Who cleans up the 260 billion dollar environmental disaster unfolding in Alberta?

[GDR]

Not sure what the point of the article or this thread is. Only sense i can make is it shows if the green leftist movement gets there way of shutting the oil tap off then the 260 billion gets paid by people (the same people with no heat, fuel shelter etc) If sanity persists its not an issue. Another example of foolish exageration to try and make news.

The orphan well situation is an issue but is funded by industry not government as we are lead to believe and is making progress. I have a lease being reclaimed right now by the oil company. It was never even drilled, just the pad built. They have been working on it for 3 yrs jumping through hoops from the AER and was never drilled. Anyone who thinks there are no watchdogs and the companies are leaving a mess is just flat out wrong. If you ask for more regs and deposits be careful what you wish for, same could apply to farms building corrals, building pads, sc****r work etc.

[bucket]

Boy I'll tell you it's getting harder and harder to take the bullshit on here. The world is not even close to oil free living. The Canadian economy runs off of oil money, WAKE UP! You can dig around and find negative on it to make yourself feel better all you want but you better do it using whale blubber in your lantern.

The other day I heard the term.."peak demand" for oil as opposed to peak oil in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc...

Its pretty obvious peak oil was a scam....And when you look at the logistics its not hard to understand....

1. Most people recycle oil....if you put 5 litres of oil in your car and 5000kms later drop 4.8liters into the recycle bin....

2. Mileage has gone up.....but the problems we threw out the most efficient rail system in the world...

etc...If you think about it,,,, all the peak oil crap was to look for more expensive alternatives and make people like Al Gore wealthy....

the dumb****led farmer / #1climate change denier....tm

[agstar77]

The oil industry in Alberta will die a slow and painful death starting with the oil sands then shale. Replaced by solar. Demand destruction. Decimation of oil demand by electric vehicles and storage batteries. No need for a carbon tax. Government is behind the curve . Transmountain will be a white elephant.

[furrowtickler]

The oil industry in Alberta will die a slow and painful death starting with the oil sands then shale. Replaced by solar. Demand destruction. Decimation of oil demand by electric vehicles and storage batteries. No need for a carbon tax. Government is behind the curve . Transmountain will be a white elephant.

Yup and 90% of Ag would be toast .
No one will go back to horse and plow .
In fact yet another special interest group will shut that down ... peta .

[bucket]

How does agriculture go on without fuel?


Running extension cords in the field? A plug-in at every quarter?

The ****ing government won't give us cell service ....and some of you think we are going to farm without fuel.....

[jazz]

Solar and wind will never be more than a small fraction if our energy needs. A sideshow. It all needs to be backed up by fossil fuels anyway, hence the higher cost when properly costed out.

If you are concerned about environmental cleanup in Ab, that could have been negotiated in the pipeline regulations. Instead of worrying about some event that is unlikely to happen, you could have incentivized oil companies to get more serious about their current problems. Hey we will give you 2 or 3 tidewater access points but you commit dedicated $10B a year to cleanup now. We would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. I am sure the patch would have jumped all over that and the envirowhackos would have loved it as well and wow would that have been an announcement for the govt.

[jazz]

I would have made a couple other deals to address all these issues. I would have first gave anyone that pits panels up on their home a tax credit. That's the only place solar will have a use - on concerned citizens homes who don't mind a 20 yr payback.

I would have gone to the patch and said hey, we will solve your tidewater problem but you have to move away from the oilsands. Start chasing light sweet again, build some refining, etc.

Secondly, I would go look to the one group that could cut our emissions in half and that's farmers. Created a 25% biodiesel and ethanol standard to all fuels produced or exported. Pay farmers to start reforesting land, shelter belts, treed grasslands etc.

And I would be honest with the people and tell them the truth that we don't know if we can meet any artificial targets but we are going to try to be efficient while at the same time leveraging our vast resources to help the cause but no industry will suffer more than any other.

[helmsdale]

Albertan's need to face reality that any oil production or expansion will result in more environmental destruction

Nigeria has been highly exploited by the oil industry (many Canadian companies) and yet they receive 3 times as much in royalties as Alberta https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/oct/26/revealed-oil-giants-pay-billions-less-tax-in-canada-than-abroad

Canadian oil companies are highly profitable as this article indicates https://globalnews.ca/news/4643295/canada-big-oil-company-profits-report/ from this article The five companies paid $31.76 billion in dividends to shareholders over the period, including $12.56 billion since the oil price crash in 2014

In 2017, the Big Five transferred a total of $6.2 billion to shareholders ($4.16 billion in dividends and $2.04 billion in share buybacks) and had residual savings of $7.3 billion, while paying out $4.72 billion in taxes and royalties to all levels of government

The aggregate gross profit of the companies in 2017 was $46.6 billion, which was close to the Alberta government’s revenue of $47.3 billion

Your economic theory of making them profitable as somehow the answer was once explained by economist John Kenneth Galbraith who explained the trickle down theory 'If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to trickle down economics).'

Nice try bud. We aren't Nigeria.

Perhaps you should have been an advisor on the latest royalty review. There were alot of people in that working group who went in with the preconception tha we weren't getting, "our fair share." Seems their preconceptions were wrong as they advised we leave the royalty rates the same.

Everyone seems to forget the benefits from O&G dont just accrue out of the share of profits that are captured by government. There are wages paid out directly to those in their employ on the operations side which supports personal consumption, and personal income taxation. There are capital expenditures year over year that are for new development which allow a massive service sector to exist, which again has employees, and operational as well as capital expenses which flow through to government coffers in personal and corporate income tax. All of these companies hire accountants, and lawyers which remit taxes. They purchase trucks, pipe, drilling rigs, etc etc.

But sure, let's say they dont contribute their "fair share", and that they're just a bunch of robber barons that are little more than leaches on the public purse.

[GDR]

Yup and 90% of Ag would be toast .
No one will go back to horse and plow .
In fact yet another special interest group will shut that down ... peta .

Im a member of PETA (People for Eating Tasty Animals

[helmsdale]

Solar and wind will never be more than a small fraction if our energy needs. A sideshow. It all needs to be backed up by fossil fuels anyway, hence the higher cost when properly costed out.

If you are concerned about environmental cleanup in Ab, that could have been negotiated in the pipeline regulations. Instead of worrying about some event that is unlikely to happen, you could have incentivized oil companies to get more serious about their current problems. Hey we will give you 2 or 3 tidewater access points but you commit dedicated $10B a year to cleanup now. We would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. I am sure the patch would have jumped all over that and the envirowhackos would have loved it as well and wow would that have been an announcement for the govt.

Unless we are ready to go nukes, there is no way unreliable renewable can be any more than a small percentage of total generation.

Especially up here in cold environs, range of EVs is drastically limited in the cold. 30% at 0°c, approaching 50% reductions below -20°c... electric heaters are pigs! Batteries perform less effectively in the cold and require heaters to keep them warm so that they can be quickly recharged. Look at the L-ion batteries in all your tools, if you are using them on cold days outside you have to let them warm up before they'll take a charge.

EVs are one thing, but can you imagine the electric grid requirements of electric farm equipment, let alone electric home heaters?

Let's take farm equipment... you think your 10hp aeration fan is a pig? Try plugging in your combine or 4wd. What would the service need to be on your farm? Tons of farm services around here are little more than 10-15kva. Replacing one piece of equipment and expecting it to be able to charge up overnight would require upwards of 100kva. That's for one powered piece of equipment. Want to charge 2 combines, 1 4wd, and two trucks? Start multiplying... now multiply that by all the farms in the neighborhood looking to accomplish the same thing overnight... when the sun doesn't shine, and the wind seldom blows. All those single phase lines servicing rural areas would have to be upgraded to high voltage 3 phase. And how about those days/nights when the weather is threatening to turn and you need to run that combine crew 24hrs a day?

Now let's change all the nat gas furnaces out of our shops and houses and go to super clean(provided the source generation is clean) electric heat... a 65,000btu equivalent forced air electric furnace requires a 240v, 80amp main breaker. Dad's house when he bought it in 1990/91 was rigged with electric base board heat. Bill in 89/90 in the winter months to heat? A whopping $1000/month! House has 300amp service. Now multiply that by an entire town let alone city. Gonna need ALOT of new infrastructure.

[grassfarmer]

If you are concerned about environmental cleanup in Ab, that could have been negotiated in the pipeline regulations. Instead of worrying about some event that is unlikely to happen, you could have incentivized oil companies to get more serious about their current problems. Hey we will give you 2 or 3 tidewater access points but you commit dedicated $10B a year to cleanup now.....

Point is they were supposed to be doing that already - getting drilling permission in the first place, and paying low royalties were contingent on them doing the clean ups. Most times they don't bother with the cleanup - just keep paying the farmer his annual lease fee after the well is at the end of it's productive life and forget about doing expensive reclamation. No enforcement by AER as they are just another fake Alberta organisation, funded by the oil industry to act as body guard for that industry. This is a ticking time bomb for the landowner. Hope landowners realise too when they signed up to allow a pipeline to cross their land that they were signing up for the liability associated with it in perpetuity.

[Integrity_Farmer]

We aren't Nigeria.

But sure, let's say they dont contribute their "fair share", and that they're just a bunch of robber barons that are little more than leaches on the public purse.

I agree with your statement
FYI again https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/oct/26/revealed-oil-giants-pay-billions-less-tax-in-canada-than-abroad

We aren't Nigeria. You are correct we are not Nigeria in fact our governments are more incompetent than Nigeria as this article indicated

Companies like Chevron Canada paid almost three times as much to Nigeria and almost seven times as much to Indonesia as it did to Canadian, provincial and municipal governments.

Chevron used to run its Nigeria and Indonesia projects out of the U.S., but after allegations that they evaded billions in taxes, their operations were moved to Canada.

According to data collected by the Guardian, Suncor also paid six times more taxes to the UK, and Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) paid almost four times more to Ivory Coast.