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Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

Alberta could have a wealth fund like Norway’s if Ottawa stopped picking its pockets – by Bill Bewick (National Post – April 2, 2024)

https://nationalpost.com/

Unlike Alberta, Norway is not forced to subsidize lower-productivity European nations

Gerald Butts recently repeated a common but misguided refrain when he posted a photo of the growth in Norway’s pension fund with the comment that, “Every time I’m in Norway I think this could have been Alberta.” Albertans who are used to such outbursts call this “Norwailing.”

You’d think someone who spent so many years as a senior adviser to the prime minister would understand the three large differences between these two oil-rich jurisdictions.

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Oil Fields of Arkansas Are the Newest Locations for a Lithium Battery Rush – by Boyce Upholt (Mother Jones – March 11, 2024)

https://www.motherjones.com/

“Production at existing sites could negate the benefits of the clean technologies they power.”

The town of Smackover, Arkansas, was founded a hundred years ago when a sawmill operator got lucky: his wildcat oil well yielded a gusher. For a time in the 1920s, the oil field beneath the clay hills and swampy creeks in this stretch of southern Arkansas was the world’s most productive site. Now, boosters say the region will help usher the world into an oil-free future, thanks to the discovery of underground brines that are rich in lithium.

Lithium is one of the most important metals in the transition to renewable power. Lithium-ion batteries are, thanks to their lightweight and high energy density, currently the top choice for storing energy in electric vehicles, and a potential tool for grid storage, too. Global production of the metal tripled throughout the 2010s, and demand is projected to increase as much as 40-fold by mid-century.

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Gulf oil giants Saudi Aramco, Adnoc set sights on lithium (Mining.com – March 11, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ national oil companies plan to extract lithium from brine in their oilfields, in line with efforts to diversify their economies and profit from the shift to electric vehicles (EVs), three sources told Reuters.

Other oil companies, including Exxon Mobil and Occidental Petroleum, plan to take advantage of emerging technologies to filter lithium from brine, as the world seeks to move away from fossil fuels.

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Canada grasping at straws with sweeping ban on plastics – by David Olive (Toronto Star – February 14, 2024)

https://www.thestar.com/

The ban creates more rather than less waste. It gives Canadian consumers the false impression that they are helping save the oceans. And it imposes additional financial costs on Canadians, David Olive writes.

The federal government’s sweeping ban on plastics is shaping up as misguided, if not a fiasco. Ottawa’s Zero Plastic Waste 2023 initiative bans a wide range of plastic items including single-use plastic cutlery and disposable checkout bags and went into effect in 2021.

A federal court decision in November overturning the ban as unconstitutional drew attention to problems with this policy. Ottawa says it will appeal that ruling. “The body of scientific evidence showing the impacts on human health, on the environment, of plastic pollution is undebatable,” Steven Guilbeault, the federal environment minister, said in response to the court decision.

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The Oil War – by Diane Francis (Substack – January 29, 2024)

https://dianefrancis.substack.com/

“Shadow fleets” of tankers smuggle oil out of Russia and Iran and provide the cash flow to finance their wars and terrorist attacks. These ships are also environmental time bombs. Several have sunk with their toxic cargos because they were in disrepair, operated by scoundrels, or unable to call for help because they were hiding from authorities.

Despite dangers, illicit oil shipments and sanctions-busting activities have exploded. In 2023, China and India imported $600-billion in fossil fuels from Russia, essentially bankrolling Putin’s war in Ukraine and billions from Iran despite draconian sanctions. Estimates are that one in five ships on the high seas are now involved in illicit oil or weapons trade.

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Ruthless, reckless, damaging: the Hon. Steven Guilbeault is MLI’s Policy-maker of the year – by Heather Exner-Pirot (MacDonald Laurier Institute – December 21, 2023)

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Guilbeault has treated the fact that Canada is a democracy, a market economy, and a federation as inconveniences to be overcome.

The Liberals have been chided for focusing on communications over substance, for announcing policies rather than implementing them. But there is an exception to this rule: the ruthlessly efficient Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. No one else in Canada has been as influential, and, in my view, no one else has done so much damage.

From an emissions cap to toxic plastic straws, and from Clean Electricity Regulations to the Clean Fuel Standard, Guilbeault has been advancing economy-killing and constitution-defying laws at a frenzied pace. He was appointed Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada in October 2021.

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Rising risk of regime change blunts reaction to oil and gas emissions cap – by Theo Argitis (Financial Post – December 19, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

After October 2025 at the latest, the Conservatives could be in the position to reverse many of the Liberals’ policies

It’s fair to say that corporate Canada has been less than enthusiastic about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s proposed plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions in the nation’s oil and gas sector. Responses to the announcement, which was made Dec. 7, ranged from outright rejection (Canadian Chamber of Commerce) to skeptical (Pathways Alliance) to, at best, silence.

This may or may not have been a surprise to Trudeau and his two top lieutenants driving the policy, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.

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Trudeau’s eco ego stifling investment in Canada – by Lorne Gunter (Toronto Sun – December 5, 2023)

https://torontosun.com/

Why does it seem that every time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault have a big environmental announcement to make — that affects the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Alberta workers and small businesspeople — they make those announcements outside the country?

The latest example was Guilbeault’s release of stringent new methane emission regulations announced Monday. Did he proclaim them in downtown Calgary or in one of Alberta’s large natural gas fields, where billions of dollars of investment and thousands of well-paying jobs could be affected?

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Dreams collide for Trudeau as First Nations bet big on oil and gas – by John Ivison (National Post – December 4, 2023)

https://nationalpost.com/

Climate zealots will likely have more influence on deciding project loan guarantees than the wishes of Indigenous communities will

Justin Trudeau’s top priorities ever since his election in 2015 have been action on climate change and a “renewed nation-to-nation relationship” with Indigenous people. But what happens when your top priorities crash headlong into one another?

In the recent fall economic statement the government said it is “determined to ensure that Indigenous communities can share in the benefits of major projects in their territories on their own terms” (emphasis mine).

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Ontario’s plan to build new gas plants just got more complicated – by Marco Chown Oved (Toronto Star – November 30, 2023)

https://www.thestar.com/

At a meeting on Monday evening, Loyalist Township declined to support a new gas plant. On Tuesday, Napanee council endorsed a bid by Atura power to build a new gas plant in their community.

Local municipal councils in Eastern Ontario rejected one new gas plant but welcomed another this week, complicating the province’s plan to build new fossil fuel projects. At a meeting on Monday evening, Loyalist Township declined to support a new gas plant, with councillors saying they could not support energy projects that both pollute local air and make climate change worse.

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Smith says she’ll reveal details next week on threat to invoke sovereignty act (Canadian Press/Toronto Star – November 26, 2023)

https://www.thestar.com/

Premier pledges to move on sovereignty act

EDMONTON – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she will reveal details next week on her threat to invoke her government’s sovereignty act over federal clean energy regulations.

Smith told her provincewide radio call-in show on Saturday that she’s “had it” with federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, saying he “doesn’t care about the constitution” and noting Ottawa has recently lost two court cases dealing with disputes over federal-provincial jurisdiction.

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Trudeau’s Green Jihad holding Canada back – by Joel Kotkin (National Post – November 20, 2023)

https://nationalpost.com/

As the Spectator recently reported, over the last ten years, Canada has had the most persistently slow growth of any major economy — the worst in the nation’s history since the Great Depression. Between 2016 and 2022, Philip Cross, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, noted in May, “real per capita GDP rose 11.7 percent in the US, but only 2.8 percent in Canada.”

Coming from a country that may soon choose to be led by either a cognitively challenged second-rate codger or a vengeful lunatic, one would like to look north, to Canada, for some inspiration.

This is an idea many Canadians no doubt find inspiring. A decade ago, The Globe and Mail published an essay that made the case that Canada was a better role model than the U.S. due to its approach of “mutual accommodation” — what the late Quebec premier Robert Bourassa called “one of the world’s rare and privileged countries in terms of peace, justice, liberty and standard of living.”

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Liberal net-zero agenda is a plan to kill the economy – by Chris Sankey (National Post – November 13, 2023)

https://nationalpost.com/

Chris Sankey is a former elected Councilor for Lax Kw’alaams Band, businessman and Senior Fellow for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

The federal government is pushing an aggressive emissions reduction strategy that could devastate the Canadian economy and threaten our way of life. This isn’t just about the oil and gas industry. Port-related industries, transportation, infrastructure, health and education, and countless other sectors will be collateral damage. As will the standard of living of everyday Canadians.

And, yet, it isn’t even clear the government’s green agenda will do much of anything to lower emissions. I recently had a chance to listen to Adam Waterous, the CEO of the Waterous Energy Fund and former Global Head of Investment Banking at Scotia Waterous. He is, I may add, an incredibly intelligent businessman who lives and breathes energy.

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Ottawa unveils interim plan for environment agency after court rules it unconstitutional – by Jeffrey Jones (Globe and Mail – October 26, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Ottawa is suspending the environment minister’s authority to force major energy or mining projects to be judged for environmental impact as part of a temporary operating plan for the Impact Assessment Agency after the Supreme Court ruled it encroached on provincial jurisdiction.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault announced a series of provisions for the agency that will be in force until the government makes amendments to the Impact Assessment Act. The interim operating plan is aimed at making sure projects now in the process of seeking approvals will have “have an orderly and clear path forward,” he said in a statement.

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Chasing Big Mergers, Oil Executives Dismiss Peak Oil Concerns – by Clifford Krauss (New York Times – October 25, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Exxon Mobil and Chevron are spending tens of billions of dollars buying oil and gas assets, betting that the International Energy Agency’s predictions of declining oil demand are wrong.

Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil companies, this month committed to spending more than $50 billion each to buy smaller companies in deals that would let them produce more oil and natural gas for decades to come.

But a day after Chevron announced its acquisition, the International Energy Agency released an exhaustive report concluding that demand for oil, gas and other fossil fuels would peak by 2030 as sales of electric cars and use of renewable energy surged. The disconnect between what oil companies and many energy experts think will happen in the coming years has never been quite this stark.

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