But that's its value to a private entity. Its value to Canada -- and mostly, Alberta -- is FAR higher.
Here's Trevor Tombe:
As to the idea that the feds should have just "cleared the way" for private industry?
It's like these guys don't learn. The Harper government tried that approach. It backfired massively -- and it built a grand total of zero pipelines to new tidewater.
And the comparison between the US and Canada?
It's *all* geography. If Alberta was located on the Pacific Ocean it would have built all sorts of LNG terminals and pipelines. And if America's oil and gas had to get through California or New York, it would have built NOTHING.
And the stuff about billions being lost? Most of said projects that were scuttled had been planned or permitted *before* oil and global LNG prices crashed in 2014.
High-cost oil sands and greenfield LNG projects don't do well in low-price environments.
Now, I know folks like Jean won't actually engage with reality here. They need the boogeyman of Trudeau and the federal Liberals to distract Albertans from their own failures (hello, lost renewables investment!)
But the facts don't care about your feelings.
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Let's start with the peevishness. I basically wrote this piece -- well, a longer and more detailed version of it -- back in March 2021 for Report on Business Magazine.
Now let's get to the pedantry.
The author writes that "Itβs easy to think of Canadian oil and gas as past its prime....the days of rampant drilling ended years ago."
Oil sands mines don't really involve drilling. SAGD projects use it sparingly.
No, the federal government hasn't "blocked 18 LNG plants". It came out against *one*, and that was after the Conservative government in Quebec rejected it first.
It has approved all the other ones that came across its desk. All of them.
It also threw almost $1 billion at LNG Canada in duty waivers, which was a major factor in the proponent deciding to proceed -- and build. It's now shipping cargoes.
There are two reasons why this argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny: time and money.
Let's start with time: even if a proponent started the process of proposing and then building an LNG terminal on the east coast fed with Alberta gas, it *still* wouldn't be operational.
LNG Canada submitted its application to the Harper-era NEB in 2012. It got the necessary approvals in....2015.
Pierre Poilievre is so anxious to get one over on Mark Carney that he'll believe (and amplify) almost anything β including flagrantly obvious nonsense from Donald Trump and a Lorne Gunter column that, of course, fails to call it out as such.
First of all: no, the federal government *never* blocked "LNG export plants" (as in, plural). It approved Cedar LNG, gave upwards of a billion dollars to LNG Canada, and granted Ksi Lisims a 40 year export license.
It's kind of amazing that after more than a decade of pipeline politics, folks like @TomOlsenXIX still haven't learned the most basic of lessons about what actually happened.
It was on full display during his debut appearance on @WestofCentreCBC. Let's unpack it -- quickly.
"You bought TransMountain where you created a policy environment where it wouldn't work for the private sector, and then you paid three times what it was worth."
Facts: TMX was assessed under the *Harper* era regulations. Neither the tanker ban nor C-69 applied to it.
And it was the Governments of BC and Burnaby that obstructed it (though the exercise of their constitutional authority).