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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Since all the usual suspects are out parroting the province's line on the emissions cap and the studies that supposedly show how bad it'll be, it's time to push this column out again -- one where I take said studies apart. nationalobserver.com/2024/05/31/opiβ¦
After some perfunctory criticisms of Justin Trudeau's vision of a post-national country and the apparent chaos that has wrought (we'll get back to that), he talks about a recent holiday to Atlantic Canada.
It's....weird.
But trust me, it gets *way* weirder. He blames "woke activists" for torching a former military barracks in Fredericton, and ties it to the increase in church arson and burnings since the 2021 discovery of potential unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops.
The PBO just updated its modelling of the carbon tax and rebate. Let's get into the details, which will surely be shared in good faith by Conservative pundits and politicians across the country.
For starters: after accounting for their error (including industrial pricing in modelled impacts/costs), the net fiscal benefit for the average household goes UP.
When they include their modelled economic impacts on this basis, you see a shift: now the two lowest income quintiles come outa head in every province, with the third being pretty close to a wash.
Only the rich get whacked here (the top 20% of income earners).
The entire editorial is built on a foundation of straw men and red herrings, and hardened with the concrete of can't-do thinking.
It also sidesteps a crucial question: what happens to demand for Canadian oil and gas if these other jurisdictions DO make different energy choices?
We'll get there in a second.
First, let's remind ourselves why this "what about coal?" argument is so obviously flawed. It relies on the belief that things like wind and solar don't exist, aren't getting cheaper, and won't be firmed up with batteries literally everywhere.
The piece's central premise is that we ought to build Energy East because of supply uncertainty in the Middle East and Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine.
Remember: even if it started tomorrow, it wouldn't be in service until 2030 at the earliest -- and would cost many billions.
Europe has already said it wants to aggressively wean its economy off oil and gas imports. The impact of Russia's invasion is a lesson it won't soon forget. Here's the IEA's forecast for oil demand growth out to 2030.