Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Premier Rachel Notley has just announced Alberta’s withdrawal from Federal carbon pricing, though she plans to keep the Alberta province carbon tax.
Premier Rachel Notley pulls Alberta out of federal climate plan over Trans Mountain ruling
‘Albertans are angry, I am angry,’ premier says of Thursday’s federal court ruling
CBC News · Posted: Aug 30, 2018 1:34 PM MT | Last Updated: August 31
In a dramatic announcement Thursday evening, Premier Rachel Notley said she is pulling Alberta out of the national climate-change plan to protest a federal court ruling that quashed expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.
…
“Albertans are angry, I am angry,” Notley said in reaction to the ruling that stalled a project her government has spent major political capital to advance. “Alberta has done everything right, and we’ve been let down.”
…
Notley blamed both the current federal government and the previous one for creating a situation she said has made it “practically impossible” to build a pipeline to tidewater in a country with more coastline than any other on Earth.
“Now, more than ever, we need to come together and prove to ourselves and to the world that our country works,” Notley said. “This ruling is bad for working families. And it is bad for the economic security of our country.”
Canada can’t accept that the only market for its oil and gas resources is in the United States, Notley said.
“No other country on Earth would accept this, and Canada shouldn’t either, especially when we are doing it to ourselves. It is ridiculous.
“Money that should be going to Canadian schools and hospitals is going to American yachts and private jets. We’re exporting jobs, we’re exporting opportunity, and we are letting other countries control our economic destiny. We can’t stand for it.”
…
The premier said the decision reached Thursday has no impact on Alberta’s own climate-change plan, or on the carbon tax her government introduced on Jan. 1, 2017, and raised a year later. But her declaration that Alberta plans to pull out of the federal climate change plan leaves proposed future carbon tax increases in doubt.
…
While its fun to watch the breakup of Canada’s Federal carbon pricing scheme, its utterly hypocritical that Premier Notley wants to keep her Alberta province carbon tax.
But Premier Notley is not the only Canadian climate hypocrite.
In May this year Prime Minister Trudeau compared climate “deniers” to supporters of female genital mutilation. But Trudeau himself supports fossil fuel exports – as Trudeau said in 2017, No Country Would Find 173 Billion Barrels Of Oil In The Ground And Just Leave Them.
Trudeau’s ridiculous effort to claim the climate moral high ground, to tax carbon while exporting all the fossil fuels they can dig up, is like a drug dealer who defends their sales on the basis that they are personally clean, that it is up to their customers to decide what they do with the drugs they buy.
Even the Alberta Trans Mountain pipeline court ruling does nothing to reduce CO2 emissions – that oil will still be pumped. Premier Notley is not saying she can’t sell her oil, her complaint is that the USA has Alberta over a barrel on oil prices, because Alberta doesn’t have enough pipeline capacity to ship the oil to other markets.
I personally believe anthropogenic CO2 emissions are harmless. Clearly many federal and state politicians in Canada must also believe on some level that CO2 emissions are harmless as well, or they wouldn’t allow up so much fossil fuel to be mined and exported. But those same Canadian politicians continue their ridiculous game of climate hypocrisy, pretending they care about CO2 emissions, imposing carbon taxes on their own people, insulting people who are honest about what they themselves clearly believe, while at the same time they preside over the export of all the fossil fuels they can dig up.
Correction (EW): h/t Alberta – Canada has provinces, not states.
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Beavers…Americans….where does it stop ?
It’s a good thing Alberta is pulling out of the so-called Canadian climate plan because there’s no way the country will reach its Paris commitments unless it increases its carbon pricing by five fold. This would be political suicide because it would wreck the economy to the point that the current government would be bounced out of office in next year’s federal election. The reality is that the carbon tax is nothing more than a revenue generating device that will have zero effect on global temperatures, and Canadians know it.
It is entirely possible that Trudeau & Co have tanked Canadian manufacturing enough that they will be able to meet the Paris Accord goals. Of course they’ll be Venezuela North by that point, but what the hey…..
If cars and trains and planes could run on green sanctimony, in the age of Justin Trudeau, Canada would be Kuwait.
That sounds just like Australia. The Politician s need to export or we as a country would go broke, but we ignore the fact that those countries burn our coal, thus adding to the CO2 emissions which all go into the same world wide atmosphere. .
But of course they are all Politicians , regardless of their idology
MJJE
https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/kevin-libin-the-pessimists-have-it-right-assassins-are-gunning-for-trans-mountain
Activist judges moving the goal posts. Nothing can be done if everyone has a veto.
Keystone XL, Energy East, Enbridge Northern Gateway, Trans Mountain, … lots of pipeline proposals, nothing ever gets approved. It’s also nearly impossible to build new refineries too.
California needs this oil!
https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/canada-dreams-of-oil-exports-to-asia-but-california-beckons
https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/amid-trump-trade-war-trans-mountains-asia-appeal-grows-crucial
I posted the following in June and it is still right-on-the-money.
Contrary to speculation, I cannot actually see the future – I just study the past, and extrapolate.
The leftist extremists are in control, and to date nobody has had the courage to fight them.
Unless this changes soon, Canada as we know it is finished.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/27/100-renewables-by-2035-surprise-new-york-primary-winner-takes-on-democrat-climate-moderates/#comment-2391692
[excerpt]
When Marxists want to sabotage a country, they increase energy costs unnecessarily, which cripples the economy. That is the left’s strategy, and it is working, except in the USA, China and a few other countries.
A key leftist strategy is to cripple the energy industry – examples are endless regulatory snarls and successful anti-pipeline movements – these have cost Canada $120 billion in lost revenues – a huge amount of money that should have been available for industrial re-investment, job creation, health, education, etc.
The leftists were the scourge of the 20th Century – Hitler, Stalin and Mao killed a total of about 200 million people. Almost 200 countries that once had viable economies are on a downward spiral – Zimbabwe and Venezuela lead the way, but many others follow. That is the Marxist agenda, and it is working.
Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
Blah blah. Please check facts. Its oil sands. Its hydro cracked on site. It is not heavy nor is it bitumen, it is refined
Quote
Suncor’s Upgrading operations process bitumen into higher-value synthetic crude oil and diesel fuel using two upgraders at its oil sands site in Fort McMurray. Suncor also operates upgrading assets at its Edmonton refinery.
http://www.suncor.com/about-us/oil-sands/process
unquote
You see how it gets annoying..
Grey – you are preaching to the choir – and I suggest that I know just a bit more about the oil sands than you. Perhaps your comments were intended for elsewhere on this page.
Suncor use delayed coking for primary upgrading. Not sure if they ever added hydrocracking later on –but not in the early stages of the Suncor plant.
Syncrude use fluid coking (Exxon technology), and also have one hydrocracker, called an LC-Finer (Lummis-Cities technology). I co-wrote the AFE for it in 1984.
Both plants use hydrotreating to remove impurities.
I posted the following prior to your above post:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/31/pipeline-fury-alberta-withdraws-from-canadas-national-climate-plan/#comment-2445486
Donald – your comments are not only abrasive, they are misleading.
For the record, I chaired the Syncrude Technical Committee, the Mining Committee and the Synthetic Crude Oil Quality Task Force, which recommended major investments that were implemented to improve synthetic crude oil quality to meet new diesel and jet fuel specs.
Athabasca Bitumen is ~9 degrees API and sour, and some of it is marketed as such, typically diluted with condensate so it can be shipped by pipeline. Bitumen is also shipped by rail.
However, the big Athabasca oil sands projects upgrade bitumen to a ~32 degree API sweet bottomless synthetic crude oil that is shipped by pipeline to refineries, where it is refined into gasoline, diesel, jet, and fuel oils.
Canada? What’s that?
Canada is the fifth-largest oil producer in the world and the largest foreign supplier of oil and other forms of energy (e.g. electricity) to the USA.
And energy is the lifeblood of society – without it, most people in the developed world would simply freeze and starve to death. That means you and your family.
It IS that simple.
____________________
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON GLOBAL ENERGY
For the record, 85% of global primary energy is fossil fuels – oil, coal and natural gas. The rest is almost all hydro and nuclear.
Without massive wasted subsidies, the total amount of green energy generated into the electrical grid would be about ZERO.
The fatal flaw of grid-connected green energy is intermittency, and there is no practical solution for most of the world.
Claims of super-batteries to level-out the grid are green fantasies at this time, except for rare cases where pumped-storage systems can be retrofitted to hydro projects – and you need a huge reservoir at the BOTTOM of the dam, which hardly ever exists.
Years ago in Alberta, wind power generators were paid up to 20 cents/KWh for non-dispatchable intermittent power. That compared to 4-5 cents/KWh for dispatchable power from natural gas or coal generation..
When the wind blew hard and there was surplus wind power, Alberta still paid the full price to the wind power producers, and then gave the power away to British Columbia or the Western States, who had the hydro power to offset the wind power. This is because surplus wind power cannot be stored in the grid.
Sometimes, Alberta even had to pay our neighbors to take our surplus power. Yes, really!
It took a really stupid politician, or a really clever crook, to come up with such a costly and ridiculous scheme, which is common worldwide.
Alberta wind power producers are reportedly paid less today, but the costly scam/scheme remains – and dispatchable power producers also have to cut back generation at their own cost, because wind power gets first-in access into the grid.
If you think this is ridiculous, outrageous, and a total scam, you are starting to see clearly – we have been sold this scam by the wind power industry and its minions, and it is costing us a fortune is rising electricity costs, and reduced grid reliability.
Repeating:
It took a really stupid politician, or a really clever crook, to come up with such a costly and ridiculous scheme.
Allan, as you probably know, we have been living with the same nonsense in Ontario for years now. Buying power from the wind guys at 18¢/kWh and, when it wasn’t needed because you can’t just turn off the nuclear base load, dumping it on New York or Pennsylvania at 3¢. As business models go, it’s pretty feeble.
Our new provincial government is trying to clean up this silliness. It won’t be easy and it won’t be cheap and it won’t be pretty; I hope they stick it out to the end because it’s better to pay now to be rid of this idiocy, rather than keep on paying for decades to come.
“It took a really stupid politician, or a really clever crook, to come up with such a costly and ridiculous scheme”
It took both, acting in concert. In other words, a conspiracy.
My expert advice to Ontario is this:
Dump the wind and solar power contracts – cancel them!
Let the green energy scammers sue you, and counter-sue them and their co-conspirators for the billions they have stolen from power consumers.
Mr . Dress Up will have a Pipeline pipe with the straggler bands , write them all hurt feelings cheques and
then the full scale rip off of tax payers can begin . One must wonder why the shippers are still hanging around given the exploding costs ? Could it be that all the risks of overruns are now on the tax payers tab like they were originally and became the reason Kinder Morgan was looking for a sucker to buy this pig .
Mr . Dress Up was duped .
It’s not a question of whether the diluted bitumen (NOT oil) will be transported or left in place. It’s whether it will be piped more safely or sent by rail car less safely.
But then, logic and green-brainedness seem to be incompatible.
Typical Canadian socialist wing nut. We are withdrawing from the climate plan but we will keep the punitive tax because we can. Canadians are as dumb as a bag of rocks.
The United States elected Trump, and Canada wasn’t to be outdone, so they elected a drama coach with about as much savvy as a drama coach when it comes to politics. The idiocy of the push me- pull you game of being climate alarmist but also an advocate of oil exporting is coming home to roost for the clown prince.
The Canadian constitution gives ownership of resources to the provinces. The feds want the money.
The feds fund eco-kooks and the rent-a-chiefs from the Indian bands to sue to stop development of the provincially owned resources. Federal courts comply.
When the federal government gets its “fair share” (80% – 90%) of the loot, the pipelines will be approved in a New York minute.
p.s. Federal greed only applies to western resources. Ontario and Quebec, which control the federal government, get to keep their own resources.
All Greens Hate All Extractives. * *Rare Earth mining by children is fine.
“I personally believe anthropogenic CO2 emissions are harmless.”
I personally believe anthropogenic CO2 emissions saved us from a cascading extinction event when CO2 levels dipped below ~190, starting with green plants and ending with the last surviving carnivores eating one another.
I’m not so sure Trudeau is all that opposed to female genital mutilation. They took the topic out of the latest edition of the Federal Guide to immigrants.
“Why would our Liberal government take FGM out of the citizens guide? Why would Trudeau not want to educate new comers on this issue? It is quite perplexing and frustrating to say the least…
Perhaps Trudeau is planning on decriminalizing FGM practices here in Canada. Maybe this is just precursor for more to come in the way of allowing this horrendous practice to take place in our beautiful country. It wouldn’t be too far fetched considering our PM’s infatuation with the religion of “peace” and his desire to promote it at great lengths.”
https://ronnycameron.com/2017/11/29/trudeau-government-to-cut-female-genital-mutilation-from-citizenship-guide-video/
Trudeau and his virtue signalers wanted this pipeline expansion shut down . It just took 5 years of foot dragging and over $ 4 billion of additional tax payer debt to do it , only to undone by political necessity .
The vast majority of First nations have been satisfactorily bought off and now the few remaining
hurt feelings whiners and their pale face lawyers can hardly wait for Prime Minister Dress Up to hand them shut up money .
Funny they never have their pictures taken with their ambulance chaser lawyers .
Ever wonder why the shippers haven’t walked from this project that has nearly doubled in cost ?
When they are not at risk why would they .
This boone doggle will cost tax payers at least $10 billion .
” withdrawal from Federal carbon pricing, though she plans to keep the Alberta province carbon tax.”
I see they are keeping the tax. Once enacted, a tax never goes away.
These politicians couldn’t lie straight in bed …
Notley is a socilaist Premier who won the job by accident in a split election. But even she can only tolerate the BS up to a point.
Karma is a biiitch.
I have sympathy for the citizens of AB but non whatsoever for Notley.
I distinctly remember time after time when Notley and her cohorts maligned the resource industry of Alberta. Remember the little rallys with her “No more pipeline” meme prior to the election. Now her former mentor and little friend Butts is in Ottawa pursuing the same agenda on the grander stage by bending the ear of Trudeau.
Canada is finished, as long as the country is now an oligarchy controlled by the courts we will be subject to supercilious judges debating how many carbon credits can balance on the head of a pin instead of competent entrepreneurs with real skin in the game. Notice always how the leftist progressive green global socialists will revert to the courts to circumvent election setbacks.
Perhaps one day the courts will revert to the real laws and actually defend property rights and progress.
Carbon taxes are the new VAT tax and climate is just a convenient boogey man to start one and then keep raising it just like VAT.
I don’t know much about Canadian politics, but if I was an Albertan I would certainly be rather upset. I wonder if it’s feasible for Alberta to become independent from Canada? Ship the oil South through pipelines to the US. And make it more difficult for BC to ship a product to the rest of Canada (unless compromises are made). Probably constitutionally not possible for Alberta? But, that’s what I might think about doing…
Alberta is the economic mainstay of Canada – through tax transfers, the average Alberta family-of-four has supported the rest-of-Canada with a donation of about one million dollars over the past two generations. (Reference: Mansell and Schlenker w/ updates)
In return, the Trudeau’s (père et fils) have savaged Alberta with punitive and extortive government policies that have caused great harm to every family. Trudeau père destroyed our economy with the National Energy Program. Trudeau fils is following suit through “climate change” fantasies and pipeline strangulation.
It is impossible to believe that the Trudeau’s and their odious ilk (Climate Barbie et al) could be this stupid – it has to be deliberate malice – pro-Quebec and anti-the rest-of-Canada, especially against those work hard and create the real wealth of this country.
Canada (MOSTLY ALBERTA – a province of only about 4 million people) is the 5th-largest oil producer in the world and the largest foreign supplier of oil to the USA.
There is no rational reason for Alberta to stay in Canada. Canada is governed by socialist saboteurs, the transfer payments reward regional dysfunction and sloth, and our courts are a charade of extremist bias, corruption and incompetence.
Canada stays together largely because of a proud shared history and the emotional attachment that we have to our past. Our future is bleak, given the current Marxist/Progressive trajectory – we are governed by scoundrels and imbeciles.
It’s long past time to find a leader that will make Canada great again.
You can easily find lots of anti-pipeline “information”. What is much harder to find is intelligent commentary by an unbiased informed scientist. There is one site that I have found:
https://achemistinlangley.net/2018/09/01/on-southern-resident-killer-whales-and-the-trans-mountain-expansion-project/
All good points, thank you Toto, but the greens are NOT really interested in the environment – it is merely a false green front for their Marxist political objectives.
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, provides a history of the rise of eco-extremism, below. Moore says that the far-left political movement effectively annexed the green movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when pro-Soviet groups were discredited and needed to find a new power base for their far-left political agenda.
The extremists have obviously succeeded. Governments, academia, the media and large corporations are all cowed into submission. Leading scientists have been ousted from their universities for speaking and writing the truth. Only a few tenured or retired professors and the occasional renegade dares to speak out, and many use aliases for fear of retaliation.
I suggest it is time for all those who have been cowed into submission by the bullying of global warming alarmists to grow a pair and stand strong for your convictions.
Despite increasing atmospheric CO2, there has been little or no global warming for almost 20 years. Climate is relatively INsensitive to increasing CO2.
Regards, Allan MacRae
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
by Patrick Moore (1994)
http://www.ecosense.me/index.php/key-environmental-issues/10-key-environmental-issues/208-key-environmental-issues-4
Right. Does this sound familiar?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/17/u-s-coal-industry-growth/
its utterly hypocritical that Premier Notley wants to keep her Alberta province carbon tax.
Cut her some slack! She has moved a step in the right direction. To use a WW1 analogy, “grab and hold” which sticks (general Plumer) is better than grandiose offensives which fail (general Haig).
The cup is half full, not half empty.
But but, all the crude oil produced can be transported in semi-truck tanks via the Coquihalla Summit to the haven of Vancouver.