Alberta politics started October 31, 2018

..damage control

Alberta regulator apologizes for spooking public with $260-billion cleanup cost estimate

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But following the media report, the regulator went further, suggesting the decision to use the numbers in the presentation was a mistake.

“We want to apologize for the concern and confusion that this information has caused,” said the statement. “The numbers are staggering – $260 billion in total liability, which is $200 billion more than we have consistently reported. This particular estimate was created for a presentation to try and hammer home the message to industry that the current liability system needs improvement.

“While the message to address liability is important, the numbers were not validated and were based on a hypothetical worst-case scenario. Using these estimates was an error in judgement and one we deeply regret.”

That statement appears to be at odds with Wadsworth’s presentation, which stated multiple times that the $260-billion figure was likely to be a low estimate.

quote:

Pressed by journalists to respond to the report, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley noted that the problem was significant.

She said the liabilities would be hard to address amid the “biggest oil price drops in generations,” adding that company practices have improved, but after decades of buildup, the existing problem is “not one that we can fix overnight.”

“The issue has always been one that is of concern to us,” Notley said. “It’s actually a matter that I raised with the provincial government well before we were in government – back when I was in opposition.”

United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney declined to comment on the investigation’s findings.

However, UCP MLA Jason Nixon said his party will likely have more to say about the issue in Alberta’s upcoming provincial election, scheduled for Spring 2019.

“Regulations were behind when our industry started, and there’s going to be some creative ways that governments in the future are going to have to look at tackling,” Nixon said. “I don’t have an answer for that today.”

The issue also came up during question period in the House of Commons on Thursday, as federal politicians sparred over the investigation’s findings.

Alexandre Boulerice, NDP MP for Rosemont — La Petite-Patrie, asked what it would take to get the Liberal government to take “real action” on climate change.

“That’s a hefty bill for pollution,” Boulerice said in French, referring to the estimated $260 billion price tag.

“When you have to take the Liberals to court to get them to take real steps on climate change, things must be pretty bad. Is that what the Liberals are waiting for? To be taken to court?”

The damage control from Alberta's oilpatch watchdog is nonsensical

t’s difficult to overstate the consequences of the predicament that the regulator – assumed to guard the public interest, but long since captured to serve industry – has plunged the province

For months its top experts have known that the financial liabilities accumulated by the oilpatch are staggering figures that are far higher than any the industry and government have told the public.

While industry has pocketed hundreds of billions in profits from public resources, complicit regulators have enabled $260 billion in unfunded cleanup to accumulate, as National Observer, Global News and the Toronto Star reported this week. Most of these liabilities have been kept off the balance sheets of government and industry.

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At the heart of the problem is a regulatory system that Wadsworth admitted was "flawed."

The AER will soon tweak rules governing the cleanup of aging and expired oilfield infrastructure. But the changes were developed in close collaboration with industry and will almost certainly fail to address the true scale, urgency or cost of the crisis.

Before the provincial election this spring, Albertans must get informed and get engaged if there is to be any chance of making the polluter pay and avoiding the worst consequences of the mighty oilpatch’s capture of Alberta energy regulators.

The starkest example is the scandalous mismanagement of aging and expired oilfield infrastructure and the accumulation of $260 billion in cleanup liabilities while hiding the true amount from the public.

Shocking scale of unreported liabilities

It puts the scale of off-balance sheet liabilities on a shocking level.

Liabilities not recorded on a company's balance sheet are hidden from investors and lenders. Such hidden liabilities can become a significant concern when trying to assess a firm’s financial health.

This scale of unaccounted for liability also has the potential to seriously affect the province’s credit rating.

Regulators have failed to impose meaningful cleanup deadlines. Another central reason that industry has failed to fulfill a legal obligation to return sites to near their original state is this: accountants simply make the problem disappear.

Accountants do so in three ways. First, they begin with absurdly low estimates of the actual cost of reclamation.

Then, the schedule of payments necessary to fund cleanup is drawn far into the future with unrealistically long well lives.

Finally, the underestimated costs are discounted over too many years to arrive at the “net present value” that is recorded on a company’s balance sheet.

The result leaves fractions of a penny on the dollar of the actual cleanup costs on today’s books.

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This makes a mockery of what the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers told the last royalty review: “The LLR Program protects industry, and industry protects the public.”

The days of hiding this crisis are over

The truth is that the LLR program protects industry from having to pay even tiny deposits on multi-billion-dollar cleanup costs. How is industry protecting the public?

The cleanup of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of pipeline has never been a part of a regulatory program in Alberta, so the liabilities are not accounted for on company balance sheets, and regulators hold no security for them. The internal AER estimate pegs the pipeline price tag at $30 billion.

The low-ball liabilities publicly reported under the MFSP are supplied by industry without verification by the regulator. And almost all oil and gas producers use the public LLR numbers, shown to be gross underestimates, to state cleanup costs.

What’s more, a case currently before the Supreme Court of Canada could effectively render polluters and their bankers immune from the environmental consequences of their profit. This is the RedWater Energy case in which lower courts in Alberta accepted an extreme interpretation of bankruptcy law that allows bankrupt companies to disown liabilities, dealing a huge blow to regulators' ability to force polluters to clean up their mess.

Alberta oilpatch cleanup would provide decades of employment

Jobs, jobs, jobs, especially in Alberta’s oil industry; they have been at the centre of our national political debate for most of the last three years.

According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, they’re the reason we bought a pipeline, and need to twin it and fill it with bitumen in a hurry. According to United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney (and federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford) they’re the reason we can’t have a price on carbon.

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If Alberta retooled its economic engine to restore the landscape of this beautiful province, rather than continuing to ravage it with extraction, riggers could keep right on rigging and truckers could keep on trucking. With comparatively little retraining or relocation, hundreds of thousands of oilfield service workers could keep doing what they do, where they do it — protected by the same unions too.

We don’t need another pipeline or gargantuan bitumen mine to pump money into the coffers of multinational oil companies. On the contrary, the much greater economic opportunity lies in cleaning up the mess they have already profited from.

And all we need to spark this boom is for governments to enforce the law and make polluters pay. You see, in Canada, the oil industry has a legal obligation to return oil and gas sites to near their original state after their productive life ends.

Now of course there are barriers, huge ones. First, cleanup money has not been set aside. Forty four years of petro-Conservativism resulted in only $1.6 billion in industry deposits against that vast slag heap of liabilities. That works out to just 0.6 cents of every dollar the AER predicts we’ll need for the eventual cleanup.

And needless to say, while the Notley government has been utterly relentless in demanding a new pipeline, it just hasn’t gotten around to pressuring industry to kick any more cash into the cleanup kitty.

May warns Ottawa will be forced to pay for oilpatch cleanup costs

quote:

On Tuesday, Alberta's governing New Democrats and official Opposition United Conservatives prevented an emergency debate on the issue proposed by a Liberal MLA.

“Yes, the federal government is going to end up being responsible for some of that cleanup,” said May in an interview Wednesday, following remarks she gave at a biotechnology conference in downtown Ottawa.

“Right now all Canadians should know that we have a very heavy debt load that we’re carrying on behalf of the oil industry, because they won’t be paying off their cleanup costs.”

Speaking on Parliament Hill after a caucus meeting, Sohi told National Observer that companies are responsible for cleaning up their environmental destruction — and provinces are responsible for holding those companies accountable.

“This is a report that was generated by the regulator in Alberta...it is a liability that the oil industry is responsible for, and it’s a liability that a provincial government manages, or asks companies in Alberta to manage,” he said.

Feds gave millions for Sydney Tar Ponds cleanup

May argued that the federal government had already spent hundreds of millions of dollars for an environmental cleanup of a provincial installation — the Sydney Tar Ponds on Cape Breton Island, which she called one of the country’s worst toxic waste sites.

Toxic sludge had flowed into an estuary into the harbour of Sydney, N.S., the byproducts of a steel plant that ha been bought by the Nova Scotia government. In 2001, May — at the time the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada — went on a 17-day hunger strike to demand relocation of residents away from toxins in a Sydney neighbourhood.

Six years later, the federal government committed $280 million to a joint $400-million fund with Nova Scotia to clean up the mess. May said it was a recognition of Ottawa’s responsibility — even though it was much smaller than the size of operations in Alberta’s oilpatch.

“That’s one estuary on Cape Breton Island — a fraction of the size of the tailings ponds the oilsands are creating,” she said. “So yes, we’re all going to end up paying for the cleanup.”

Asked about whether the Sydney Tar Ponds set a precedent for federal government investment in environmental cleanups, Sohi said “I don’t know the specifics of the project that you are mentioning,” and reiterated his stance on provincial responsibility.

“It is my understanding that companies are responsible for making sure that they have plans in place to mitigate the damage that is done to the environment,” he said, “and it’s the province’s responsibility to make sure that when these resources are extracted, companies are held responsible to pay for the costs of remediation and cleanup that has to occur afterwards.”

The federal government has already chipped in some money to help Alberta clean up abandoned wells. In its 2017 federal budget, the Trudeau government offered $30 million in support for the oilpatch, including funding to support reclamation of orphaned wells. An orphan well is an inactive site that no longer has an operator due to bankruptcy.

Main Street Poll; November 2, 2018:

UCP: 54.3%

NDP:  29.1

Alberta Party: 5.5

Liberals: 5.2

Green Party: 2.7

Freedom Conservative: 2.5 

 https://www.scribd.com/document/392941521/Mainstreet-Ab-Nov12#fullscreen...

Quote:

The Wildrose and the PCs garnered a total of 52% of the vote in the last election, and the UCP today has 54.3%”, continued Angolano. “This indicates that UCP support is most likely an aggregate of pre-existing support for the two former small-c conservative parties.

The poll also found that Albertans have a positive view of Kenney compared to Notley. While respondents have +14.3% net favourability rating of Kenney, Notley has a -20% rating.

The silence on Alberta's $260 billion environmental liability is deafening

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Anger among many Albertans that successive governments have let this issue worsen has not led to accountability – yet. You would think that the revelation of a $260 billion in off the books environmental debt against a mere $1.6 billion in security deposits collected might garner more sustained interest. Yet headlines the next day in Edmonton focused on a $79 per household proposed city tax hike and not the quarter trillion dollar elephant in the room.

It’s difficult to imagine companies investing such a large sum of money in reclamation efforts and even more inconceivable that this would take place when revenues dry up. If companies walk away, Alberta taxpayers could ultimately be on the hook for the cleanup, which would amount to about $150,000 per household or more than six times Alberta’s current provincial debt. That’s why it is critical that Alberta strengthens its regulatory regime to ensure that companies that reap the benefits of the province’s natural resources are also responsible for the cleanup.

United Conservative Party avoided the issue

The official opposition, the United Conservative Party, which will likely campaign around financial responsibility and the deficit in Alberta’s 2019 election, curiously declined to comment on the $260 billion liability – an issue of financial mismanagement that dwarfs all others. What’s more, party leader Jason Kenney signaled that he wants to appoint a “minister of deregulation” and undo environmental policy advancements. To go back to the old way of doing things and relax already weak requirements is the opposite of what needs to be done and would expose Albertans to further financial risks of this inherited problem. Such regression in policy is illogical.

It is also troubling that the smoking gun on the need to protect citizens and reform Alberta’s weak liability system, was met in large part with silence. If nothing else, it might temporarily quiet the usual refrain about Alberta’s “world class” regulatory system and cause a moment’s pause in industry and opposition arguments that the oil and gas industry needs even more deregulation.

Canadian Fossils ‘Lose Patience’ with Trudeau as World Oil Prices Drag Them Down

With world oil prices heading toward another crash, the swashbuckling free marketeers in Canada’s oilpatch are doing exactly what you would expect: amping up the pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to somehow, magically solve a complex cluster of problems that is ultimately beyond Canadian governments’ control.

The fossil execs and their financiers say they’re losing patience with the federal government. Warning of a new wave of western Canadian separatism. Accusing-not accusing Ottawa of treason. Even risking the appearance of insider trading by participating in a meeting with Notley to discuss production volumes.

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Nearly three years later, Canadian fossils seem to have forgotten both the humour and the truth in Nenshi’s comment. The grade of oil that Alberta sells into world markets, Western Canadian Select, hit a rock-bottom price of US$13.46 per barrel on Thursday, its lowest since Bloomberg began keeping track in 2008. They’re producing at a loss, and they want a solution right now. And they imagine that faster federal action to approve the intensely controversial Trans Mountain pipeline extension—a project that would be years away from delivering an ounce of heavy crude if construction restarted tomorrow—will somehow give them relief from today’s problem.

They also imagine that they have anything less than the federal government’s full-throated support.

That’s after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet bought them a C$13.8-billion pipeline, graciously postponed regulations to control the industry’s climate-busting methane emissions despite alarming new research on their total output, pays out fossil subsidies estimated at $3.3 billion per year by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and $46 billion by the notoriously radical International Monetary Fund, posted the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions of any G20 country, and incurred the shame, to be frank, of being named one of the three countries whose climate policies would put the world on track to more than 5.0°C average global warming if every other government followed their civilization-ending example.

They still seem convinced that Ottawa could speed up a pipeline it fully intends to approve after a new round of regulatory review, even though a court told them in no uncertain terms that a faster process violated Canadian law.

A screenshot from a presentation delivered by Alberta Energy Regulator vice-president Robert Wadsworth on Feb. 28, 2018 shows internal estimates by the agency evaluating the financial liabilities of companies in the province's oilpatch. Document released through freedom of information legislation by the AER

..not asking for investment in refinery but...

Alberta's Rachel Notley wants Trudeau government to invest taxpayer dollars in oil-by-rail

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley wants more taxpayer dollars to fund a plan to boost the transport of oil-by-rail.

The premier from the oil-rich province made the comments on Wednesday, while speaking to a lunchtime business crowd at a five-star hotel in Ottawa. At the event, hosted by the Canadian Club, Notley said that she has asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to commit to co-purchasing two new unit-trains to transport an additional 120,000 barrels of Alberta oil a day.

“To be clear: that would increase the already record levels of crude by rail by another third,” she said in a prepared speech.

The Trudeau government has already spent $4.5 billion on what some have described as an oilpatch bailout plan to purchase the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and related assets from Texas energy company Kinder Morgan, in order to proceed with construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project to the west coast of British Columbia.

This decision has been welcomed by industry stakeholders who say that Ottawa should be doing a lot more to support fossil fuel expansion. Environmentalists and other critics, including federal New Democrats, say that this is the wrong approach needed to address the threat of climate change....

..more from above

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We’ve heard these false claims before

It reminds me of a similar false narrative advanced in support of the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, way back in 2012. A CIBC analyst claimed there was a $50 million a day loss because Northern Gateway was not built. When I asked for the calculation he did not have it. Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver aggressively relied on the figure in public statements. I asked Natural Resources Canada for their calculation and was given a run around. Eventually, an after-the-fact calculation was provided that made little sense.

This didn’t stop the Canadian Chamber of Commerce from releasing a pamphlet in September 2013 claiming that same $50 million a day loss. That document was paid for by industry, including Kinder Morgan. I checked with the Chamber of Commerce. They did not confirm how the figure was derived but said they relied on sources like CIBC and Oliver.

Flawed analysis makes Notley’s numbers meaningless

Notley relies on the Scotiabank report which attempts to put some analysis behind its figure, but Scotiabank misrepresented how the market for crude oil actually works. Scotiabank mistakenly applied the discount to all barrels supplied as if they are all exposed to spot market pricing when relatively few are.

What matters is not the size of the discount, but the number of barrels exposed to it. Reliance on a flawed Scotiabank analysis renders Notley’s claim meaningless.

Take for example the integrated operations of major oil producers active in the Alberta economy. Scotiabank would have Canadians believe that when Suncor, Husky and Imperial sell the crude they produce to their refineries in Canada, they suffer a loss. They don’t. They make profits in their refinery operations — in Canada — as if they paid the international benchmark price, Brent, for their feedstock.

Scotiabank would also have us believe that when other Canadian refiners — such as Regina Co-op, in Saskatchewan, or Parkland in B.C. — buy discounted crude, that this is a loss to the Canadian economy, when it is a clear gain.

Since Scotiabank “forgot” that we have a refinery sector in Canada, this error alone overstated the number of barrels it subjected to its "loss" estimate by about 20 per cent. I asked Scotiabank about this. I was told that their report was not intended to be a cost benefit evaluation. When I said their report is presented as such, suddenly they had no further time for discussing the flaws in their analysis with me.

There are a number of other major flaws in Scotiabank’s report.

So what direction does the oiligarchy want this oil train to go in;  South, East or West? Or maybe it will be flexible and head for the refinerery with the best price for the day.

Alberta plans to buy 7,000 railcars to ease 'crisis' in oil price differentials

Alberta needs to buy as many as 7,000 railcars if it wants to be able to meet its goal of shipping an additional 120,000 barrels of oil a day, says Premier Rachel Notley.

In a speech to the Toronto Board of Trade, Notley says her province is prepared to buy roughly 80 locomotives, with each train pulling 100 to 120 cars.

quote:

This is the first time she has specified how many railcars will need to be purchased. She did not give estimates on the cost of the cars but industry experts suggest that one rail car can cost between $120,000 and $150,000 to buy or about $1,200 per month to rent, putting Alberta's plan at upwards of $1.05 billion.

The railcars will never be bought. I just read an article that claims Alberta isn't fully using the pipelines they already have and it is going to be investigated.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/sohi-orders-neb-to-study-whether-canada-...

Harm reduction means no new pipelines and no new rail cars either. If they were a good financial investment it would have been done already. Companies have been forced to use rail because they are producing more than they can export and storage costs money. They want Notley to put a cap on production because they are selling at a loss.

Using rail cars as a threat isn't going to work. It's just going to increase opposition to the rail cars.

Notley is hoping the feds will help pay for them but buying the pipeline was enough. If rail cars are profitable then the oil industry will obtain them if they are not profitable then the government has no business buying them.

no. it's their right to block for whatever reason.

but you know so well as i do there's no United front amongst FN along the routes.

 i am pissed at arm chair environmentalists who have never set foot on a pipeline and who do not live on the rail line.

..underneath it all you have indigenous rights vs colonization. this struggle goes back to before this country was ever founded. and will not go away anytime soon.

eta:

Canadian youth occupy MP offices across the country calling for climate action

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The day of action on Friday included occupations of federal MP offices in Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax where the young Canadians made a three point call for climate action and respect for Indigenous rights:

1. Transition to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030, and create one million climate jobs in the process

2. Meaningfully implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

3. Keep fossil fuels in the ground and align the federal climate plan with the 1.5 degree threshold

Alberta’s Problem Isn’t Pipelines; It’s Bad Policy Decisions

Bitumen prices are low because the province has ignored at least a decade of warnings.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2018/11/23/Alberta-Policy-Problems/

I'm not an expert on the oil industry so I'm not comfortable arriving at a verdict on whether building oil refineries in Alberta makes economic sense. I've seen oil industry experts say that Alberta oil refineries would be economically uncompetitive with US oil refineries located in areas that give the US oil refineries a competitive advantage.

PS on Alberta refineries. They don't need to compete with US refineries. The bitumen is in Alberta so no need to compete for raw product. Alberta refineries may well earn less profit than US refineries but any profit is better than no profit and it ends the expense of trying to get new pipelines.

Notley doesn't need to study cutting production. It's a stall intended to keep prices depressed as a pressure tactic. Production should always have been limited to export capacity.

JKR wrote:

When did I say I support pipelines? I'm happy the BC government here is opposed to them. If new Alberta refineries are so beneficial, why aren't they being built?

Because they don't benefit Texas and the real North American oil barons.

What's stopping Albertans and other non oil barons from establishing refineries in Alberta?

Canadians have been hosed by the federal government, the Alberta government, banks, the pipeline companies, and the oil industry. There is NO ASIAN MARKET FOR BITUMEN, as the following article explains. Not only that, the bitumen oil sands projects are economically unviable, in addition to being environmentally disastrous. But politicians can't say that and get re-elected.

Canadians are often told the Trans Mountain pipeline project is imperative to access Asian markets anxious to buy Alberta bitumen. ...

Crunching the cargo statistics from the Port of Vancouver a very different picture emerges. In 2016 — the last year that complete data is available — the U.S. accounted for 99.99 per cent of outbound crude oil shipments. Of the 1,185,289 tonnes of crude shipped in bulk tankers that year, 1,185,121 tonnes were delivered to the United States.  In fact, total crude tanker shipments from Vancouver peaked eight years ago in 2010 at 4.3 million tonnes and have since declined 72 per cent.

And what about those hungry Asian markets? Crude exports from Vancouver to China topped out in 2011 at only 28 per cent of total outbound shipments. By 2014, they dropped to six per cent, and in 2016 they were essentially zero. The next largest Asian importers of crude from Vancouver were Singapore, which peaked at four per cent of total shipments in 2009, and India reaching two per cent in 2013.

The market seems to have decided that shipping diluted bitumen across the Pacific Ocean is a money loser. Like it or not, the main customer for Alberta bitumen remains existing refineries in the U.S. already tooled up to process high-sulfur low-value bitumen. And with the current U.S. administration anxious to complete the Keystone XL pipeline to refineries in Louisiana, why do we need to endanger the B.C. coast with tankers carrying dilbit to the same market? 

Many Albertans would prefer to believe that once the Trans Mountain pipeline is rammed through, the good times will be here again. Again, the numbers tell a different story. 

Oil economist Jeff Rubin recently published a damning assessment of the viability of increased pipeline capacity out of Alberta. Asian markets actually pay $8 a barrel less than U.S. refineries for heavy oil like Alberta bitumen. Likewise, European refineries typically pay $3 below the U.S. market after a long expensive boat ride.

Many multi-billion-dollar bitumen projects are already the economic equivalent of dead men walking, according to Rubin. 

“Exxon had to write off US$16 billion of its oil sands assets, including all 3.5 billion barrels of bitumen reserves at its massive and still expanding Kearl Lake mine,” he writes. “Following the huge decline in oil prices since 2014, Exxon’s high cost oil sands resource no longer meets the US Securities Exchange Commission’s definition of a proven reserve, which is one that can be commercially exploited at today’s prices with current technology. Having already spent billions of dollars to develop the mine, Exxon and its Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Oil, have little choice but to complete the ongoing expansion, whose increased output only adds to the current glut of oil already weighing on the price of WCS (Western Canada Select diluted bitumen).”

In other words, the bottom has already fallen out of many bitumen projects, yet they stagger on, animated solely by political and economic inertia. Of course hope springs eternal in the oil industry, which clings to the idea that if the Trans Mountain project is uneconomic now, perhaps in 10 to 40 years prices will improve. 

On the same planet, but in an alternate universe, policy makers are striving to keep global temperature increases below two degrees Celsius. This would require decreasing oil demand by 20 per cent by 2030. If these efforts are successful, the market share of the most expensive, lowest value petroleum on the planet will be the first to go. 

The U.K., France and China have all announced impending bans of the sale and manufacture of gasoline and diesel vehicles. These bold actions are in stark contrast to the moral origami of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is maintaining with a straight face that the best way to protect the climate is by massively scaling up bitumen production. So absurd is this position that it seems hardly worthy of even ridicule. Beyond climate conference photo-ops and aspirational rhetoric, Canada has a wretched record reducing carbon emissions, and Ottawa seems determined to make it even worse.

So what about continued calls to approve the Trans Mountain pipeline? In this age of conflicted information, it is important to look at the sources and their interests. For instance, Scotiabank recently released a report advocating rapid pipeline approvals, stating “The sooner governments move to allow additional pipeline capacity to be built, the better off Canada will be.” Scotiabank has the largest exposure to oilsands debt of any Canadian bank at $32 billion. According to Peter Routledge, an analyst at National Bank Financial quoted in the Financial Postregarding the dangerous debt exposure of oilsands creditors, “Banks effectively go into business with their clients, businesses or households, when they lend to them. Therefore, it is in a bank’s interest for its clients to remain going concerns.”

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/02/23/Fantasies-Keep-Pipeline-Plans-Aliv...

Alberta Crown land proposed for sale not treaty land, Kenney says

United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney says the northern Alberta Crown land he proposes to sell if he becomes premier next year is not treaty or reserve land.

"It's Crown land, and it's land that belongs to Albertans which is not being put to economic use right now," Kenney said Thursday, in response to a reporter's question at an end-of-session news conference.

"The notion that all of northern Alberta should suddenly be turned into a park, I think, runs contrary to our entire history as a people, where we seek in a responsible way to allow for the development of our resources, including our agriculture resources."

Kenney first raised the issue in late November at the Rural Municipalities Association convention in Edmonton. At the time, Treaty 8 leaders said no sale would happen without their consent. They also took issue with Kenney's characterization of the land as "unproductive."

Treaty 8 Grand Chief Arthur Noskey said on Thursday that Kenney could face legal action if he tries to implement the plan.

"I guess we have a major court case in the making if he does come into power and if he doesn't pull this plan," Noskey said.

Kenney said Mackenzie County council wants to expand the land auction undertaken by the government of then-premier Ed Stelmach 10 years ago. The UCP leader first mentioned the idea last month as one measure to help balance the provincial budget. 

Asked about the comments by Treaty 8 leaders, Kenney said Indigenous people did not raise any concerns over the land sale a decade ago.

Noskey said no one raised concerns because they didn't know about the sale until after the fact. Noskey said Kenney's proposal is "insulting," adding that no one from the UCP ​has tried talking to Treaty 8.

Asked about Kenney's statement that the property isn't treaty land, Noskey said Treaty 8 was signed in 1899, six years before the creation of the province of Alberta.

'It's always been our lands'

"So whose land was it prior to the province assuming authority over it?" he asked. "It is our land. It's always been our lands."

Kenney said the proposed land sale would be one way to grow the province's economy.

"We would obviously listen to First Nations, and other stakeholders," he said.

Alberta looking for new refinery to be built in face of ongoing oil price crisis

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/notley-to-announce-new-made-in-alberta-energy-strategy

quizzical beat me to it.  Still in the discussion phase, likely requiring some sort of government buy-in, guess we'll see if something comes of it or not.

..my bold

Can Canada’s Tar Sands Industry Be Profitable Without Government Subsidies?

Todd Paglia of Stand Earth says Canadians taxpayers increasingly foot the bill for Canada’s fossil fuels industry

quote:

TODD PAGLIA: Oh, absolutely. And this is the product of a lot of work by the oil and gas industry, to the extent that since April, meetings just on the environmental assessment law, they met with federal officials more than once per day since April. So an extraordinary lobbying effort. And they’ve been rewarded by that law being watered down and delayed. They’ve been rewarded by lobbying the Notley government in Alberta to not hold them liable for the enormous tailings ponds full of toxic waste; that they’ve been able to delay that implementation of new tighter restrictions on the tailing ponds. The emissions cap has now been delayed.

So it’s been a highly successful strategy for the oil and gas sector. And Canada so far continues to hitch its wagon to that single industry. And if you look at the kind of reductions that be required across the country to allow oil and gas sector to continue to expand, and to expand with subsidies and lax regulation, this is a this is a train wreck in slow motion, and there’s no clear indication that they’re going to be able to pull themselves out of this. So the advocacy for high ambition is great, but they’re aiming very low when it comes to policy.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And I just want to alert our viewers to the fact that part of what you just talked about, Todd, we covered that recently and it talked about in this report that your organization, Environmental Defense, has issued. There was a revolution recently–a revelation, I should say–that the estimated cost for cleanup of the tar sands tailing ponds and obsolete oil wells is $260 billion, and the Alberta government has only collected $1.6 billion in security from the fossil fuels industry. So that is obviously one area, I imagine you would agree, where the fossil fuels industry has been extremely effective in terms of weakening government protection of the environment.

TODD PAGLIA: And that’s–and that’s a subsidy, right? So that’s an externality. That’s a cost of doing business that the sector now doesn’t have to deal with. And what Alberta is saying is you never have to deal with it. So you know, more and more, when you take a close look at this industry it looks a lot less like a business and more and more like some sort of nonprofit. I mean, there is no way this business works without massive subsidies, and without completely failing to meet the Paris agreement.