The Economics of Power LInes in Alberta.

The Economics of Power Lines in Alberta.

It has been a few years since Mr. Lougheed said that he was moving ATCO away from pipelines into building power lines as the pipelines only paid at cost plus 10% whereas the power lines paid a cost plus 15%

Cost Plus: In this province that means an unaudited free for all in a grab the cash game. All eyes are on the supply side of things, not the cost. This leaves the door open for private sector kick backs and double dealings through associated companies.

There is no ceiling on the costs in Alberta. A few million dollars here and there is of no consequence when you consider it is taken from the users of the power in the province. A one cent per kwh increase in your home bill produces 2 million dollars in revenue per day over the system.

The more that is spent, the greater the profit!

The 800 million for the cost of building the Edmonton to Calgary power lines needed for the export of electricity to the US has been around for 3 years or more.

800 million would offer a minimum of 120 million dollars in profit for the builders.
On the other hand, a 1.6 billion dollar construction would offer profits of 240 millions!

This Government has not managed anything since the beginning of time. Everything is shelled out of General Revenues not budgeted. Cost plus negates any need for this Government to follow costs or hold people to their bids.

At 19% oil royalty you have to wonder how we survive! And, EPCOR and ENMAX are not in the business of “saving” anything.

John Clark

Alberta Power Lines just increased in cost!

As predicted the cost of steel is going to drive up the Alberta Power lines construction. Along with the understated contruction costs the additonaly 30-60% increase in the prices of the steel towers will easily put the prices for the power lines above 1.5 billion.
John Clark

Threat to Alberta recognized.

This is the crew who dropped Alberta's royalty from 25% to 19%! This is the crew who plans on reducing the royalty even more as new production comes on board!

This is the crew that is about to move the Peace River south for use in upgraders and supplement water now lost.

This is the crew who prides itself in decimating social programs entrenched for several life times in favor of putting the programs into the hands of their "friends" through the exercise of privatization.

No one person or party could possibly do more damage to this province than the ruling Conservatives and Iris Evans!

John Clark

Alberta Natural Gas has Peaked; on its way down!

Trans-Canada Pipelines are seeking federal jurisdiction for approval of a new export pipeline.

Link http://ago.mobile.globeandmail.com/generated/archive/RTGAM/html/20080617/wtranscanstaff0617.html

The approval is nothing new. Any company that operates out of provincial boundaries falls under federal jurisdiction. The pipeline wants to extend beyond Alberta boundaries so, this is federal jurisdiction.

What this interesting article is pointing out is Alberta's Natural gas has peaked; it will now start to diminish. Further Trans-Canada want to export most of it before it runs out.

Alberta oil ripoff further demonstrated.

Petro-Canada signs still another deal with Libia.
The agreement with Libyan National Oil Corp. contemplates total spending of $7-billion (U.S.), with 50 per cent of all development costs to be paid by Petro-Canada, which will receive an initial 12 per cent share of production.

In Alberta Petro Canada would pay 0% for the development and receive 81% of the revenue!
Something to remember when you hear the squeals about the new, non existent royalty framework.
John Clark.

Bill C-51- Harper does away with search and seizure formality.

Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario, Tony Clement's response to the letter: Quote:
The compliance and enforcement proposals will allow us to respond to risks, regardless of the product type - they will not result in more enforcement action taken against natural health products or any other regulated product. In fact, the approach to compliance and enforcement activities for natural health products will stay the same, and will continue to be guided by the Compliance Policy for Natural Health Products and the Health Products and Food Branch Inspectorate's Policy--0001."

The question remains, do you trust conservatives to do otherwise than exploit to the fullest an enforcement law like this?

Alberta Power needs being exploited by EPCOR and others.

EPCOR, one of the principals who want to export power to the USA is warning of a catastrophic power failure if the power lines between Calgary and Edmonton are not doubled immediately. These people are also leading the pack in power price increases by the invention of a number of “add on charges” to the power bills.

It is true the power lines are working at near capacity. It is also true the power could be managed by controlling current export.

EPCOR’s jaundiced view of our situation fails to inform the people of the time line for the power generation coming on at Brooks Alberta, South of Calgary. When that comes on line the power load between Edmonton and Calgary will drop by a full 50%, possibly more. This 50% slack in capacity is what EPCOR want along with a lot more, to export power on.

I think we should watch closely any attempts by EPCOR to make their predictions come true!

John Clark

AlbertaConservatives planning their futures.

The Alberta Conservatives are thinking they will never get elected in Alberta again once the public catches on to the changes they are going to put in. This from a Tory insider.

Get all the cash you can get your hands on and then, bail!

This explains so much. The huge raises, the extreme cut in royalties. The dismantling and privatizing of health care and water; the wholesale give away of crown lands to friends.

Because all the deals are made behind the scenes, “public” tenders are never made public you will not know of most of it until it is over.

I continue to say it is very hard to distinguish this group of politicians from organized crime!

John Clark

Alberta Conservatives- Take the money and run!

Alberta is getting robbed
Alberta is giving our resource away at 19% royalty, less that 1/2 the amount the lowest paying country in the world collects! This Government has plundered the so called Heritage Savings and Trust Fund to a point it is void of any appreciation and now undergoing privatization.

Take the money and run! To hell with the future, we will move on is the philosophy of the ruling Alberta Conservatives.

HIDDEN WEALTH
Alberta's oil sands are the largest-known reserve of oil in the world
There are two trillion barrels of oil there, with some estimates judging the reserve at closer to three trillion barrels.
Global oil exploration companies have witnessed an exodus of workers to Canada for higher salaries .
From India, roughly about 400 workers have put in their papers after getting solid offers from companies working in Canada.
US downstream companies are expanding their capacity to process the extra-heavy sour crude from oil sands.

More than two-thirds of the expansion of US refining capacity is being tailored to handle the sand crude oil from Alberta.

A recent study by US environmentalists estimates that the tar sands capacity in the US will increase by 1.9 million barrels a day, while the cleaner conventional oil refining will decrease by about 300,000 barrels a day

John Clark

More pressure on Gasoline supplies!

Refinery vapour base (what gasoline is made from) is going to be moved into Alberta for use in extracting crude out of the tar sands. The now polished crude along with the saturated dilutant will be shipped from Hardisy AB to Superior Wisconsin for refining. Over producing the tar sands leave us in the positon of digging the stuff. We remain hewers of woodand haulers of water. This "dilutant" could arguably be made into gasoline.

One has to wonder how much of this the taxpayer is going to end up paying for. I can only go be the track record of this Government and say, all 5.3 billion dollars of it! The Conservatives don’t use and account system as such. Everything goes into “General Revenues” and is dispersed from there, attributing the expenditures to one Department or Another without those same departments knowing anything about it.

The Conservative way; Accounting by slush fund.


Process for recovering high quality oil from refinery waste emulsions
Document Type and Number:
United States Patent 5882506
Abstract:
An invention is disclosed whereby refinery waste emulsion streams such as API slop oils, desalter rag layer emulsions, mud pit sludges and the like having high viscosities and specific gravity approaching that of water can be treated for the recovery of processable oil values which had previously been unavailable by adding a sufficient amount of a light hydrocarbon diluent to the emulsion to lower its overall viscosity and to reduce the specific gravity of the oil phase to less than about 0.92. The diluted emulsions are subjected to flashing at emulsion-breaking conditions after which the oil is recovered from the various streams created in the flashing steps.

John Clark

Carbon Controls a patch work of NIMBY projects.

Carbon Controls differ across all the jurisdictions. The underlying theme is how many hat tricks do we have to preform before we can saddle the consumers with the bill. You couple this circus with the hand outs planned by Stelmach and it is not hard to figure it is still another way to cut deeper into Alberta's share of the royalties and fatten the corporate banks while doing so. Carbon be dammed! Take the money and run!

John Clark

Carbon Dioxide- Why is it dangerous.

Your body has no inkling of how much Oxygen you are getting. When you breath you take in a mixture of air and the Oxygen is picked up and burned in your body. Carbon Dioxide is produced. Your body monitors the amount of Carbon Dioxide, not the Oxygen you have in your blood.

When you walk into an enclosed, oxygen deficient area like an empty tank. Your body does not get sufficient oxygen; you do not produce enough carbon dioxide and your body registers the "oxygen deprivation" effects of suffocation.

On the other hand when you walk into a Carbon Dioxide enriched area, your body registers you have enough carbon dioxide so, you stop breathing, are overcome and probably die. There is no sense of suffocation because you body, measuring carbon dioxide is in a happy place.

John Clark

Alberta carbon sequestor program.

There is no public plan put forward on Alberta's program. There is however information available about what one may reasonably expect.


“CO2 will be injected at depths below 0.8 km (2600 feet). CO2 increases in density with depth and becomes a supercritical fluid below 0.8 km. Supercritical fluids take up much less space than gases, as shown in this figure, and diffuse better than either gases or ordinary liquids through the tiny pore spaces in storage rocks. The blue numbers in this figure show the volume of CO2 at each depth compared to a volume of 100 at the surface.”

Source:

Carbon stored at marginal depths create problems where carbon dioxide will stay down at one temperature but not another. In this case the carbon dioxide flooded a valley killing thousands.



And finally the CBC document summary on the Weyburn Co2 Sequester experiment:
The conclusion of the study will be an assessment of the integrity of the reservoir and its
ability to store CO2 over the longer-term. The risk analysis will evaluate the potential for
leakage, migration paths this leakage may take and future land-use changes that may
impact on reservoir integrity.
Nothing is solid or fixed!

One thing I have heard nothing about which, seems obvious to me is a pro active use of the carbon dioxide by injecting into the very deep aquifer that is not potable. Indeed, it is outright poison with no chance of redemption. I see no reason why pressurizing that aquifer would not make this water available to the oil industry rather than using our drinking water the way they are.
The last time I enquired into this was about 8 years ago having to do with the water use at and near Drayton Valley by the oil industry. It was explained to me the deep water would work fine but, it is too expensive to bring up to a point they can use it.

If the industry plays at this it will serve no other purpose than to rip off more cash. Because it is public funded by the taxpayer we should be able to get access to their efforts, good and bad.

I am sure as hell not going to believe anything this Government tells me. There is no accountability!

John Clark

Alberta Electricity and the cost of power lines.

We are told the new double power line down the centre of Alberta is going to cost 800 million of dollars. My guess would be closer to 1.6 billion.

However, using the 800 million dollar figure one has to wonder how long it will take to pay for this line.

Fortis are presently charging you 2.5157 cents per kwh plus .451 cents per day.

Using only the per kwh rate and a base of 9000 megawatts system in Alberta, that means Fortis will collect $226,413.00 per hour for the whole grid.

If .005 cent were allowed for a rate increase to pay for the 800 million dollar construction it would take only 7.4 days to pay for it in total! 1 week of one half cent increase in power bills will pay for this construction in total!

This is why I am insistent we have a construction rate that will come on to pay for the lines and drop off when they are paid.

If some one tells you that you will have to pay .01 cent more until the end of time to pay for the new power lines I would complain loudly!

Expect no help from the Conservatives. Like the oil they will gouge the hell out of the consumers in this province allowing record profits for the companies.

John Clark

Alberta Electricty dog and pony show-Transmission

The transmission lines between Genesee and Langdon are working at peak. Peak invites overload and leaves little room for flux or flex. A new power line is needed because this Government allowed it to fall into neglect as they did with all aspects of the infrastructure through the Klein years.

Now privatized they are prepared to put the big bucks in place. Under this scheme the big bucks will come directly from your pockets for years after the line is paid for. What is needed here is a cost analysis. How much will it cost and over what period of time. After that time will the construction fee(no such thing yet) come off our utility or will it remain on as still another escalated cost.

Consider power lines are built in this province on a cost plus 15% for profit basis. There is no tender as such and the system does not encourage any one to control the costs. Only approximations are used. The rich get richer.

There was a working proposal put through to the Government where the cost of power lines would be put onto the generator source. Then, the charge would be put forward to the people who used the power. The large cost of lines would be put through to the exporter!

Stelmach said “No way is this going to happen.”
This is going to be built. New government agencies assure that!

If being built, the double tower high voltage would be the only choice. Single towers are not really considered; only there for the exercise. The double towers will be 20’ higher than and 3 times as wide as the single towers and from a technical stand point the best of all worlds.

When all this is in place and the populace goes back to sleep thinking Conservative is the best of all worlds, the 500 MW power plant at Brooks Alberta will be built and 95% of the power on these new towers will be for export, paid for by you on your utility bill.

John Clark

Alberta Electricity continues to be challenged.

”We are meeting with Alberta Electric Systems Operator now to discuss some options. There are options available to satisfy both the industry and the public. However, we are at odds with EPCOR, TransAlta, and AltaLink if they try to make the public pay for an export line that will only raise our electricity rates and does not provide any additional electricity to Albertans. It is time we worked towards a solution,”

The conservatives through still another sustained lie, told Albertans they would take control of the power lines so that all schools could enjoy fancy computer rooms. This was early after the relatively honest Government of Peter Laugheed so, it was taken at its word.

After they had control of all the lines the story was hammered home "Albertans have always paid for their own power lines"

With these pieces in place they sold the power lines through power purchase agreements. The acronym for these was the "PPA's"

These PPA's ended up in the hands of the choice few after someone made millions flipping the PPA before they got into the correct hands; the major cities.

Because this Government opens all of the bids in secret and no one every knows who bid or who the top bid really was, we have no knowledge of who they handed the original PPAs to. In other words, who they decided was to get very rich in a hurry.

All the pieces in place now and more than enough power lines and generation to look after the citizens of Alberta the power companies look for export markets to other parts of Canada and and the coveted USA. The latter are going to be short a very huge amount of electrical generation starting this summer.

Alberta residences are set up presently to pay for all the line costs that is associated with the export market.

That, is what the people are fighting!

John Clark