1 – Does Alberta Have the Legal Authority To Block Oil Shipments to British Columbia?
As explained in the video below, ALL oil and gas products in Alberta used to be COMPLETELY controlled by the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission (APMC) which still exists today. There has been no legal impediments to that process put in place since the APMC was formed in 1973, so yes the Province of Alberta can legally block petroleum shipments to BC.
2 – Would Albertans and Alberta Companies Support Blocking Oil Shipments to British Columbia?
The current Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline debacle agonizingly demonstrates that even medium scale infrastructure projects are easily stalemated in Canada. This has scared away vast sums of foreign direct investment as investors look for easier, more reliable places to put their money. This is a crisis and it appears Read more…
UPDATE: Sept 14 2018 – We just added new TMX articles you will find interesting: How Big Is The Pipe In The Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion? How Big Are the Oil Tankers Heading to BC To Take Oil From Trans Mountain Pipeline? Are Oil Tanker Spills Getting Worse? Spill Statistics Read more…
Many people, and politicians (which are also people 🙂 ) have suggested that Alberta cut off the oil supply to British Colombia in an effort to punish the BC Premier, John Horgan. While that is one possibility, there are other things that can be done.
Some options are reasonable, some are draconian and some of them are just not possible.
Here are most of the options available to Alberta:
Block BC Workers – This is possible but not likely:
it would be very disruptive to business as the two provinces have a largely integrated work force
it would annoy BC workers, many of which are in the oil sector, and they are some of Alberta’s biggest boosters in BC so it would be counterproductive to send them home .
Not Buy Electricity From BC – This is doable and in fact has already started
Should the Province of Alberta buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline from Kinder-Morgan if they want to walk away from the project? That question was posed to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley today and she responded with an emphatic ‘Yes!’.
It has become abundantly clear, whether you are for or opposed to this particular pipeline or not, that having the relatively simple twinning of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline fail to be built would signify the end of even medium scale infrastructure projects in Canada.
There will always be interest groups and affected people that have some legitimate claim against a large project. The standard for projects should not be keeping everyone happy. The standard for infrastructure projects MUST be if they are in the national interest. That national interest contains a giant list important factors including:
In general terms the issue is that with low oil prices, oil companies see better places in the world to put their money than Canada. Oil & Gas “activists” will initially claim a victory here because they have had some impact on making it difficult to get Canadian Oil and Gas to both international and domestic markets.
Last week the NDP Alberta Government introduced yet another budget without any cuts in it. Instead they are relying on growth to balance the budget by 2023 leaving us with colossal debt of about $96B.
Both the previous Liberal and current NDP governments in British Columbia have been on similar spending sprees and while certainly not as deep, BC has had many similar economic problems to Alberta in recent years. Think about BC’s primary industries (Oil collapse, softwood lumber disutes…). However, in February 2018 their NDP Finance minister announced:
“Government’s direct operating debt is projected to be eliminated in 2018-19, one year earlier than forecast. This will be the first time government has been direct operating debt-free in over 40 years.”
There has been much talk in the recent decade about banning disposable plastic bags. The basic argument is that consumer grade disposable single use plastic bags are the root cause widespread environmental damage but have ready alternatives, so why are will still using them?
As is often the case with political issues, there is no simple answer to the question “Should single use plastic bags be banned?”. Below are some of the facts and you can decide for yourself if this is a crisis or not:
ARGUMENTS AGAINST SINGLE USE PLASTIC BAGS
Australian scientists found that 90% of seabirds had plastic in their digestive tract
85% of ‘ocean garbage’ is plastic
In March of 2018, Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna claimed that there is the equivalent of one full dump truck load of plastic materials being dumped in the ocean every minute of every day
Plastic bags are made from non-renewable material
Single use plastic bags account cost about $.04 each to buy new and it is estimated the clean up cost is about $.15 per bag, resulting in a total cost to the consumer of more than $80 per year (more…)
Dr David Maenz, author of the new book ‘The Price of Carbon’, explains that blocking Canadian and US pipelines will simply push the supply to a different part of the world. If Americans and Canadians produce and transport our own oil & gas, those projects will need rigorous environmental validations. Read more…
Please note that www.PartisianIssues.com is trying to stay out of Municipal politics. In Chestermere’s case specifically, we know that the new Council will make mistakes but that those mistakes will be well intentioned and not malicious.
Claim: Chestermere Is In Too Much of a Hurry To Handle Its Own CAO Search:
This is perhaps the strangest claim made in the article so we will deal with it first. Our original article made three fundamental points;
Lacombe will do their CAO search much faster than Chestermere
Lacombe will do their CAO search for somewhere between $100K and $200K less than Chestermere
Temporary staff, almost by their very definition, will not develop meaningful changes
The simple fact is that even though Lacombe started their CAO search after Chesteremere did, Lacombe has already hired a new CAO. Chestermere is still spending $27,000 on a person (who we are sure is a smart, qualified but temporary CAO) that has not made any notable changes to the city that any other CAO wouldn’t have done.
Beyond this we found it odd to imply that Lacombe isn’t in a hurry to get their CAO work done. Clearly this is inaccurate; Lacombe is done and Chestermere isn’t.
Dr David Maenz is interviewed on CBC Regina radio. The discussion is on climate change, his new book The Price of Carbon, and how the Saskatchewan Provincial government is handling the Canadian Federal Governments demand for a price on carbon.
Below is an 11 minute interview with Dr. David Maenz about his new book The Price of Carbon. Unlike all climate change books we have reviewed in the past, The Price Of Carbon is the first one to pull together the serious science of Global Warming from Earths formation until today, explain the three likely outcomes of Global Warming, and then detail the PRACTICAL solutions to the issue.
This book is definitely not a casual read but for the educated person that is still open to thinking about this critical issue, it will be an eye opener:
The Oil & Gas industry has more than its fair share of misinformation directed at it. This site is intended to expose and explore facts and so as part of our new series on the Oil & Gas industry we thought you would like a quick run down of some interesting facts:
LNG Does Not Burn: Companies compress Natural Gas into what is known as Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) it is much easier to move and store. However, one concern that is often heard relates to how dangerous LNG (think of an LNG tanker as a floating bomb or an LNG pipeline as scary torch), but LNG is safer than nearly any other petroleum product. It will not burn and if it spills it LNG will quickly clean itself up. LNG is incredibly safe. Watch this short fun video:
At the heart of the Canadian Federal Governments announcement today about fixing the process that determines if a large scale project is in the best interest of Canada or not, is a desire to limit ability Provincial, Municipal and interest groups (like ‘First Nations’) to stall approved projects. The idea is to:
increase consultation so everyone’s voice is heard
set firm and visible rules for industry so that “goal posts” are not being moved after the fact
determine what is in Canada’s best interest, when that interest is at odds with local interest
These are clearly admirable goals. To achieve those goals there are now going to be three structures that industry must pass through to get Federal Government support:
A new ‘Impact Assessment Agency of Canada‘ will do the preliminary investigation to determine the environmental effects of a project
The existing ‘National Energy Board’ is demoted and renamed ‘Canadian Energy Regulator‘ but still be responsible for determining the technicalities of a project
The ‘Federal Minister of the Environment‘ will have the final say if a project is viable and in Canada’s interest
So now the questions are, will these changes allow:
Industry to decide that spending many millions of dollars to go through an elongated approval process that will have a definitive outcome be worth while?
Provincial, Municipal and interest groups (like ‘First Nations’) to be heard and listened to?
There has been much debate over the process and all agree something big had to change:
When industry works on large scale projects deemed to be in the Canadian national interest after years of consultation and vetting that are still blocked by local and regional interests, there is a big problem.
When interest groups (i.e. some ‘First Nations’, Municipal governments (i.e. Vancouver) local and Provincial governments (i.e. BC) feel empowered to block large scale projects that adversely affect the rest of the country, there is an even bigger problem.
Dennis McConaghy, a former senior executive at Trans Canada Pipelines thinks these changes will not achieve the desired goals:
