Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image – Page 107

Brad Wall urges Obama to ‘swiftly’ approve Keystone pipeline – by Josh Wingrove (Globe and Mail – January 18, 2013)

January 18, 2013

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Edmonton — Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is urging President Barack Obama to “swiftly” approve the Keystone XL pipeline project, issuing a letter signed by 10 state governors – but not Alberta’s premier.

Mr. Wall calls the energy relationship between Canada and the U.S. “vital to the future of both our countries.” He urges Mr. Obama, who will be formally inaugurated for his second term this weekend, to approve the proposed pipeline to create jobs while recognizing the governors’ and premiers’ commitment to “responsible stewardship” of the environment.

“Mr. President, we consider the Keystone XL pipeline fundamentally important to the future economic prosperity of both the United States and Canada,” Mr. Wall wrote. “We strongly urge you to issue a Presidential Permit and act swiftly to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.”

There are notable omissions among the letter’s signees, however. Those include Alberta Premier Alison Redford, a long-time advocate for the pipeline, and Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, whose state has raised some of the most acute environmental concerns about the pipeline project.

The project would carry oil from Alberta, into Saskatchewan, through six U.S. states and down to the Gulf Coast. The signees on Mr. Wall’s letter include the governors from four of the six states Keystone XL would cross: South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

First nations’ growing voice pressures resource sector – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – January 17, 2013)

January 17, 2013

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

OTTAWA — Canada’s energy and mining companies are facing new challenges from first nations that are demanding the right to approve all resource projects on traditional territories and to participate in the revenues.

Saskatchewan Regional Chief Perry Bellegarde on Wednesday called on governments not to approve leases or other exploration rights unless companies can demonstrate they have properly consulted local aboriginal communities. He said resource companies should bring first nations into their planning at the earliest possible stages, and be prepared to treat them as full partners in development.

“We have to be involved in the economy – fully and no longer marginalized,” Mr. Bellegarde said. “Because if we keep talking about self-determination as indigenous peoples, that’s got to be linked to self-sufficiency.”

Spurred by “Idle No More” protests, many of the country’s chiefs met last week with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who committed to work more closely with them on treaty rights and economic development.

Chief Bellegarde is the lead spokesman for the Assembly of First Nations on treaty rights, and his comments echo demands from chiefs and protesters alike that aboriginal people must be given greater control over their traditional territory.

Provinces need to be at negotiating table with natives – by Martin Papillon (Toronto Star – January 17, 2013)

January 17, 2013

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Martin Papillon is an associate professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa.

So, they met . . . and promise to talk more. Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent last Friday afternoon discussing treaty rights, land claims and economic development with Assembly of First Nations representatives.

The problem is, despite the good will of those involved, we know the impact of these high level discussions will be limited. The reason is quite simple: Real substantive change in the relationship between First Nations and Canada will have to involve provincial governments.

Provinces, not the federal government, are responsible for the management of public lands, natural resources, education, health care and many other key policy areas at the core of First Nations demands. This won’t be easy. First Nations, many of whom have signed treaties with the Crown, are reluctant to engage in formal relations with provinces.

Treaties, they argue, established a nation-to-nation relationship with the Crown in Right of Canada, not the provinces. From their standpoint, provincial engagement is a denial of their unique status and a step toward assimilation into the broader framework of Canadian citizenship.

Alberta should learn from Norway on managing oil – by Bruce Campbell (Toronto Star – January 17, 2013)

January 17, 2013

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Bruce Campbell is executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His study, The Petro-Path Not Taken: Comparing Norway with Canada and Alberta’s Management of Petroleum Wealth, is available on the CCPA website: http://policyalternatives.ca

Momentum is building across Canada on the need to develop a sustainable national energy strategy. On this front, Canada and Alberta, its main petro-province, have much to learn from another major petroleum-producing and exporting country, Norway.

Canada and Norway are advanced industrialized countries with highly developed political, bureaucratic and economic institutions.

Norway and Alberta have similar population size, similar production profiles, and similar levels of dependence on petroleum exports and government petro-revenues. During my recent trip to Norway, I found they have taken very different paths, and with very different outcomes.

In Norway, there was from the outset, a societal consensus that the government should play the dominant role in the petroleum industry, both as owner and regulator. The Norwegian government owns 80 per cent of petroleum production, and retains roughly 85 per cent of the net petroleum revenues mainly through a 78-per-cent company tax and through direct access mechanisms.

How science is showing the oil patch the way – by Shawn McCarthy and Carrie Tait – (Globe and Mail – January 16, 2013)

January 16, 2013

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

OTTAWA and CALGARY — Moments before Rick George, who led Suncor Energy Inc. for 20 years, was named Canadian Energy Person of the Year in October, 2011, he declared himself “mad keen about technology” in the oil sands industry.

His words were a hip twist on a mantra he, along with his peers around the globe, have long supported: that technological advancements will ease some of the most environmentally challenging issues facing the energy industry, such as eliminating tailings ponds and reducing water use.

And new engineering techniques are about more than greening the energy industry. Teams are constantly experimenting, trying to find new ways to get more oil and gas out of the ground. Hydraulic fracturing, which revived depleted oil and gas fields across North America, as well as made new ones viable, stands out as a prime example in the past five years. Fracking is now as well known as old-school jack pumps, albeit more controversial.

That’s the catch with technology. It is a slow process, and not everyone wants development in the energy sector to flourish. But until alternatives become widespread, the energy industry will continue to rethink its techniques, looking for technological breakthroughs – big and small.

Here are some technologies in use and ideas scientists, engineers, geologists, and executives are working on, in hopes the faith and enthusiasm for technology they share with Mr. George proves fruitful.

Suncor leads attack over Kinder Morgan pipeline prices – by Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – January 16, 2013)

January 16, 2013

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

CALGARY — A corporate spat has erupted in the race to carry oil to the British Columbia coast, as energy producers accuse a U.S. pipeline company of trying to charge exorbitant prices to ship crude.

The attack is being led by Suncor Energy Inc., the country’s largest oil company, and is aimed at the Canadian unit of Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc., which is seeking approval for a $5.4-billion expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline. The Kinder project would allow for the shipment of another 890,000 barrels a day between Edmonton and Burnaby, B.C., where it connects to a dock that stands to be an important outlet for Canadian oil to find new buyers in California and Asia.

Major oil companies are eager to ship to the coast to take advantage of higher prices on world markets than they can get by shipping to refineries in the U.S. Midwest and Southeast. But some of them are balking at the price – known in the industry as tolls – which they argue would allow Kinder Morgan to earn returns on the project that are far above its historical 7 to 12 per cent.

“The average projected [return on equity] would be approximately 28.3 per cent,” wrote Greg Matwichuk, an Alberta chartered accountant who provided evidence on behalf of Suncor to the National Energy Board. That, he added, “is significantly greater than returns earned by other pipelines in Canada.”

The dispute about tolls, which is set to burst into greater view when a public hearing begins Feb. 13, is a window into the high-stakes game under way for Canadian companies fighting to get oil to Pacific Coast as quickly as possible.

Canada’s energy juggernaut hits a native roadblock – by Linada McQuaig (Toronto Star – January 15, 2013)

January 15, 2013

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Those who believe we can freely trash the environment in our quest to make ourselves richer suffer from a serious delusion — a delusion that doesn’t appear to afflict aboriginal people.

Aboriginals tend to live in harmony with Mother Earth. Their approach has long baffled and irritated Canada’s white establishment, which regards it as a needless impediment to unbridled economic growth.

Nowhere is this irritation more palpable than inside Stephen Harper’s government, with its fierce determination to turn Canada into an “energy superpower,” regardless of the environmental consequences. So it’s hardly surprising that the Harper government has ended up in a confrontation with Canada’s First Nations.

Certainly the prime minister has shown a ruthlessness in pursuing his goal of energy superpowerdom. He has gutted long-standing Canadian laws protecting the environment, ramming changes through Parliament last December as part of his controversial omnibus bill. He has thumbed his nose at global efforts to tackle climate change, revoking Canada’s commitment to Kyoto.

And he’s launched a series of witch-hunt audits of environmental groups that dared to challenge the rampant development of Alberta’s oilsands — one of the world’s biggest sources of climate-changing emissions — as well as plans for pipelines through environmentally sensitive areas.

First Nations leaders, Idle No More activists warn peaceful protests could turn into months-long blockades this spring – by Kathryn Blaze Carlson (National Post – January 15, 2013)

January 15, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

First Nations leaders and Idle No More activists have promised only peaceful protests on their national day of action Wednesday, but once the snow melts and warmer weather sets in, key highways — including the main road to Alberta’s Fort McMurray, a major oil production hub — could be blocked for days, weeks or even months, prompting what one chief called “chaos.”

These latest threats of economic upheaval come at a fragile moment in First Nations-Crown relations, especially now that National Chief Shawn Atleo announced on Monday that a regional chief will take over his duties while he takes a “brief” doctor-ordered stress leave.

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam said that while there are no plans to shut down Highway 63, the only all-weather road to Fort McMurray, on Wednesday, the government should expect a months-long summer blockade if it does not repeal or amend its recently passed omnibus budget bill that made changes to the Indian Act and the Navigable Waterways Act.

“If we’re going to shut down that highway, we’re going to shut it down completely — and not just for one day,” he said, warning that “every major highway across the country” would fall to a similar fate. “It’s escalated to a point where people’s frustrations are beginning to run out, and when people’s frustrations run out, things happen.”

In Southern Ontario, Grand Chief Gordon Peters of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians warned that Wednesday’s planned disruption along Highway 401 near Windsor is just a taste of what could come if the Harper government does not acquiesce.

The oil sands’ benefits – by David A. McLellan (National Post – January 15, 2013)

January 15, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Great jobs with environmental issues that are being dealt with

From an economic perspective, Canada currently stands out among its OECD peers. On a relative basis, we have not looked this strong in more than a generation, although it is by no means a given that we will retain this superior economic performance, with so many obstacles facing our historical trading partners.

It will be imperative to capitalize on our natural resource assets in particular, by developing and commercializing advanced technologies to facilitate their development in more economic and environmentally responsible way.

Consider that there is an irrefutable positive correlation between standard of living and energy consumption, proofed by an examination of current global petroleum consumption. The International Energy Agency reported that in 2011, Canadian per-capita annual consumption of petroleum was 24.6 barrels; the U.S. figure was 21.8 barrels, while the Chinese figure was just 2.7 and the Indian figure was a paltry one barrel. It is not unreasonable to assume that the populations of China, India and much of the developing world would be striving to achieve a Western style standard-of-living.

It may be unreasonable to think they will get there soon, given their numerous challenges, but suppose they do get to a point where their per-capita consumption of petroleum rises to a level about one-third of North America’s.

‘We are businessmen’: First Nations entrepreneurs far from idle – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – January 12, 2013)

January 12, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

The Idle No More movement presents one face of Canada’s First Nations: combative, frustrated with government, impoverished, opposed to resource projects while claiming entitlement to revenue sharing.

Aboriginal entrepreneurs such as Wilf Lalonde present the other face. He’s a Cree from northern Alberta who sees big opportunities to work in and profit from oil and gas and other resource projects, and strives to make First Nations self-sufficient.

It’s a side of First Nations that gets little notice next to the constant stream of grievances and the anti-development tough talk. But it’s alive and pushing to make room for itself, fighting tensions between First Nations about how to deal with the extraction of resources on traditional lands and over who gets to benefit, and struggling to find funding and to convince the corporate community that aboriginals have the capacity and the resolve to deliver.

Mr. Lalonde wouldn’t comment on Idle No More, saying it’s political and he is no politician. He’s taking a different path to prosperity.

“We are businessmen,” Mr. Lalonde, a member of the Driftpile First Nation near Slave Lake, said in an interview in Calgary this week, where the group of aboriginal companies he leads, as yet unnamed, has set up an office to be close to energy company headquarters, bid for contracts and act as the go-to-guys for skilled and unskilled aboriginal labour.

With pipelines under attack, railways lead race to move oil – by Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – January 12, 2013)

January 12, 2013

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

CALGARY — Russ Girling is prepared to accept that he is, for now, losing.

Pipelines built by companies such as Mr. Girling’s TransCanada Corp. carry the vast majority of the crude oil shipped around North America. This year, however, nearly 10 per cent of the volume of oil pulled from the ground in the U.S. will not flow through that massive network of buried steel. It will instead be loaded on to trains and race across the continent in a blur of tanker cars that is transforming the way North America’s energy moves.

It is a giddy procession of profit, as trains connect western oil wells to coastal and global markets willing to pay far more for crude than the inland buyers attached to the continent’s pipeline system.

It’s also a procession of risk. Though accidents remain infrequent, trains leak hazardous materials more frequently than pipelines, have a higher accidental death rate and produce greater emissions. But they are succeeding where pipelines are stumbling.

Across North America, planned pipelines are running into an outpouring of public discontent largely around environmental concerns, allowing locomotives to increasingly step in as an alternative. In 2008, fewer than 20,000 barrels a day of crude oil moved on trains in the U.S. By the end of 2012, that number had jumped above 500,000 – a more than 25-fold increase in five years.

Petronas taps TransCanada for pipeline – by Kelly Cryderman and Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – January 10, 2013)

January 10, 2013

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

CALGARY — Buttressing Canada’s position in the global race to export liquefied natural gas, TransCanada Corp. announced Wednesday that it plans to build a $5-billion pipeline to transport B.C. shale gas to the West Coast and onward to lucrative Asian markets.

The deal will see TransCanada build and operate a link to deliver natural gas to Lelu Island near Prince Rupert where Progress Energy Canada Ltd. – now a subsidiary of Malaysian state-owned firm Petronas – plans to build the massive Pacific Northwest LNG export facility.

The announcement shores up national efforts to catch up and compete with established LNG export projects in Australia and the Middle East, and will help Canada take advantage of strong natural gas prices in Asian markets versus depressed levels in North America.

“It’s a huge opportunity for Canada. But to capture that opportunity, we need to compete on a global basis,” TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer Russ Girling said in an interview Wednesday.

Keystone XL pipeline gets boost from Nebraska report, but real fight remains – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – January 5, 2013)

January 8, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

The countdown over the fate of the Keystone XL oil pipeline — the new and improved version — has begun. A report from Nebraska Friday found TransCanada Corp.’s proposed re-route of its Canada-to-United States line avoids many sensitive ecological regions in the state and generally paints a positive picture of the proposal.

The 2,000-page report from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is one of four big hurdles facing the Canadian project on the road to a presidential permit — and the next three could be more politically charged as the debate picks up where it left off before the U.S. presidential election.

The other three are: a final recommendation by Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, to the U.S. government in the next 30 days; a supplemental environmental impact statement by the Department of State, under the new leadership of John Kerry, that will incorporate Mr. Heineman’s recommendation; and a national interest determination by the president, expected to be handed down after the first quarter.

Environmental organizations, Keystone’s dogged opponents, are planning to make the most of it. They are ramping up to defeat the project as part of a bigger climate change agenda, which they hope will regain prominence during Barack Obama’s second term as president. Indeed, they are framing the pipeline as one the most important environmental decision facing his administration.

The energy sector will secure Canada’s future – by Daniel Lang (National Post – January 7, 2013)

January 7, 2013

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Senator Daniel Lang represents Yukon and serves on the Energy, Environment and National Resources Committee and on the Standing Committee on National Security and Defence.

The National Post’s editorial board recently highlighted the need to explore new avenues for getting Canadian oil to market. I agree. In the Senate, we have been considering a recent report on Canada’s energy sector — Now or Never, Canada Must Act Urgently to Seize its Place in the New Energy World Order. It is important that all Canadians understand how vital our energy reserves are to the economy, and the challenges that lie ahead for us.

The energy sector plays a vital role in keeping Canada strong, free and prosperous. It employs over half-a-million Canadians and contributed a staggering $94-billion to our country’s exports in 2010. It also contributed $35-billion in taxes and royalties in 2008 to various levels of government. With oil production set to double by 2030, these contributions to our tax base and our living standards will prove crucial to all Canadians. I stress all Canadians. Even provinces without abundant oil resources will share in the wealth through transfer payments.

The energy sector is the largest private-sector employer in Canada. Young Canadians need to be introduced to the opportunities in the energy sector as they plan their careers. Moreover, these opportunities must also be accessible to all Canadians, including aboriginal youth, 400,000 of whom will be eligible for the workplace between 2012 and 2020.

Energy industry slams Matt Damon fracking film as Hollywood fiction – by Kelly Cryderman and Carrie Tait (Globe and Mail – January 4, 2013)

January 4, 2013

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Calgary — A blend of engineering and geology hardly makes for a Hollywood blockbuster. But the latest movie about hydraulic fracturing – yes, there’s more than one out there – has an A-lister taking shots at the controversial practise.

The film – Promised Land , co-written and starring Matt Damon – opens Friday, but the energy industry’s supporters are already fuming over how they have been painted as the bad guy. The movie, they argue, is full of scare-mongering rather than facts. And they say Hollywood has done just the same: made judgment calls without having all the necessary information.

Hollywood has used its broad reach to try to persuade the masses before. James Cameron’s Avatar was interpreted by some as a potshot against the oil-sands industry. Documentaries such as Thank You for Smoking chastized tobacco companies and their lobbyists, and Super Size Me went after fast food businesses. Gasland , released in 2010, criticized natural gas players and famously showed someone lighting tap water on fire. The energy industry, experts say, must battle Promised Land or risk losing ground in the fracking debate. The audience for Promised Land , after all, is full of folks who have not spent years figuring out how guar gum and water can be mixed together to shatter previously impenetrable rocks.

“There’s a lot of misinformation in any story,” Deborah Thompson, principal of communications and executive consultancy DT Communications, said. “It doesn’t matter if it is as contentious as this, in any story for any company, regardless of whatever industry they are in, you have to correct misinformation. While that doesn’t sound terribly Hollywood sexy, that’s what you have to do.”