Alberta Jobs are going down the pipeline

The Edmonton Sun and Neil Waugh in particular is one of the consistently best reads in the province! nwaugh@edmsun.com

Premier Ed Stelmach did a good job promoting Alberta's economic interests at the Council of the Federation meeting in Quebec City last week.
He fought off attempts by eastern premiers, Ontario's Dalton McGuinty and Quebec's Jean Charest, in particular, to pressure Ottawa to set up a cap and trade scheme for greenhouse gases.

It's a "pay-to-pollute" boondoggle that would transfer billions of dollars out of the Alberta economy - not unlike Stephane Dion's suspicious Green Shift initiative designed to win votes in southern Ontario at the expense of our industry.

Stelmach did a good sales job for Alberta's own greenhouse-gas plan, stressing repeatedly that he has the only program that is up and running.

Meanwhile, the eastern premiers were simply posturing for all those TV cameras.
The trouble with the premiers' meeting is that it's largely all greenhouse gas - or hot air.
However, what was happening on the home front last week was for real.

And many Albertans must be asking, "Who's got our backs?"
Clearly not Alberta's struggling Energy Minister Mel Knight.
Knight was tasked by the premier over two years ago to come up with an effective strategy to get the best bang for our energy buck.

During the PC leadership campaign, Stelmach felt the issue was so important that he compared shipping raw oilsands bitumen to the United States to stripping the soil from a farm.

Now it appears that Knight has sold the farm because of his failure to produce an effective value-added strategy.

So far, all the minister and his failing bureaucrats have come up with is a minor royalty give-away.

In the meantime, more and more bitumen is moving over the border along with thousands of permanent jobs and construction work.
Last week, three disturbing events occurred that highlighted and exacerbated the PC party's lack of will and direction.

There's going to be a $10-billion upgrader and refinery in South Dakota, of all places, designed to exclusively process oilsands production.

There's a ludicrous proposal to ship Alberta bitumen to Portland, Maine, then tanker it to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

And there's the plan for another $5-billion project to pipeline our bitumen from Nebraska to Texas.

Clearly, the Stelmach government is failing to promote long-term jobs in Alberta.
Once production leaves the province it may become problematic to get it back because of the provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Scoring some political points at the premiers' gab fest may be good for Stelmach's ego - but it will do nothing to stem the flow of jobs down the pipeline.

Albertans need a tough value-added strategy and they need it now. Get busy, Mel.
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Alberta to be a Major Exporter of Power to the USA

We all remember the outright lies of the past dozen or more months. “The power lines being built are not for the purpose of export of electricity” was shouted loud and clear by our “honest” politicians in Alberta.

At the crux of the issue is “Should Albertans pay for the power lines built to export electrical power?”

For proportion:
Alberta consumes 70,000 GW of Electrical Power in a year. Up-graders and oil project expansion will increase that to 100,000 Gwh.(Billions) (Lowball figure) or 240 Mwh per day.(Millions)

Nuclear Power in Peace River is expected to furnish part of the increase.

Applications to export power to the United States are now filed.
ENMAX - 11,000 Gwh per year over 10 Years.

Aquila – 10,000 Gwh per year over 10 years

Royal Bank of Canada – 4830 Gwh per year over 10 years

AVISTA -50,000 mwh per year over 10 years.

And, the list goes on.

EPCOR – 1200 Gwh per year over 10 years.

On the surface it would seem that EPCOR and ENMAX have an arrangement for EPCOR to keep the province accounts and ENMAX take the export market.

Alberta Carbon sequester is BS!

The Weyburn CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project is funded by several international energy companies, the U.S. and Canadian governments, and the European Union.

The main concern is whether the CO2 will stay in place.

Good information on how this works can be found here
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/weyburn.htm

and here
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/sleipner.htm

Stelmach’s program is no program at all; same as usual. Why would you put carbon dioxide into salt caverns for storage when you could pump it into the strata to scrub the older oil fields? This crew are all about flushing more money into buddies pockets and are after the publicity and don’t give a dam about the environment.

This whole program is about what is basically wrong with these guys!. There is no public disclosure of who gets what for a contact nor are there details of process. Bids are asked for but reesults are never revealed. Only the Governments “selected” winner gets the headline and no bid results are published nor are bidders advised of the details. The Government knows who they are going to give the contracts to before the bid is let. Why even bother going through the expense of bidding?

Cost plus contacts given out at every level with no due process! Pipelines, power line construction; you name it. Effectively this Government takes no responsibility for anything they do! They are at best, totally irresponsible. Always some one else’s fault and cost over runs are paid without a blink. And at the end of the day, no guarantees on anything.

Alberta Carbon Sequester Program-or not

Not all carbon sequester is equal! Mostly it will end up by design as being still another bonus to oil companies and the Tory elite.

Carbon Dioxide can be used as a solvent to free up or thin out oil trapped in shale formations (or any other formation as far as that goes) making the oil thinner so it is much easier to recover.

This is the case in Weyburn Saskatchan which has been doing this for a couple of years. As it stands the operators in Weyburn do not know where the carbon dioxide they pump down the hole goes to. It is acknowledged a large percentage of it come back out of the hole saturated in or adjacent to the oil which is freed up. Effervescent oil?

What percentages, no one knows. Where it ends up even partially; they are still looking.

Stelmach and company would have us believe he is out to save the world. Certainly you know him better than this; just about everything that comes out of his mouth is an outright lie.

Look to the announcements of pipelines going to the south and southeast. This is the territory of the huge shale oil deposits which will require a huge amount of carbon dioxide along with horizontal drilling to get the oil out. Most of it will be on the US side where the majority of the oil is. (Map at the start Bakken Formation)

The US is at a disadvantage in starting projects like this. Different states and the feds must agree. Alberta owns the resource to the Government can just say “do it” and, it is on the way to being done.

Pipelines are being built to the south east and North Dakota who now sells Weyburn their clean carbon dioxide is looking closer to home.

When Getty shows up with his hand out you have to believe it is still another rip off!

John Clark

Alberta resource is lost to Texas at 19% royalty

Alberta to Port Arthur Texas
Highlights:
The expansion includes a 36-inch (91.4-centimeter) line that extends about 3,200 kilometers (1,989 miles) to Port Arthur, Texas, from Hardisty, Alberta. An 80-kilometer line may be built to deliver Canadian oil to refineries in the Houston area, the companies said.
TransCanada Corp., owner of Canada's largest pipeline system, and ConocoPhillips plan a $7 billion pipeline expansion to provide additional capacity to ship crude from western Canada to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners.

The $7 billion addition would allow Alberta oil- sands output to be processed by Gulf Coast oil refiners who represent almost half of the U.S.'s refining capacity

Texas Keystone project. Customers have signed contracts for 300,000 barrels a day.

Carbon Tax- I Agree for the right reasons

Stephen Dion has the correct idea with his Carbon Tax. Presented as a cure all for climate change it is ultimately a program for the redistribution of wealth in this country, something that Conservatives are dead set against.
Alberta can only be a better place to live if Stephen is allowed to bring his program forward! We are getting nothing of the Oil royalty now; it can only get better.

Take a moment to think here! Stelmach’s new royalty rates will not come into effect until after the next election! The Energy Minister Mel Knight pulled the royalty rate down to 19% from the already low of 25% prior to the last election then continued to lie about what the rate was.

As new production comes on the royalty rates will be dropped below 19%. The conservatives will continue to cut programs and public access to run the infrastructure while they further reduce the royalty percentage. That is the new future you are looking at from this Government!

Mr. Knight has said on any number of occasions nothing is in stone and there will be adjustments. And again, no adjustment until you elect him again. Just look to their track record of cut slash and lie.

Financial papers broadly heralded the 19% as a means to prop up profits of the oil companies in advance of a brutal royalty regime.

Royalty regimes around the world have increased with the exception of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Both conservative governments are playing one against the other in a public arena trying to create an atmosphere of fear in both provinces. There is a market for everything both provinces can produce.

The lowest rate in the world outside of Canada is 50% royalty! In Alberta we are collecting 19%! That numbers leaves us not only loosing money; we are paying them to take the oil away!

In Alberta our hospitals and schools are short funded. Revenues collected from income taxes are used to further support the energy industry rather than them supporting the tax base and the future of this province.

Oil companies are not going to abandon this province! If Alberta’s royalty rates go up Saskatchewan will soon follow. That is the fear of the oil companies.


The Carbon Tax will tax away some of the profits of the oil giants most of who are owned by foreign currency and most of their profits presently go to foreign currency.

This Carbon Tax will be in the public purse to support individuals in Canada who are not empowered by oil stocks.

Mr. Mandel has recently questioned the cost to EPCOR and to the consumers in Alberta and, he is correct in doing so. There will be a charge made on coal fired electricity at the source. However EPCOR has been increasing their rates and add in service charges almost whimsically collecting billions in profits. Mr. Mandel and the city of Edmonton council claim they treat this as a private company and don’t interfere but, they are quick to pocket the same billions.

Certainly losses in revenue in EPCOR will result in lower profits and perhaps property tax increases. It does not have to be an increase in power bills that is levied against 2/3rds of the province. Perhaps it is time to give Mr. Mandel his deal on service sharing and leave the power milking alone.

John Clark.

Alberta Conservatives pay off buddies with tax money.

Rebranding Alberta contract awarded to Tory-friendly ad firm
Link downplayed, but opposition parties say money best spent elsewhere
Published June 26, 2008 by Trevor Howell

There is no end to the crap this outfit goes into.

On June 20, an advertising firm with ties to Premier Ed Stelmach’s campaign team was awarded a $25-million contract to “rebrand” Alberta. With little fanfare and no official announcement by the Alberta government, Calder Bateman Communications and Identica (a division of Cossette Communications Group) were given the lucrative contract. Margaret Bateman, a co-founder of Calder Bateman, is a former managing director of the government’s Public Affairs Bureau, the department that awarded the contract. She is also listed as a member of Stelmach’s election campaign team.

The awarding of the contract comes just six months after the NDP requested the Alberta auditor general investigate another Tory-connected ad firm. Highwood Communications Ltd., owned by Barry Styles, has received more than $41 million in government-related advertising contracts in the past decade. Styles is also listed as a member of the Conservative election campaign team.
According to Public Affairs Bureau spokesperson Sonia Piano, a committee of representatives from different government ministries and members of the Public Affairs Bureau conduct the selection process. More than 80 advertising firms initially applied for the new $25-million contract that will see $5 million paid out the first year and $10 million the following two years.
Frank Calder, co-founder of Calder Bateman Communications, downplayed the link between Bateman and the premier as a reason for being awarded the contract, adding other firms with “very strong Tory associations” were unsuccessful with their own bids. He was unable to provide any specific details on how the campaign will be run by the two ad firms, saying, “It’s generally not our place to discuss what priorities the government might have.”

According to NDP leader Brian Mason, while there is no doubt Calder Bateman has connections to the Conservative party, he says the ad firm is very reputable. What concerns him is that the government is ignoring the impact of the oilsands on the environment, which leaves Alberta’s economy vulnerable to an environmental backlash that may result in fewer investments in the province. “Unless there’s a real effort on the government’s part to actually clean up the tar sands and adopt more environmentally friendly practices [the rebranding campaign] is not going to work,” says Mason. “It’s like the tobacco companies taking out ads to convince people that cigarettes are safe. People just won’t buy it.”

“It’s business as usual with our provincial government,” says Liberal MLA Hugh McDonald. “They think they can buy political goodwill through public relations and this is another example of it.”

According to the government, the $25-million, three-year campaign is intended to promote the province as a “great place to live, work, visit and invest in,” and to polish Alberta’s environmental record. The premier rationalized the need for the rebranding campaign because of “misinformation” spread by the opposition parties and environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club about Alberta’s environmental record. He also accused the opposition of trying to damage the reputation of the Department of Environment and oil companies after being asked if the money could not be better spent protecting the environment. “Twenty-five million dollars is well spent in ensuring that we protect the integrity of this province not only within Canada but within North America and around the world,” said Stelmach in the legislature on April 30.

The opposition Liberals labelled the campaign as nothing more than taxpayer-funded propaganda. With U.S. politicians increasingly opposed to the use of fuel derived from Alberta’s oilsands, McDonald says taxpayer money would be better invested in new technologies like carbon capture and storage.

“The $25 million could be spent actually cleaning up the environment, rather than this propaganda campaign to convince people there’s no problem, when everyone knows there’s a problem” says McDonald.

U.S. politicians are increasingly opposed to the use of unconventional energy sources that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. Regarding Alberta’s oilsands, Henry Waxman, U.S. congressman and co-author of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, was quoted as saying, “It is important to ensure that the [U.S.] federal government does not subsidize or promote the expanded use of these fuels through government purchasing decisions.” Earlier this week, the oilsands were the target of U.S. presidential candidate Barak Obama and a number of big city U.S. mayors. Both called for the U.S. to reduce its addiction to “dirty oil.”
“American consumers are going to be quite skeptical because they already know our environmental track record,” says McDonald. “And it hasn’t been a good one.” He adds that taxpayer money would be better invested in new technologies like carbon capture and storage. “The last thing we need in this province is another propaganda campaign funded by the taxpayer.”

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