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Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

This Blizzard Exposes The Perils Of Attempting To ‘Electrify Everything’ – by Robert Bryce (Forbes Magazine – February 15, 2021)

https://www.forbes.com/

The massive blast of Siberia-like cold that is wreaking havoc across North America is proving that if we humans want to keep surviving frigid winters, we are going to have to keep burning natural gas — and lots of it — for decades to come.

That cold reality contradicts the “electrify everything” scenario that’s being promoted by climate change activists, politicians, and academics.

They claim that to avert the possibility of catastrophic climate change, we must stop burning hydrocarbons and convert all of our transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial systems so that they are powered solely on electricity, with most of that juice coming, of course, from forests of wind turbines and oceans of solar panels.

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‘It’s freakishly cold’: Deep freeze slams North American energy sector – by Geoffry Morgan (Financial Post – February 16, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

CALGARY – A deep freeze is roiling electricity markets in more than a dozen U.S. states, leading to record-setting prices for electricity and natural gas, knocking oil production off line and shutting down some of North America’s largest refineries.

“It’s freakishly cold,” said Eric Fell, a senior natural gas analyst with Wood Mackenzie in Houston, where record cold temperatures and snow have blanketed the city, caused rolling power outages, shut down refineries and sent both natural gas and electricity prices soaring.

The polar vortex has led to freezing temperatures in every county in Texas, the largest energy-producing state in the U.S., and caused massive disruptions across the North American energy complex, triggering power outages as far south as Mexico.

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DirtyCo to CleanCo: How environmental pressure is shaking up the mining industry – and will soon reshape it – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – February 6, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

In the global push to avert catastrophic climate change, investors’ new mantra is ESG – environmental, social and governance – and resource companies are looking for ways to sell, merge and change their businesses to follow the money

The mining industry is embarking on a black-to-green revolution that will almost certainly trigger an unprecedented wave of sales and mergers, reshaping the world’s top companies.

Industry bosses told The Globe and Mail that intense pressure from environmental, social and governance (ESG) investors to meet climate targets will prompt imaginative efforts by big mining companies to dump, or greatly reduce, their exposure to their dirtiest, most carbon-intensive assets – mostly coal, oil and iron ore – commodities that are taking on pariah status after having powered two centuries of industrialization.

“We are about to see a game-changing scenario,” said Mark Cutifani, the CEO of Anglo American , one of the world’s biggest diversified mining companies. “At some point soon, there will be a restructuring of businesses and assets, starting with thermal coal.”

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Canada must retaliate over Biden’s ill-considered Keystone decision – by Conrad Black (National Post – February 6, 2021)

https://nationalpost.com/

Canada absolutely has to retaliate for the outrageous and cavalier cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. The millions of Canadians who celebrated former U.S. president Donald Trump’s departure from the White House may start to wonder if the new era is quite as paradisiacal as they had expected.

President Joe Biden promised to ”rebuild our alliances,” yet with no notice given to America’s closest, oldest and least abrasive ally, with whose leader he is personally friendly, he revoked the existing arrangements and withdrew the permit to construct the pipeline, throwing 11,000 of his countrymen, and possibly as many as 40,000 Canadians, out of work.

Other executive orders that Biden issued in his first week in office reaffirmed his desire for a $15 minimum wage and additional immigration of unskilled foreigners at a time when the United States is still attempting to reduce COVID-related unemployment.

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Repeat After Me: Canada is Uninhabitable Without Fossil Fuels – David Yager – by David Yager (EnergyNow.ca – January 20, 2020)

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Please note, this article is a year old but still very relevant. – RepublicOfMining.com.

If you remained in Alberta during the first major cold snap of the year and are alive to read this article, you owe your continued existence to fossil fuels; coal, oil and natural gas.

Using Red Deer as an example, from January 12 to 18 the average daytime high was -25.9oC and the nighttime low -34.7oC. It was a bit warmer in the south and colder in the north, but high/low ranges for the entire province were similar.

Without heat from carbon-based plants and animals – either long dead in the form of coal, oil or gas or not yet fossilized wood or grass – we’d all have frozen to death.

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Trudeau paved the way for Biden’s rejection of Keystone – by Joe Oliver (Financial Post – January 27, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

Under Trudeau’s leadership, the government is deliberately squandering a stupendous legacy — the third largest proven oil reserves in the world

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau got a taste of his own medicine when on Inauguration Day, President Joe Biden dealt a body blow to the Canadian energy industry by cancelling the partly-built $8-billion Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline.

What Biden did to our country was hardly different from what Trudeau had inflicted on us before. And for the same fatuous and hypocritical reasons.

When I served as minister of natural resources I called the proposed pipeline, which would bring Canadian crude oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners, “the most studied energy project in the history of the world.”

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Were I an Albertan today, I’d be asking: What’s the point? – by Rex Murphy (National Post – Janaury 23, 2021)

https://nationalpost.com/

I’d be asking, how long are we going to put up with being mauled and mocked and stymied and blocked, by forces within Canada and without?

He couldn’t wait. Joe Biden didn’t let the sun set on his first day as president before coming down like a ton of bricks on Alberta. Almost with his first breath, he smashed Keystone XL.

And Justin Trudeau didn’t let 24 hours go by to assure Mr. Biden he understood. Ever so kindly he “acknowledged the new president’s decision to fulfil his election campaign promise on Keystone XL.” The promise to kill it on the first day.

My guess is, to borrow a phrase that the now defunct governor general, Julie Payette, and Trudeau have both found useful in tight situations, the citizens of the province of Alberta “will experience the decision differently.”

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Biden Poised to Freeze Oil and Coal Leasing on Federal Land – by Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Ari Natter (Yahoo Finance/Bloomberg – January 21, 2021)

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden is poised to suspend the sale of oil and gas leases on federal land, which accounts for about 10% of U.S. supplies, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The moratorium, which would also freeze coal leasing, is set to be unveiled along with a raft of other climate policies next week, according to the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss plans not yet public.

The move would block the sale of new mining and drilling rights across some 700 million acres (2.8 million hectares) of federal land. It could also block offshore oil and gas leasing, though details are still being developed, some of the people said.

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[Opinion] Let’s see violent pipeline protesters the way we see violent Trump supporters – by Rob Port (Pipeline Technology Journal – January 20, 2021)

https://www.pipeline-journal.net/

The problem is not opposing pipelines and oil production, or believing the 2020 election was somehow stolen from Trump, though I, and I suspect many of you, find both positions to be equivalently wrong-headed. The problem is people who have concluded that their cause is so righteous they are justified in scaring and even hurting other people to get their way.

As the years-long regulatory and legal saga around the Line 3 pipeline replacement project in Minnesota has unfolded, many of the activists opposed to the pipeline have vowed that their opposition will mirror the violent, months-long protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.

That hasn’t happened yet, but already left-wing activists are instigating inane stunts to get themselves arrested in protest of the pipeline.

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Tiny Keystone vs. the global coal boom – by Terence Corcoran (Financial Post – January 20, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

Canadian hopes of overcoming Biden’s climatism look hopeless

Canadians aiming to break through the Democratic Party climate policy barricades, past the army of anti-fossil-fuel green activists surrounding Joe Biden’s White House, are likely to be disappointed.

Political experts grounded in the world of diplomacy, negotiation and reasoned argument seem to believe that a careful strategic approach to the New Green Washington will enable Canada to forge new bilateral energy pacts that would, among other things, allow the $9-billion Keystone XL oil pipeline to proceed.

The false assumption behind such optimism is that the global climate policy agenda has some grounding in economic and technological logic and sound science, as if it were part of a well-thought-out master plan to restructure the world energy system so as to avoid an inevitable environmental crisis that allegedly poses a threat to the very existence of humans on the planet.

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How Canada should respond to Joe Biden’s Keystone XL decision – by Adam Radwanski (Globe and Mail – January 19, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Joe Biden is poised to begin his presidency with a wake-up call for Canadians who expect him to compromise his climate agenda in the name of diplomacy.

The president-elect’s apparent plan to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline expansion as one of his first actions after Wednesday’s inauguration, laid out in leaked transition documents, shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

It’s what he promised during last year’s U.S. campaign, it’s easy to act on and failing to do so swiftly would have sounded alarms within the Democratic Party’s base.

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OPINION: Why President-elect Biden’s energy plans could derail the American Dream – by Jason Issac (Fox Business – January 17, 2021)

https://www.foxbusiness.com/

The coming inauguration of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States sets the stage for a policy agenda that openly and proudly demonizes the affordable, reliable energy resources we all rely upon.

Biden’s energy plans are bad for our national security, economy, public health, and overall quality of life. But the American people’s ingenuity and creativity — and the very nature of how our planet and energy systems work — mean all is not lost.

Under Biden’s attempts to “phase out” natural gas, petroleum, and coal, the prices we pay for energy will go up.

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Joe Biden plans to block Keystone XL pipeline as one of first acts in White House – by Janice Dickson and Adrian Morrow (Globe and Mail – January 18, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

U.S. president-elect Joe Biden plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline expansion as one of his first acts in office, transition documents suggest, dealing a blow to Canadian efforts to get the project built and jeopardizing the prospect of thousands of jobs in Alberta.

Rescinding the Keystone XL pipeline is included as an executive order on a to-do list, according to The Canadian Press, which has viewed the documents. Outgoing President Donald Trump in 2017 signed the construction permit, which will now likely be terminated.

“Roll back Trump enviro actions via EO (including rescind Keystone XL pipeline permit),” the document reads.

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As Ottawa prepares to unveil its Clean Fuel Standard, industry warns of refinery shutdowns – by Geoffrey Morgan (Financial Post – December 10, 2020)

https://financialpost.com/

CALGARY – Canada’s federal government is poised to unveil its long-awaited Clean Fuel Standard by the end of the year, which executives say is concerning for a wide range of industries that may not have sufficient time to make dramatic changes before new regulations come into effect in 2022.

The Clean Fuel Standard (CFS) will be published in the Canada Gazette by the end of the year, Moira Kelly, spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, confirmed to the Financial Post Wednesday.

“The Clean Fuel Standard remains an integral policy in Canada’s climate plan, and will contribute to the government’s goal of exceeding its current 2030 target,” Kelly said in an email.

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OPINION: Question for the Trudeau government: What does UNDRIP stand for? – by Editorial Board (Globe and Mail – December 8, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Take Two: Ottawa is again moving to codify the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canadian law. In this reshoot, the Trudeau government is spending a lot of time insisting its bill is both weighty and insubstantial.

The declaration, known as UNDRIP, is a non-binding resolution passed by the UN in 2007. At the time, Canada opposed it, as did Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Three years later, the Harper government reluctantly endorsed the document, but said it was merely “aspirational.”

In 2015, the Liberal platform promised to implement UNDRIP, but didn’t say how. Thereafter, an NDP private member’s bill wended its way to Parliament – “an act to ensure that the laws of Canada are in harmony” with UNDRIP. The House passed it in 2018, but it died a year later in the Senate.

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