Agriweek, Augst 13 2012 page 8:
Too bad the premier of B.C. is a she. Otherwise he could be taken to the woodshed and taught a thing or two about how to behave in public.
These disputes about oil pipelines, in which the B.C. government proposes to collect protection money from operators of the proposed Northern Gateway line, have assumed proportions of ridiculousness previously unreached even by the Canadian political left and the native pressure groups. There is no provision in any law or in the constitution which allows a province to collect fees for interprovincial works that cross its territory. Oil and gas lines from Alberta converge on southern Manitoba, where they connect to lines into eastern Canada and south into the U.S. Over decades of NDP rule no one has come up with the notion that a province is entitled to a share of another province’s natural resource revenues.
It gets worse. Now the B.C. premieress and also others are also talking about a ‘national strategy’ for energy. Every time you hear about a top-down government strategy you are hearing about another step into economic central planning and government control-freakishness. Considering the way in which the free-market system has enabled resource wealth to save Canada from the economic convulsions wracking the rest of the world, this is no time to be tinkering with what is not broken.
The B.C. government, nor any other provincial government, does not have a legal way to enforce demands for a pipeline ransom. But it can delay and frustrate regulatory processes and tie up a project for years, while offering to back off if it is paid off. This is conduct so unethical as to border on the criminal. It is normally known as blackmail and there are stringent laws against it for everyone, it seems, but politicians. The B.C. government is already helping already well-heeled native interests to do the same.
Each month that a project of this type and scope is delayed is a month of lost economic activity, wealth creation and employment. Opposition to the pipeline and to petroleum development generally has been intensified, by the publicity B.C. has generated, in the lunatic fringe of uber-environmentalists. Even the Quebec government is taking sides in a matter that does not concern it, excepting that Alberta’s resource wealth is the main source of the transfer-payment payoffs which make possible the lavish European-style Quebec welfare state.
The federal government is taking steps to stop frivolous interference with projects of national importance, but these plans are unpopular even in parts of the population that are not otherwise anti-development. But there is no other way. The issue of oil spills is totally phony. There are millions of miles of oil pipelines in the world, most built before present technology was available or present standards applied. New pipelines are safer
Many people seem to have not noticed the changes that are going on in the North American petroleum sector. Hydraulic fracking has opened up the Bakken formation in North Dakota to economic development. The basin contains several billion barrels of oil that was previously not recoverable at reasonable cost. Now it is in the mid-range of per-barrel cost. There are other areas of the U.S. that are comparably situated. American energy production is rising; very recently the so-called experts said it would be petering out by now. Increases in renewable energy production and conventional petroleum (as well as reduced consumption) have cut U.S. oil imports from two-thirds of total use to just over half. A time will come, if it has not already, when the U.S. market for Canadian petroleum will be substantially less profitable than offshore markets, especially in Asia. Considering the speed with which the American energy equation is changing and the length of time it takes to build a multi-billion pipeline, no delay is acceptable.
At stake is the further development of the Alberta oil sands and also conventional petroleum. Canadian oil exports to the U.S. are actually price-discounted already relative to world values. If the oil cannot be moved to the best-paying markets there is no point in producing more of it. Without the enormous wealth being generated by the western petroleum industry all of Canada would be sinking as fast as the manufacturing base in eastern Canada.
Resource (and also agricultural) exports to the booming Asian manufacturing countries must also rise to prevent very unhealthy balance of payments trends. The Canadian merchandise trade deficit with China last year was a staggering $32 billion. Exports of $16.4 billion were just 34% of imports. Selling Alberta oil to China is a matter of self preservation.
Too bad the premier of B.C. is a she. Otherwise he could be taken to the woodshed and taught a thing or two about how to behave in public.
These disputes about oil pipelines, in which the B.C. government proposes to collect protection money from operators of the proposed Northern Gateway line, have assumed proportions of ridiculousness previously unreached even by the Canadian political left and the native pressure groups. There is no provision in any law or in the constitution which allows a province to collect fees for interprovincial works that cross its territory. Oil and gas lines from Alberta converge on southern Manitoba, where they connect to lines into eastern Canada and south into the U.S. Over decades of NDP rule no one has come up with the notion that a province is entitled to a share of another province’s natural resource revenues.
It gets worse. Now the B.C. premieress and also others are also talking about a ‘national strategy’ for energy. Every time you hear about a top-down government strategy you are hearing about another step into economic central planning and government control-freakishness. Considering the way in which the free-market system has enabled resource wealth to save Canada from the economic convulsions wracking the rest of the world, this is no time to be tinkering with what is not broken.
The B.C. government, nor any other provincial government, does not have a legal way to enforce demands for a pipeline ransom. But it can delay and frustrate regulatory processes and tie up a project for years, while offering to back off if it is paid off. This is conduct so unethical as to border on the criminal. It is normally known as blackmail and there are stringent laws against it for everyone, it seems, but politicians. The B.C. government is already helping already well-heeled native interests to do the same.
Each month that a project of this type and scope is delayed is a month of lost economic activity, wealth creation and employment. Opposition to the pipeline and to petroleum development generally has been intensified, by the publicity B.C. has generated, in the lunatic fringe of uber-environmentalists. Even the Quebec government is taking sides in a matter that does not concern it, excepting that Alberta’s resource wealth is the main source of the transfer-payment payoffs which make possible the lavish European-style Quebec welfare state.
The federal government is taking steps to stop frivolous interference with projects of national importance, but these plans are unpopular even in parts of the population that are not otherwise anti-development. But there is no other way. The issue of oil spills is totally phony. There are millions of miles of oil pipelines in the world, most built before present technology was available or present standards applied. New pipelines are safer
Many people seem to have not noticed the changes that are going on in the North American petroleum sector. Hydraulic fracking has opened up the Bakken formation in North Dakota to economic development. The basin contains several billion barrels of oil that was previously not recoverable at reasonable cost. Now it is in the mid-range of per-barrel cost. There are other areas of the U.S. that are comparably situated. American energy production is rising; very recently the so-called experts said it would be petering out by now. Increases in renewable energy production and conventional petroleum (as well as reduced consumption) have cut U.S. oil imports from two-thirds of total use to just over half. A time will come, if it has not already, when the U.S. market for Canadian petroleum will be substantially less profitable than offshore markets, especially in Asia. Considering the speed with which the American energy equation is changing and the length of time it takes to build a multi-billion pipeline, no delay is acceptable.
At stake is the further development of the Alberta oil sands and also conventional petroleum. Canadian oil exports to the U.S. are actually price-discounted already relative to world values. If the oil cannot be moved to the best-paying markets there is no point in producing more of it. Without the enormous wealth being generated by the western petroleum industry all of Canada would be sinking as fast as the manufacturing base in eastern Canada.
Resource (and also agricultural) exports to the booming Asian manufacturing countries must also rise to prevent very unhealthy balance of payments trends. The Canadian merchandise trade deficit with China last year was a staggering $32 billion. Exports of $16.4 billion were just 34% of imports. Selling Alberta oil to China is a matter of self preservation.
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