Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

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.

MURMANSK, RUSSIA—For as long as humans have spread out to conquer the planet, despoiling as they progress, the Arctic’s punishing environment has been its best defence.

Like fortress ramparts, heavy snow, metres-thick ice and battering winds made it very hard for miners, oil drillers and industrialists to take much ground, let alone make a grab for the riches of a frozen sea. Those walls are crumbling fast.

The rush is on to drill offshore in the fragile Arctic, and Russia is at the front of the pack with ambitious, and risky, plans to exploit some of the world’s biggest untapped oil and natural gas reserves.

Around 1,200 kilometres northwest of here, squeezed from all sides by the powerful ice of the Pechora Sea, Russia’s first ice-resistant stationary oil rig in the Arctic shelf is set to begin drilling for crude.

Fifteen years in the building, the Prirazlomnaya drilling platform is 126 square metres, weighs 117,000 tons without ballast, and sits on a gigantic box of heavy steel designed to withstand the intense pressure of constantly shifting Arctic ice.

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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.

The Obama administration’s ongoing delay approving the Keystone XL pipeline is a “tragedy” that is costing the North American economy thousands of jobs and up to $100 billion a year in economic benefit, TransCanada Corp.’s chief executive said Thursday.

“That’s the kind of economic stimulus that gets generated. I don’t think we can afford to continue to delay things like that,” TransCanada president and CEO Russ Girling said in an interview.

But even as he noted Keystone XL has undergone “the most rigorous review of a pipeline ever built anywhere in North America,” Girling told Postmedia News he wants no part of the current fight in Congress over speeding up a decision on his company’s $7 billion oilsands project.

Despite its initial disappointment with a State Department last month that delayed a ruling on a permit for Keystone XL until early 2013, Girling said TransCanada is comfortable working within the new timeline.

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

Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post and a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

At a dinner event hosted at the Canadian embassy in Washington last week, former U.S. national security advisor Robert “Bud” McFarlane was asked to explain why America has no “energy policy.”

In response, he paraphrased an answer that Gary Hart once had given to that very question: “Oh, you’re wrong about that. We do have an energy policy. We limit ourselves to one fuel. We buy it from a cartel. And every five years, we go to war to maintain that privilege. That’s the policy.”

The fuel, of course, is oil. The cartel is OPEC. And the last war, in Iraq, has cost the United States close to a trillion dollars. That’s a hard number to swallow in a country where the national debt has become a source of shame and political paralysis. It isn’t just peaceniks who are fretting about “war for oil” these days. It’s also hawks like McFarlane and former CIA director James Woolsey, who appeared alongside McFarlane at Thursday night’s panel.

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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.

The handling of the Keystone XL pipeline process by the Obama administration serves as a loud wake-up call for Canada. While America remains our most important market, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that Canada should not be a “captive supplier” of energy for the United States. In light of global demand growth, it’s also in Canada’s national interest for Ottawa to act decisively to enable our oil and gas industry to diversify its customer base.

The fast-growing markets in Asia, particularly China and India, are obvious targets, but they need the assurance that Canadian oil won’t be landlocked in Alberta. Federal and provincial governments must understand that the Chinese and Indians are not sitting idly by enjoying the spectacle of the interminable and uncertain Canadian regulatory process. They’re actively seeking long-term supplies from other producers around the globe.

Obviously, the best way to ship Canadian oil to Asia would be through West Coast ports. That’s the rationale both for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat and for expanding the existing Trans Mountain pipeline system to B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

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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.

A day after native groups rallied in a show of force against the Northern Gateway project, a hereditary chief announced that the Gitxsan people had signed on as a partner in the $5.5-billion proposal – allowing Enbridge to make good on its contention that native opposition to the company’s plans is far from unanimous.

But even as Enbridge welcomed the support of the Gitxsan nation and praised the vision of its leaders, dozens of native groups remained staunchly opposed, insisting that the pipeline-and-tanker project poses an unacceptable risk of oil spills and other problems.

“Enbridge has always had a strategy of offering money to lots of First Nations. Lots of First Nations have refused this money,” Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz First Nation, said in a statement, adding that Enbridge is using a “divide and conquer” tactic in an attempt to win over its critics.

The Saik’uz, along with dozens of other bands, have signed a declaration opposing the project, which would ship crude oil from Alberta to the B.C. coast and condensate from Kitimat to Alberta.

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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

A group of First Nations in British Columbia says it will do “whatever means necessary” to stop exports of crude oil from Alberta’s oilsands through their territories — including the controversial Enbridge Northern Gateway oil pipeline.

The $5.5-billion project, which is currently being assessed by a review panel in Ottawa, now faces yet another public relations setback in its quest to open up a new supply route to Asia.

Some 130 aboriginal groups claimed Thursday the company would be contravening international laws such as the non-binding United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Aboriginal Peoples if it the pipeline goes ahead without their approval.

“We will do whatever means necessary, and we do have the support,” said Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, who represents the Yinka Dene Alliance of five First Nations.

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

If there were any doubts Enbridge Inc. faces an epic battle over its proposed Northern Gateway pipeline between Alberta and the British Columbia coast, a cross-border coalition representing environmentalists and First Nations put that to rest Tuesday as it launched the opening salvo against the $5.5-billion project.

Along with releasing a report on the dangers of oil sands transport, the coalition provided a taste of its strategy: it’ll fight the project before regulators, in the court of public opinion, by legal means if necessary and by using civil disobedience.

“As a famous prime minister once said, just watch us,” Gerald Amos, a member of the Haisla First Nation near the pipeline’s Kitimat end point and director of the Headwaters Initiative, warned in a conference call with reporters to kick off the campaign.

“Everyone involved, including myself, have made commitments to one another, that we will do whatever it takes, legally and otherwise, to stop this project.”

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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

U.S. President Barack Obama shocked the Calgary oilpatch earlier this month in delaying approval of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry Athabasca crude oil across the U.S. Great Plains to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. That step has been greeted in some quarters here as an act of hostility toward Canada.

But it’s the opposite. The U.S. did everyone a favour by putting the brakes on this thing. The environmental impact is clear as mud. And the long-term economic viability not only of Keystone but Athabasca itself is by no means assured.

TransCanada, in which I own shares, earned its setback, playing almost perfectly to the widespread distrust of business in these times. The firm asserted, falsely, that Keystone was essential to U.S. energy security; that halting its progress would spark some kind of national U.S. emergency; and that Keystone had been more thoroughly vetted than any project of its kind.

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http://www.calgaryherald.com/index.html

EDMONTON — In the days after the U.S. government made it clear expansion plans for the Keystone XL pipeline were on hold until at least 2013, energy experts, industry insiders, politicians and others wondered aloud where Canada’s international oilsands message had gone wrong.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, just weeks before a decision was delayed to better study environmental impacts, had called approval of Keystone XL a “no-brainer.” Canada’s message throughout the debates, studies and protests of the cross-border pipeline, designed to carry Alberta’s heavy oil across several states to Texas refineries, had been simple: Building Keystone XL would create thousands of American jobs and ensure a secure supply of oil from an “ethical” neighbour.

But amid a sea of hand-wringing and second-guessing, the conservative activist and author who first coined the term “ethical oil” stuck to his message. Writing a column for the Sun newspaper chain, the same media organization that televises his news show each day, Ezra Levant explained U.S. President Barack Obama had simply chosen “Saudi conflict oil” over friendly Canadian oil.

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http://www.calgaryherald.com/index.html

EDMONTON — As world leaders gather in South Africa to discuss climate change this week and next, Canada’s environment minister says he plans to defend Alberta’s oilsands and is willing to argue they are an “ethical” and reliable energy source.

Heading into the 17th Conference of the Parties meeting, Environment Minister Peter Kent says he will not sign on to any deals that mandate some countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions while others don’t — as his government argues was the case under the Kyoto Protocol. He is also unequivocal in his defence of northern Alberta’s bitumen production, a position he expects will be supported by Alberta Environment Minister Diana McQueen when she joins him at the end of the week.

“We still need to — and the industry needs to and our provincial partners need to — be aggressive in ensuring international friends and neighbours and customers recognize Alberta’s heavy oil is no different from heavy oil produced in any number of other countries which don’t receive nearly the negative attention or criticism,” he says. “It is a legitimate resource.”

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http://www.calgaryherald.com/index.html

Regulatory reform urged in wake of pipeline delay

The leaders of two of Canada’s biggest investors in oilsands mining came out swinging at a business forum in Lake Louise, demanding that the country adopt regulatory reform and ensure market access in the wake of the U.S. delaying the Keystone XL pipeline project.

Murray Edwards, vice-chairman of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., and Shell Canada president Lorraine Mitchelmore told the Bennett Jones Lake Louise World Cup Business Forum on Friday that Canada is losing ground in the international marketplace.

Mitchelmore said the oil and gas sector has been complaining about red tape for years – and did so at the same forum six years ago – but nothing seems to get done. “We are the only major oil and gas exporting country in the world that does not have access to global markets.

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

SINGAPORE/BEIJING – China is set to embrace Canada’s offer of more crude, heating up competition with the United States as the world’s top two oil consumers jostle to secure supplies and meet ravenous demand.

Shipments from a politically stable country such as Canada will be a welcome diversification of supply sources as top consumers make plans to deal with a supply shock if tensions in the Middle East escalate and choke off Iranian exports, barely a year after markets coped with a disruption from Libya.

“There is no oil that we can’t process,” an official at Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner, said, declining to be identified as he is not authorized to talk to the media. “With 30 refineries, there will be some that can use Canadian crude.”

China is an ideal client for Canada in Asia as it has the ability to process a wide range of crude and its appetite continues to grow. The Canadian heavy sour grade, which will be shipped to Asia, has API gravity of 19 to 22 degrees and contains around 3% sulphur. Most Asian refineries process crude of 30 degrees API.

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