Showing posts with label WTI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WTI. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Alberta Conservative Throne Speech-A pack of lies.

#First understand the RCMP cannot investigate the Conservatives unless they get express permission from the Attorney General.   Several times they have refused to get on board with the rest of Canada for a national securities commission, saying it wouldn't work for their business model.    They were busted for taking over 7 billion dollars from AIMCO pension funds.  The union held their feet to the fire and after much denials  came up with an unknown settlement.  One thing sure; it costs you.   They operate completely above and beyond the law!

Jim Prentice made his first major press release that was packed full of outright lies; a neat way to start a crooked party recovery!  This should convince you nothing at all has changed and its going to cost your dearly if you continue to support  these  characters!

His first outing  from the Edmonton Journal: 
1. He said we were getting top dollar on our crude WTI (West Texas Intermediate) 
2. He said royalty was rolling in. 

Fact: 1
Under Peter Lougheed we were on the NY crude prices; highest in the marketplace. Under Ralph Klein we found ourselves down a notch to WTI .

Under the new crew of neo-cons the wheels came off; (that is Prentice's group). They opted to price on the London based Brent prices which were designed for North Sea oil with no infrastructure in transportation to speak of. The lowest prices in the spectrum.   On top of this, Canadian high commissioner Stewart Beck said in the Financial Post Alberta was discounting the Brent prices by 20 to 25.00 per barrel.  That's 30% and its been going on since oil hit 200.00 per barrel.

What he published was not an error nor an oversight; it was planned deceit; outright and deliberate lies  that didn't fly for those who knew differently.

It is Alberta's oil producers who take the biggest hit.
This is a 3 billion dollar lie!
Fact: 2
Royalty was set up in the tar sands to encourage growth.  The royalty base was 34% but we collected only 1% until the plants were built..  In other words, the Alberta taxpayer paid for every cent of the tar sands projects by leaving 33% of their royalty with the various Companies. It is our expense, not the oil companies.

Just when we were going to collect the full 34%, Syncrude complained their Firestorm project should not be taxed at the full 34% as it was an additional build; not an improvement. There was a public show of the Government resisting this cut back in royalty.   Ralph Klein and Syncrude went on a well publicized fishing trip; a boat load of booze and no reporters allowed.  The results of this meeting as presented to the public was the Firestorm would be included in the 1%.  In other words Albertans would pay for it; not Syncrude.

We heard nothing at all on royalty for a couple years .  All enquiries to the Conservatives were turned away with no answers.  Then, Fred Dunn the Auditor General chastised the Government because they were not even collecting the 16% they had told him about.  Well that brought on a rash of hate Fred Dunn news releases and the Auditor General's budget was cut so badly the couldn't investigate anything new.

Then the portfolio fell to Loose Lips Ron Liepert who told us on TV our royalty rate was now 6% and it would stay there for 5 years  then, it dropped to zero; zilch.

Prentice is telling us his government is new, different but its not its the same if not worse.

Yet they may get in again because of low voter turn out.   22% of the vote gave them this huge majority.  The turnout in Whitecourt was only 16%; scary!
Support the Alberta Liberal;s get a change in Government that means something!   Raj Sherman is a strong leader and has put out points which he will fix in education, grade school, high school and graduate university.

As it is now we are graduating kids with the equivalent of grade 10 education as high school graduates!  I see in todays paper they are going to reduce the high school graduation on final exams from 50% which is the lowest in north America to 35% because of their inability to teach them anything.  I would fire the whole bloody works of them!

The Conservatives froze the Heritage Trust fund at 5% profits when oil was over 200.00 per barrel.  Anything above 5% was siphoned off into General Revenues and used as taxes.  We gave the oil majors over 700 billion dollars out of this fund!

Norway, both green and rich has got hundreds of billions of dollars banked from their oil industry (they don't do royalty they do taxation)  They are now Europe's bankers!.   They won't vote Conservative!

They have the highest educated population in Europe.  Every kid is guaranteed a university education free!

They turn out 70% of their population in every vote.  (put this against the ignorance of whitecourt  who turned out 16%)

On the burger economy; yes burgers can cost 10.00 each but the people working at McDonalds there make 100,000 a  year so the 10 dollar burger is no problem.  Economies to scale.

You in Alberta own this Resource!  You don't have to fight for it or kill for it as they do in other countries.  All you have to do is vote!

The Conservatives are counting on your ignorance and stay at home attitude and, they just may be right.

The Conservatives have gone to many of the smaller communities promising them multi millions of dollars for their pet projects but, only if they are elected.  They have done a version of this for the past 40 years!.








Sunday, January 27, 2013

Redford's Fireside (Not!)


Key points and misconceptions.

Firstly; Remember Klein on his fireside saying read his lips; they are not going to privatize health care!  Some things never change. 

In excess of 70 Billions of dollars have been sucked from the Heritage Trust Fund!

She said they would start adding money to the Heritage Trust fund which hasn't been added to in 25 years.
 Truth is:  For 25 years this Government has frozen the investment profits of the Heritage Savings and Trust fund at  5%.  Everything above was pulled out and sent to General Revenues where it was used to reduce taxes for the Oil Concerns chiefly and small business, just a bit.  Individuals got next to nothing.  In this period of time there was a long inflation stretch where profits should have been in the 25% range..

This makes Albertans the highest taxed state in North America if not the world!

For all intents and purpose the Heritage Trust was robbed and the money sent down pipelines to the US parent companies. It  wouldn't have been any faster as a bank transfer!

This is another gross misconception; as close to a blatant, outright lie as one is going to get.  It is a far greater transgression than a spin doctor campaign.

The oil is extracted from the Bitumen along with High and Low vapor bases used in blending gasoline's and diesel fuels.   The resulting mix is a low volatile oil; cleaner than anything you will pull from the ground by conventional means.

The WTI; The Brent; The West Texas Crude are designations in markets that indicate impurities, not API or the Weight of the mix  Sulphur  is the key indexer.   Tar Sands crude is Sulphur  free!  It should be priced with the highest  priced market out there! 

In order  to get enough vapor base into the Tar Sands Crude, pristine sulphur free natural gas is added to the mix to bring it to the proper market desired vapor pressure to blend diesels and various gasoline.

Not only is it oil, but it is oil that has been tailored to the refineries it is going to!

You may recall a couple years  ago Natural Gas wells North of High Level were shut in by the Government .  This gas was needed for the blend.  There was never any news of the compensation given to the oil companies who owned the wells.  You can however bet it was the taxpayers who paid the price for it.

In addition, the refineries in the US only have to heat the oil a bit to get their blends.  This gives the US a low carbon foot print and Alberta wears the roses for the dirty part of the equation.

She has said we are loosing 6 billion dollars short this year in oil revenues.   Lets be more specific  here.  This is not  royalty; they are zilch.  It is the taxes off the various plants and shipping facilities.  And, according to the Conservatives (It doesn't  matter who is the leader) taxes is all we are entitled to as Albert ans.

She alluded to getting more for the oil at some nebulous time in the future.  It is time to speak of patterns here.  Stelmach popped out  PDF showing impossible royalty rates going into the future.  This was on the Eve of an election and no time to debate it.   At the bottom of the page was 6 pt print saying all revenues are taken in Canadian dollars.  That one line meant that we took an 18% cut in royalty at that point in time!

http://albertathedetails.blogspot.ca/2012/12/conservatives-playing-same-old-game.html

I can hardly wait for the lies that will come out  the next election.

It is very worthwhile to note that the Wild Rose Party has criticized Redford saying there is no reason to change our take on Royalty or change the markets on oil.

Three links that remain very important!





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