reduced price at the pump.
By contrast, the policies being ushered in by EPIC and its compliant politicians result in the mirror opposite. A reduction in our ability to protect the environment and a gutting of processes designed to uphold Canadian values. Exposure to globalized petroleum markets resulting in high prices at home, little control over the development and export of the resources and royalty regimes that cater to multi-national interests as Canadians are left exposed to the whims of market volatility. And, of course, there is the over all socializing of losses, costs and environmental impacts, as well as, a privatization and off-shoring of the wealth that is generated while governments are left to file deficits and increase debt.
The “benefit” to Canadians accrues to the very few plugged into the higher levels of the petroleum industry, their lackies and those lucky enough to obtain the few high paying “jobs.” In the final instance of jobs it seems those lucky few will in fact be American service men and veterans as apparently the talent pool in Canada does not exist, even with the swelling unemployment lines resulting from the 500,000 manufacturing jobs shed during Harper’s oily regime.
These fundamental underpinnings are never raised in the corporate media. Instead we are treated to a now decades-old demonizing of the NEP and similar policies while celebrating a new “National Energy Strategy” which is designed to fleece Canadians as illustrated above. Our mainstream media and politicians are only too happy to dish up an array of ridiculous rhetoric which amounts to hollow grandstanding and politicking while avoiding the real issues Canadians care about, all the while paving the way for the aggressive globalization of the agenda.
This is done through the implementation of the National Energy Strategy which has seen its most pivotal times occur during the height of the Summer vacation season in Kanaskis and again this summer on the east coast, in a less than transparent bid to keep the protests at bay and the implications under wraps.
With these fundamental points established, I will continue explore the details of the new National Energy Strategy offered up by EPIC and dutifully carried out by Canadian politicians on behalf of the corporations interested in transitioning Canada into an Energy Superpower in the remaining two pieces of this three-part series.
Read this story from the Vancouver Sun on evidence that despite his feigned commitment to “listen to science” on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, Prime Minster Stephen Harper has “disembowelled” the science budget for the pipeline review. (Aug. 20, 2012)
VANCOUVER – While Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the fate of Enbridge’s proposed pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to tankers on the British Columbia coast will be based on science and not politics, documents show some of that science isn’t forthcoming.
And critics say there is no time for the science to be completed before a federal deadline for the environmental assessment currently underway.
Documents filed with the National Energy Board show the environmental review panel studying the Northern Gateway project asked Fisheries and Oceans Canada for risk assessments for the bodies of water the proposed pipeline will cross. The pipeline is to traverse nearly 1,000 streams and rivers in the upper Fraser, Skeena and Kitimat watersheds.
The department didn’t have them.
“As DFO has not conducted a complete review of all proposed crossings, we are unable to submit a comprehensive list as requested; however, this work will continue and, should the project be approved, our review will continue into the regulatory permitting phase,” DFO wrote in a five-page letter dated June 6, 2012.
The response went on to say there “may be differences of opinion” between the company and the department on the risk posed by the pipeline at some crossings. It provided two examples of crossings of tributaries to the Kitimat River where Enbridge rated the risk as low but Fisheries rated it medium to high.
DFO said the federal ministry will continue to work with the company to determine the risk level and level of mitigation required.
“DFO is of the view that the risk posed by the project to fish and fish habitat can be managed through appropriate mitigation and compensation measures,” said the department’s response.
“Under the current regulatory regime, DFO will ensure that prior to any regulatory approvals, the appropriate mitigation measures to protect fish and fish habitat will be based on the final risk assessment rating that will be determined by DFO.”
Earlier this month, Harper told reporters in Vancouver that “decisions on these kinds of projects are made through an independent evaluation conducted by scientists into the economic costs and risks that are associated with the project, and that’s how we conduct our business.”
He went on to say “the only way that government can handle controversial projects of this manner is to ensure that things are evaluated on an independent basis, scientifically, and not simply on political criteria.”
But the federal government recently sent letters to 92 habitat staff members within Fisheries and Oceans in B.C., telling them that their positions will be cut. Thirty-two of them will be laid off outright.
The cuts will mean the department in B.C. has half the habitat staff it had a decade ago.
All but five of the province’s fisheries field offices will be cut as part of a $79 million — 5.8 per cent — cut to the department’s operational budget, including the offices in Prince George and Smithers that would have had the lead in monitoring pipeline effects.
The marine contaminant group that would have been involved in a spill in B.C. has been disbanded and the fisheries and environmental legislation gutted, said Otto Langer, a retired fisheries department scientist.
“He (Harper) says the science will make the decision. Well he’s basically disembowelled the science,” said Langer. “It’s a cruel hoax that they’re pulling over on the public.”
Former federal Liberal fisheries minister David Anderson agrees.
Read this article by Lauren Krugel in the Calgary Herald about a dozen significant oil and gas leases in the central Mackenzie area. (August 12, 2012) “(Chief Wilfred) McNeely said some residents are concerned about how much water would be drawn from the Mackenzie River for the fracking process, in which producers inject water, sand and chemicals into the rock at high pressure in order free the oil and gas. He said some have also expressed concern over chemicals contaminating the river.”
During nearly three decades of fruitless negotiating, the political leaders of the international community have failed to find an effective way to price carbon dioxide emissions and thereby ameliorate global warming and climate change. But simple causality guarantees that we will pay a carbon tax, even if we don’t have an official one. So a carbon tax is levied and collected by nature, usually inequitably and sometimes very cruelly.
In anticipation of this rising tax, the cities of Toronto and Halifax have already instituted expensive “adaptation” strategies to accommodate an increase in street flooding, storm water runoff, sewer backups, heat-related illness and storm emergencies.
Vancouver is the latest city to consider costly preventative measures that should reduce the astronomical costs associated with more active weather. The city is still stinging from a 2006 windstorm that left 250,000 people without electricity and required infrastructure repairs of $10 million. Then a 2010 rainfall flooded many homes, which resulted in lawsuits against the city. Said Sadhu Johnson, the deputy city manager, “The key for us is to be proactive. It will save us billions in the next century” (The Vancouver Sun, July 21/12).
And how much will it cost Vancouver to be “proactive”? Just the risk assessment studies for coastal flooding, urban forest management and fresh water challenges could be $1.3 million. The “adaptation” strategy is expected to cost $84 million for the years 2012 to 2014. All these re-engineering costs can be attributed to global warming. “The climate is clearly changing,” concludes Vancouver’s study, “and, in many instances, we are observing changes at the most extreme end of the projections made a decade ago.”
And what are the expected changes? Wetter winters with a 28 percent increase in “extremely wet days” by 2050. Heavy rainfall events that occurred every 25 years will occur every 10 years. Summers will get correspondingly dryer. Temperature increases will average 1.7°C by 2050 and 2.7°C by 2080. “Extreme heat events” that occurred every 25 years will occur every 8 years. Sea level rise, difficult to predict because of so many variables, could be from 1 metre to 2 metres by 2100, a change that could cause havoc with drainage systems, wharfs, buildings, roads, waterfront facilities and low-lying residential areas.
Although inland cities do not have to contend with rising sea levels, they often have to contend with flooding rivers, and may be subjected to more extreme weather because of their continental location — Manitoba recently spent $1 billion on dikes and flood management. So multiply Vancouver’s initial “proactive” costs by the number of other cities in Canada to get a vague estimate of the hidden carbon taxes that will either be payed in prevention or repairs. Then add the rest of North America’s cities and those of the world. “Adaptation” is a term describing people’s efforts to make the best of a bad situation. Call these costs a carbon tax.
Other carbon taxes are more severe. The four people who died in BC’s Johnsons Landing mudslide on July 12, 2012, were just a few of those paying a heavy carbon tax. Unusually heavy winter snowfall and torrential rains during warm summer weather created the conditions that brought down a mountainside on their idyllic homes in the Kootenays. But floods in China, Thailand, Brazil, France, Poland, Japan, India, Australia and the Philippines in the last two years have exacted a much heavier toll.
The floods in Pakistan in 2010 drowned thousands, submerged one-fifth the country and displaced 20 million people. These floods were followed by record high temperatures of 53.5°C. Saudi Arabia had temperatures exceeding 47°C in 2010, and Mecca had rain this summer when the city was sweltering at 42.8°C — the highest temperature at which rain has ever been recorded. Russia had 172 casualties from extreme rainfall on July 7th. Britain ended an extraordinary spring drought with incessant rain. A drought is presently parching much of the US corn belt, more damage to add to the $5 billion that Texas recently lost to drought.
Climate change deserves so much attention because the impacts are pervasive and fundamental, affecting almost everything related to our security and prosperity. The science of this process is indisputably clear. More than 40 different supercomputer models consistently predict nearly identical weather outcomes for rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, confirming repeatedly that the extreme weather events we have been experiencing in recent months and years are wholly consistent with the new reality we are inflicting upon ourselves. Much of this damage can be counted as carbon tax.
This tax cannot be negotiated or postponed. It is levied in accordance with the laws of physics. A rise of a single degree in temperature increases humidity by 8 percent. Humidity over oceans has already increased by 5 percent. More humid air coupled with higher temperatures transfers greater amounts of energy into storm systems and causes more extreme weather. More heat means more evaporation. Climate science requires that increasing amounts of evaporated moisture must eventually come down as precipitation. For some places, this means more droughts; for other places, this means more floods. The distribution is not based on any human notion of fairness. Nonetheless, it is a carbon tax, duly levied and dispassionately collected. Our own version would likely be less painful and more equitable — if ever the international community should find the foresight to implement one.
Read this story from the Huffington Post on the shrinking profit margins from Canada’s oil and gas sector and how that could be a sign of things to come. (July 25, 2012)
The talk coming out of Canada’s oil patch in recent months has been increasingly tinged with panic. Industry leaders are growing worried about the oil sands’ future prospects, and the earnings reports coming out this week are a good sign of why that may be.
Oil producer Cenovus on Wednesday reported a 40-per-cent decline in profit in the latest quarter, falling to $396 million from $655 million a year earlier.
Things were even worse for Calgary-based natural gas producer Encana, which recorded a whopping quarterly $1.48 billion loss. It had recorded a profit of $383 million in the same period a year earlier.
(And Canada’s largest energy producer — Suncor — said on Wednesday it’s mulling delaying some of its new projects. The company denied market conditions were behind the move, saying only that the company is “looking at how we get the best economics for those projects.”)
On the surface, the reason for this is obvious: Declining energy prices. Natural gas prices are at rock bottom, and prices for oil have been under downward pressure as the world economy faces a tough summer thanks to Europe’s credit crisis and a slowdown in China.
But beneath the surface is a rapidly-changing global energy industry. With the U.S. rapidly developing its shale oil and gas deposits, Asia increasingly looking to renewable energy, and the controversy over the environmental impact of the oil sands showing no signs abating, Canada’s energy exporters could find themselves in a seemingly unthinkable situation: Lots of oil, and few markets to sell it.
All this is happening just as Canada’s dependence on energy exports has been reaching new heights. As the Globe and Mail reported, oil and gas sales, as well investment in oil sands infrastructure, accounted for one-third of Canada’s economic growth in 2010 and 2011.
So what happens to Canada when energy and commodity prices go down? One thing that happens is it becomes cheaper to tank up your car. But at a certain point, as prices come down, the benefit to Canada of lower gas bills and cheaper commodities is overtaken by the cost to the economy of lost exports.
“If oil prices get to a point where they are going to deter investment in the [energy] sector, the negatives outweigh the benefits,” TD Bank economist Diana Petramala told the Globe.
That scenario — unthinkable just a few years ago — may be exactly what Canada’s natural resource sector may be facing. And it’s not just a temporary blip in prices Canada is facing — it may be a permanent and revolutionary shift in energy extraction that makes Canada’s oil sands far less desirable than they seemed until now.
One thing threatening Canada’s energy sector is the new American oil and gas boom. With new extraction techniques like hydraulic fracturing coming online, U.S. energy companies are busily starting to drill on domestic soil again. The oil industry in Texas is booming in a way it hasn’t in more than three decades, and plenty of other, less expected, places are becoming oil meccas. Meanwhile, new supplies of natural gas have pushed prices for the energy source down to near-record levels.
This boom is already having tangible effects on Canada’s oil industry. Insiders estimate that Canadian exporters, unable to export to markets other than the U.S., are facing a $15 per barrel discount on the oil they sell, when compared to international Brent crude prices.
But it’s not just supply and demand that’s cutting into Canadian energy profits — it’s Canada’s lacklustre response to the world’s concerns about oil sands carbon pollution.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/07/25/canada-oil-gas-shrinking-profits_n_1702807.html
Check out this interview from Aug. 15 on Vancouver Co-op Radio’s “Discussion”, with host Charles Boylan. Guest Damien Gillis and Boylan cover a wide range of topics relating to energy and the future of the BC and Canadian economy. The pair discuss the myriad alternatives popping up of late to the embattled Enbridge pipeline, including Kinder Morgan’s planned twinning of its Trans Mountain Pipeline to Vancouver, and shipping bitumen by rail. They also cover natural gas development in northern BC – including controversial hydraulic fracturing and the building of a new pipeline to carry this gas to Kitimat and covert it to Liquified Natural Gas to sell in Asian markets – plus an alternative economic vision for BC that doesn’t depend on becoming a major fossil fuel corridor to the world. (Aug. 15 – 1 hr)
One must, I suppose, take newspaper tycoon David Black’s offer to build a refinery near Kitimat seriously, although the idea is preposterous on several fronts.
For openers, he doesn’t tell us who will be behind such a refinery. He admits he doesn’t have the money – an important matter.
Of course, Mr. Black tosses out employment as jelly bean for us to enjoy, citing 6,000 jobs over the six year construction period and 3,000 long-term in the operation of the refinery. He doesn’t mention any research on this issue – one must take these numbers with the skepticism which always rightly greets announcements of undertakings like this.
Mr. Black ignores the fundamental issues here.
He ignores the certainty that the pipeline will continue to have spills of bitumen – Enbridge averages one per week – and BC will watch as its wilderness is incrementally destroyed.
It’s interesting to note that Mr. Black doesn’t deny the dangers from oil tankers but allays our fears by saying that because refined oil and gasoline will be replacing bitumen, that our worries are over!
What also is puzzling is the timing of this announcement.
Mr. Black is a self-made billionaire who admits that he knows bugger all about refineries. This suggests that he has some backers in the oil business who are a bit shy about having their pictures in the papers.
Wasn’t the deal that the main customers were Chinese who want the raw bitumen to refine themselves?
Was this idea from David Black? If it means anything at all it must be a diversion to focus on jobs! Jobs!
The announcement attracted attention – but when one reads it, it’s a damp squid.
In my view, the public will have no trouble seeing this proposition for what it is – environmentally unacceptable and as not only no improvement on the Enbridge proposal but, on analysis, worse.
Mr. Black should stick to publishing newspapers.
Read this story from the Vancouver Sun on BC media mogul David Black’s proposal to build a $13 Billion refinery in Kitimat to process Alberta bitumen from the Enbridge pipeline. (Aug 17, 2012)
VANCOUVER – B.C. community newspaper tycoon David Black proposed today building a $13-billion oil refinery near Kitimat to use all of the crude from Enbridge’s controversial Northern Gateway pipeline.
It would mean tankers would ship refined fuels like gasoline off of B.C. northwest coast, not heavy oil from Alberta, reducing environmental risks, says Black.
A refinery also promises 10 times as many jobs as an export pipeline.
See more David Black photos here
Black is hoping his proposal will change opposition from British Columbians and first nations, many of which have rejected the $6-billion project because they say the economic rewards for B.C. are not great enough to offset the risk and consequence of an oil spill on the pipeline or off the northwest coast of British Columbia.
Last month, B.C. Premier Christy Clark also declared the province would not even consider the Northern Gateway project unless it gets a much greater share of the economic benefits.