Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

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

In 2008, Kinder Morgan Canada added 75,000 barrels of capacity to its Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver at a cost of $750-million, which included 13 new pump stations, twinning the system through Jasper National Park in Alberta and Mount Robson Provincial Park in British Columbia.
 
It faced little opposition, completed its regulatory hearing within a week, and provided contracting and employment to the Aseniwuche Winewak and Simpcw First Nations and the Alberta Metis Zone IV community. When the project was completed, the Town of Jasper and the Village of Valemount thanked Kinder Morgan Canada for the opportunity.

Today, the company’s president, Ian Anderson, has cleared his deck and plans to dedicate the next five years of his career to a single goal — win support for and build a $5-billion expansion of the same pipeline, which has been in operation for 62 years. He is planning a campaign of unprecedented magnitude for his company, a unit of the Houston-based infrastructure giant, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners.

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

VICTORIA – During the past few months, the main front in the fight against development of the Alberta-based oil sands has moved to British Columbia. It’s a situation the westernmost province is uncomfortable with and an expansion it’s unmotivated to defend.

The aggressive push by the oil sands industry and the Alberta and federal governments to open a new market for Canadian oil through shipments from the West Coast has been met by equally forceful resistance starting at the AlbertaB.C. border.

Anger has escalated since the start of public hearings in January into the Northern Gateway pipeline, proposed by Calgary-based Enbridge Inc., interrupting years of friendly relations between the neighbouring provinces, particularly on energy development.

Indeed, condemnation of the pipeline through B.C.’s rugged north and its associated oil tanker traffic has erupted into the type of popular revolt that is becoming a B.C. mainstay – from the campaign against the harmonized sales tax to the fight to preserve the Great Bear Rainforest and the moratorium on oil tanker traffic and offshore drilling.

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

Joe Oliver, the federal Natural Resources Minister, will find a partner in Alberta’s newly re-elected Premier in his efforts to promote the oil sands at home and abroad, a strategy he said is beginning to show results in Europe and in the United States.

Alison Redford’s Conservatives held on to power by a wide margin in Monday’s provincial vote, fending off a threat from the upstart Wildrose party.

Ms. Redford is pushing for a Canadian energy strategy to promote a national dialogue to encourage co-operation on energy and plans to spend billions in oil sands research to ensure environmentally responsible development. “This election was about choice, a choice to put up walls or build bridges,” Ms. Redford told supporters Monday evening. “Tonight Alberta chose to build bridges.”

While the federal government doesn’t see the need for an energy strategy, Mr. Oliver said Canada has a huge opportunity to sell its oil to new markets looking for energy security, but it will take a sustained and broad communication effort to defend the unconventional resource and he expects Alberta’s Premier to do her part.

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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.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week.

For once the outcome of an Alberta election was completely unpredictable. Right up until the end the two leading contenders — Alison Redford’s PCs and Danielle Smith’s Wildrose party — were locked in a bitter battle for control of government. But one outcome was entirely predictable.

No matter which party won there would be no sudden changes when it came to oil sands development and all the risks and rewards that go with it, not just for Alberta but for the rest of Canada. The oil sands and energy policy in general were simply not on the election agenda.

Party leaders barely mentioned the oil sands; it wasn’t a big issue in the news media; at the public forums I attended not one person questioned candidates about oil sands policy. Official oil industry voices were noticeably silent for the entire campaign.

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

Albertans will know who their next premier will be Monday and the winner of the hotly contested provincial election between the Wildrose Party and the ruling Conservatives will have a big impact on the rest of Canada.

Both right-of-centre parties are well-liked by the province’s dominant oil-and-gas industry because of their favourable views of development, particularly of the oil sands.

But they project different styles, espouse different levels of government involvement and push different pet projects that have the potential to reshape Canada’s energy priorities.

If Danielle Smith’s Wildrose overthrows Alison Redford’s Conservative dynasty, as polls suggest, Canadians should expect a bolder approach by Alberta to develop and sell its energy riches. It will closely reflect that of Stephen Harper’s federal Conservative government.

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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 – TransCanada Corp. (TRP-T42.91—-%)plans a 32-kilometre detour – at no extra cost – for its long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline, and hopes the change will be sufficient to win approval from the U.S. State Department.

In a filing with the government of Nebraska, the Calgary-based pipeline company said the new route should allay concerns that the pipeline will threaten the state’s Sandhills region, considered a fragile environmental zone.

“The primary goal of the Nebraska reroute effort is to avoid the area defined by the [state’s Department of Environmental Quality] as the Sandhills region,” the report says.

In December, the Nebraska environment department provided TransCanada with a map that identified the extent of Sandhills region, saying the company needed to know what area to avoid.

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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.

Since the middle of the last century, the United States has been a net importer of oil (and not many years ago, it imported about two-thirds of its yearly consumption). The assumption of continued U.S. dependence on “foreign” oil provided one foundation stone for future Canadian prosperity. Canada, a self-described “energy superpower,” would always be able to send ever-larger quantities of oil to slake our neighbour’s insatiable thirst.

But what if the U.S. becomes an oil exporter, no longer needing anyone else’s oil? The change – or threat, if you prefer – for Canada would be immense. Indeed, it’s not too far-fetched to say that all the assumptions on which Canada has based its fossil-fuel industries can no longer be taken as axiomatically correct.

For the bitumen oil in Alberta, the future could be particularly murky. The oil resources there are immense, but finding markets for that oil might be very hard, indeed. Not only might the U.S. need less and less, but opposition to pipelines through British Columbia to ship oil to Asia is so intense that no guarantee exists they’ll be built for a very long time, if ever.

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