Mr. Harper goes to Beijing

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

China is home to the world’s second-largest economy. It grew by 9.2 per cent in 2001, even as its chief rivals, the United States and the European Union, continued to struggle. As a country that sells things—oil, natural gas, uranium—Canada needs access to Chinese money and markets if it wants to thrive going forward.

That is fact one.

China is run by an undemocratic regime. It spends billions of dollars controlling its own people, often violently, every year and it uses its influence to prop up some of the world’s most violent and unstable dictatorships.

That is fact two. Continue…

Keystone rhetoric and reality

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Charles Pierce traces those “environmental extremists” to Nebraska.

What gets lost in all of this is that the most stalwart opposition to the crazy notion of running a pipeline of the world’s dirtiest carbon-based fuel through what is literally the bloodstream of the nation’s farm economy is coming from landowners in Nebraska. Trans Canada, the company that wants to build the pipeline, already has folded and offered an alternate route that it says would keep the pipeline out of the Sandhills. (The danger to the aquifer remains.) But the ranchers whose property abuts this new route are not yet satisfied … ”We’ve been called radical environmentalists,” Frisch said, “but we’re just looking out for our livelihood.”

Separately, the New York Times’ Joe Nocera says “all of Harper’s ministers have been instructed to stop making comments that might be construed as interfering in the American presidential election.” It’s unclear (at least to me) if that much has been reported previously in Canadian media.

Sound familiar?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Newt Gingrich, yesterday. “He recently vetoed the Keystone pipeline. Now, think about it! He did it to appease left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco.”

Joe Oliver, September 27. “The NDP has decided to stand against these jobs and ally itself with a few environmental extremists who want to shutter all oil sands development.”

Canada’s crude awakening

By Paul Wells - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Darryl Dyck/CP

In hindsight, Stephen Harper’s new fight against the world’s oil sands detractors was a long time coming. Last November in Vancouver, the Prime Minister gave a local television interview in which he warned that “significant American interests” would be “trying to line up against the Northern Gateway project,” Enbridge’s proposed $3.5-billion double pipeline from near Edmonton to a new port at Kitimat, B.C.

“They’ll funnel money through environmental groups and others in order to try to slow it down,” Harper told his hosts. “But, as I say, we’ll make sure that the best interests of Canada are protected.”

In early November, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he was putting off final approval of TransCanada’s $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline until after this November’s presidential election. Harper has long viewed Obama as an unsteady ally. Now he’d had enough. “I’m sorry, the damage has been done,” he told CTV before Christmas. “And we’re going to make sure we diversify our energy exports.”

Continue…

Crack in the Northern Gateway pipe dream

By Nancy Macdonald - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Darryl Dyck/CP

The business case for Enbridge’s $5.5-billion, twinned Northern Gateway pipeline, which would send Canadian crude bound for Asia to the B.C. coast, seems sound: the project could inject $270 billion into Canada’s GDP while fetching $10 more per barrel than the oil gets when transported south, to the country’s current, lone oil customer. But politics, it became clear as an environmental review launched last week in Kitimat, B.C., may yet derail the pipeline dream—its importance to the country’s financial future notwithstanding.

Ottawa’s smoke-and-mirrors strategy of bashing the project’s foreign critics, which was timed to the hearing’s launch on B.C.’s soggy, northwest coast, allows Canadian politicians to avoid pointing fingers at what really stands in their way: British Columbia First Nations, empowered by a decade and a half of legal victories that have granted them a significant say over land in their traditional territories. The powerful Wet’suwet’en, who vigorously fought a land claim over 13 years, culminating in 1997’s landmark Delgamuukw ruling establishing the existence of Aboriginal title in B.C., are among dozens of bands that oppose the project, and call its proposed, 1,176-km route home. “It’s going to get ugly,” says Terry Teegee, vice-tribal chief of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council. “Battle lines have been drawn.”

Legally, experts say, B.C. bands have more clout than those outside the province, thanks partly to an accident of history. Few entered treaties with the Crown, unlike First Nations elsewhere in the country; and since they never signed away title, courts now require their input when resources are extracted from their traditional lands.

Continue…

Keystone and everything after

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

The State Department apparently saw little to be excited about. The Liberal party is carefully neutral. John Bennett welcomes the news. Nebraska’s governor is disappointed. Mitt Romney is shocked. Newt Gingrich is displeased. John Boehner is sad. Robert Redford is happy. Politico pronounces victory for both Democrats and Republicans.The New York Times editors praise the President’s decision.

Republicans intent on scoring campaign points immediately repeated their fallacious cries that “tens of thousands of jobs” would be lost by not instantly approving the project. They made no mention of the risks inherent in the project: harm to the Canadian boreal forests and threats to water supplies in the Midwest. Bipartisan opposition to the pipeline has notably been led by Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, a Republican … Far more important to the nation’s energy and environmental future is the development of renewable and alternative energy sources. This is the winning case that Mr. Obama should make to voters in rejecting the Republicans’ craven indulgence of Big Oil.

Gabriela and Gustavo provide a timeline. Paul recalls when Mr. Harper thought it was the Prime Minister’s responsibility to make sure he was respected in Washington.

Keystone rejected

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 11:53 AM - 0 Comments

(This post last updated at 6:57pm.)

So reports the Washington Post. With an asterisk.

The Obama administration will announce this afternoon it is rejecting a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate a massive oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border, according to sources who have been briefed on the matter. However the administration will allow TransCanada to reapply after it develops an alternate route through the sensitive habitat of Nebraska’s Sandhills.

The Prime Minister’s last comments on Keystone came Monday in his interview with the CBC.

I think what’s happened around the Keystone is a wakeup call, the degree to which we are dependent or possibly held hostage to decisions in the United States, and especially decisions that may be made for very bad political reasons. So I think that just … it puts an emphasis on the fact that we must perform our regulatory processes to get timely decisions on diversification of our markets.

Update 2:03pm. Maybe “rejected” is too simplistic a characterization. The New York Times has the project “on hold.”

The administration has until Feb. 21 to decide the fate of the 1,700-mile pipeline to carry heavy crude oil from formations in Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Officials are expected to announce that they cannot meet that deadline and that they are looking for ways to complete a thorough environmental review before making a final decision on the project … The State Department is expected to say that routing, environmental and safety concerns raised by the project are too complex to be decided on that abbreviated timetable and is recommending that President Obama reject it for the time being.

Update 3:17pm. And here is the official statement from the U.S. State Department.

Today, the Department of State recommended to President Obama that the presidential permit for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline be denied and, that at this time, the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline be determined not to serve the national interest. The President concurred with the Department’s recommendation, which was predicated on the fact that the Department does not have sufficient time to obtain the information necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is in the national interest.

Update 3:28pm. A note from the Prime Minister’s Office on Mr. Harper’s conversation with Mr. Obama. Continue…

Harper criticizes foreign influence on Northern Gateway debate

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 12:13 PM - 0 Comments

A decision on the Northern Gateway pipeline should rest in the hands of Canadians only, not foreign interest groups, Stephen Harper said in an interview with the CBC on Monday night. The $5.5 billion dollar project, proposed by Canadian oil and gas company Enbridge, envisions building two pipelines that will stretch almost 1,200 km from the Alberta oil sands to the West Coast, transporting up to 525,000 barrels of oil daily. Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver raised the issue earlier this month that local environmental groups who are opposed to the project are receiving funds from outside Canada, particularly the United States. “Just because certain people in the United States would like to see Canada be one giant national park for the northern half of North America, I don’t think that’s part of what our review process is all about,” Harper said in an interview with Peter Mansbridge. Environmental groups, on the other hand, argue that much of the funding for the proposed pipelines would come from outside Canada as well.

CBC

Threats at home and abroad

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

CBC has posted Peter Mansbridge’s complete interview with the Prime Minister. In addition to his concerns about “certain people in the United States” who “would like to see Canada be one giant national park,” Mr. Harper is also worried about Iran.

Military action has been discussed, Mr. Harper added. “President [Barack] Obama’s said all options are on the table and I can certainly tell you that, when we talk about these issues, we talk about the full range of questions around these issues.

“But there is certainly no consensus on, you know, ultimately how to deal with this matter.” Canada’s position on dealing with Iran is that allies should work together, Mr. Harper said. “I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.

New Republican weapon on Keystone XL: a map

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, January 16, 2012 at 11:57 AM - 0 Comments

Congressional Republicans plan to keep TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline  high on their agenda when the US House of Representatives resumes its session tomorrow, two congressmen said this morning.

“We go back into session tomorrow. This issue will be first and foremost,” South Carolina congressman, Jeff Duncan, told me in an interview. “We’re going to ramp it up,” said Duncan, who sits on the Natural Resources committee and, a member of the Republican “energy action team” in the House.

“We’re going to keep attaching it to other bills. I’m not one who likes to attach non-related legislation to other pieces legislation, or bob-tailing, but this is an issue we’ve already passed its something we believe in and we’ll keep attaching it,” said Duncan. Last month, Republican lawmakers attached legislation that would give President Obama a 60-day deadline to decide on the Keystone XL permit to legislation extending a payroll tax cut by two months.

At an energy-themed breakfast in Myrtle Beach, SC, another Republican congressman, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, showcased a map that he said would be making the rounds of Capitol Hill in coming weeks.

“We have an opportunity here to win the messaging war and we are going to push this as hard as we can over the next several months,” he told a packed ballroom of hundreds of assembled Republican officials and activists.

“What you are going to see over the next few weeks in Washington are these two maps,” said Mulvaney. Showing the audience an image of a map of the proposed pipeline route from Albert to the Gulf Coast of Texas, Mulvaney said: “This is what the president wants you to see.” Switching the slide to a map of thousands of pipelines that cover the US. “…And this is reality. Often those two things are divorced in Washington.”

“What you see here is that pipelines already exist. What the president would have you believe is the pipeline is somehow unusual or extreme. The truth of the matter is that there are pipelines all over this country that function each and every day without any environmental impact at all.”

(Environmentalists who oppose the pipeline have argued that few pipelines in the US carry diluted bitumen and that they have particular concerns about a pipeline in the Sand Hills area of Nebraska that crosses a large aquifer.)

The Obama administration has delayed a decision on a permit in order to review an alternative route that would take the pipeline around the environmentally sensitive region of Nebraska. Republicans accuse President Obama of delaying the process to appease environmentalists ahead of the November presidential elections.

The breakfast was hosted by a former US ambassador to Canada and a former Speaker of the South Carolina legislature, David Wilkins. He told the audience: “What most Americans view as common-sense or no-brainer energy policy, like drilling off our own shores, or in ANWR, or approving a pipeline to ship oil from Canada – a trusted ally, a stalwart partners in the pursuit of liberty, and a strong environmental steward – somehow has all fallen victim to the worst kind of partisan politics in Washington.”

(Note: this post has been updated with the same map used in Rep. Mulvaney’s presentation.)

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Twitter/luizachsavage

Adding fuel to the fire in Nigeria

By Kristy Hutter - Monday, January 16, 2012 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Sunday Alamba/AP

Africa’s most populated country has not had a good start to 2012. Thousands of Nigerians took to the streets of its two largest cities, Lagos and Abuja, to protest against President Goodluck Jonathan’s Jan. 1 decision to cancel fuel subsidies, which virtually doubled the price of gas across the country. The jump—45 cents to almost $1 per litre—has outraged Nigerians, most living on less than $2 a day. Ironically, Nigeria is Africa’s most oil-rich nation, but foreign companies such as BP and Shell own and operate the high-functioning refineries that produce two billion barrels each day—a process that resulted in two major oil spills in the past month.

The demonstrations come just as the president confirmed that the local Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has infiltrated parliamentary and legislative arms of the government. The group has already been held responsible for four Christmas Day bombings, and is fighting to impose a strict interpretation of sharia law throughout the country.

Pressure builds on Iran oil sector

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 13, 2012 at 1:39 PM - 0 Comments

The U.S. is ramping up its efforts to put pressure on Iran’s Islamic regime, thought to be pursuing a nuclear weapons program, by squeezing the country’s oil sector. Late Thursday night, the U.S. State Department announced sanctions against three large oil companies—including, including, in a bold move, China’s Zhuhai Zhenrong—for selling refined oil products to Iran. “This is an extremely unfriendly signal,” said analyst Li Guofu of the China Institute for International Studies, speaking with the Financial Times. Refined oil products are considered crucial to Iran’s economy since the country doesn’t have the domestic infrastructure to refine crude oil on its own. The targeted sanctions come as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner visited Asia’s two largest economies this week, pressuring China and Japan to reduce the amount of oil they import from Iran. Japan, which imports 10 per cent of its oil from Iran, pledged to reduce its crude trade with Iran after Geithner’s visit.

AP

The Financial Times

Pipelines and battle lines

By Alex Ballingall - Friday, January 13, 2012 at 7:15 AM - 0 Comments

After the U.S. delayed its decision on whether to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would carry oil sands bitumen from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quick to stress his government’s renewed enthusiasm for exporting more oil to Asia. He called it “an important priority” for Ottawa.

With those words, the heated pipeline fight shifted from Keystone to the Northern Gateway project in British Columbia, where Calgary-based Enbridge Inc., hopes to lay a 1,172-km oil sands pipeline to the port town of Kitimat. For environmentalists, the economic benefits—estimated by Enbridge to add $270 billion to Canada’s GDP over 30 years—don’t outweigh the risk of an oil spill, something Enbridge experienced with much publicity in July 2010, when one of its pipes burst into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. Nathan Lemphers, a Pembina Institute analyst, says Northern Gateway’s route leaves it vulnerable to landslides and avalanches, increasing odds of a rupture. He also points to the B.C. coastline, where an oil tanker spill could devastate salmon stocks and wipe out the region’s orcas, according to a 2010 report by the Raincoast Conservation Society. Alongside such disquiet are concerns over Aboriginal land rights. Continue…

Ghana’s cursed growth

By Paul Carlucci - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 2:29 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Paul Carlucci

The West may be paddling an ocean of debt and disorder–naught but austerity and tatty lifestyle reductions–but Africa is booming, especially Ghana, one of the world’s fastest growing economies in 2011.

In this West African nation, it’s the era of oil. Tapped just over a year ago in the Gulf of Guinea, the Jubilee Oil Field contributed seven per cent of the country’s 14.6 per cent growth last year. A reported 23 million barrels were lifted out of the field in 2011 by Ireland’s Tullow Oil and other stakeholders. The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, a 13 per cent shareholder, lifted $344 million-worth.

But discoveries of vast natural reserves are notoriously a tricky thing to manage. There’s the text-book case of the Netherlands–which economists dubbed the Dutch Disease–, where natural gas reserves found in the 1960s lead to an appreciation of the local currency that eventually chocked a number of domestic exporters. And then, of course, there’s Nigeria, where billions in oil wealth did little to relieve the wretched poverty of the Niger Delta region.

Ghana is having its own share of troubles. Critics say millions have already been lost in unpaid corporate taxes and a skewed royalty system. Meanwhile, the oil-propelled growth has failed to create jobs or spur development in a country that, despite its recent elevation to lower-middle income status, still struggles with grinding poverty in its urban, rural, southern and northern regions.

“The growth associated with oil development is false-growth because the investment does not have direct bearing on the economy,” says Mohammed Amin Adam, an energy economist and the national oil coordinator of Publish What You Pay Ghana, an advocacy group. “Development hasn’t kept pace with growth,” he adds. Despite the GDP numbers, “more and more people are coming under the poverty line.”

There are three issues the government needs to address if it wants to turn Ghana’s oil sector into a ground-level growth machine, says Adam. The first revolves around supply side economics. Ghana is largely an import-based economy. It ships away its raw materials–gold, timber, cocoa–for production elsewhere, then buys back finished products. The influx of oil revenue, says Adam, is playing up this dynamic, swelling up demand that can’t be met domestically. If the supply side can’t match the rise in demand from the inflow of oil revenue, the result will be inflation, he says.

And the oil money is feeding another beast: corruption. Unquestionably, Ghana is not new to the problem. An anti-corruption NGO recently estimated that the country loses $4 billion a year to pernicious seepage, and Transparency International ranked it 69th out of 183 countries in its 2011 Global Corruption Perception Index. But civil society watchdogs worry that the oil bonanza will ratchet up greed in 2012, an election year, and beyond.

Bribes and graft, in turn, will “increase the cost of investment,” predicts Adam. He’s talking about general investment, including in non-oil sectors, where the potential lies for Ghana to create the jobs it needs. The oil boom, in fact, has been largely jobless. Unemployment was at 11 per cent in 2000, according to the latest census, but the government plainly admits it doesn’t know how many people are out of a job these days. One thing is for sure, though, pouring more of the oil money into the agricultural sector would help put people to work, says Adam. Agriculture made up about 16 per cent of  Ghana’s GDP in 2011, and that’s where a big portion of the country’s permanent jobs are. “Depending on how we spend the money in the non-oil sector that have higher growth potential, higher employment potential, like agriculture, then that could help the country,” muses Adam. A planned Heritage Fund is meant to address these sort of ideas about how to use the oil money. Alas, it only accounts for only nine per cent of that revenue.

Joe Oliver vs. the radicals, or among them

By Paul Wells - Monday, January 9, 2012 at 6:47 PM - 0 Comments

The Natural Resources Department was always where you worked if you thought environmentalists were a bunch of kooks. In the late 1990s, when the world was young and Kyoto was fresh and new, Natural Resources used to leak like a firehose right into the notebook of a colleague of mine at the National Post. Herb Dhaliwal, then the minister in charge, made a great show of driving an SUV the size of a hockey rink.

But the leaks were always anonymous and Herb’s SUV was a bit of an inside joke. Times change, and now we have Joe Oliver, who’s written (well, whose signature appears under) an open letter as significant in the annals of Conservative government as the ones Stéphane Dion used to write for Jean Chrétien.

There’s nothing subtle about it. Continue…

Get your environmental concerns off Joe Oliver’s lawn

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 9, 2012 at 12:51 PM - 0 Comments

The Natural Resources Minister takes on the environmental regulatory system, environmentalists, celebrity, air travel, foreigners, America and civil law.

Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade. Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams.

These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources. Finally, if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.

This is perhaps reminiscent of the rhetoric directed at the NDP in the House last month—see here, here and here.

‘Dirty oil’ vs. ‘blood bananas’ slugfest

By Nicholas Köhler - Friday, January 6, 2012 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

iStock; Chuck Burton/AP

On the surface it’s a silly affair, no more serious than a banana peel pratfall. It began in November, when Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International—the banana company—wrote a letter committing to avoid “fuels from tar sands refineries” while vowing to work toward the “elimination of those fuels.” That pledge was in response to an anti-oil-sands campaign mounted by ForestEthics, an activist group based in San Francisco’s fabled Haight-Ashbury, the one-time hippie district, against Chiquita and Dole, another fruit giant. “Say no to rotten tar sands bananas,” reads the campaign’s website, rottenbananas.org, part of a broader campaign drawing attention to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would funnel Alberta crude to Texas, but which has now been put on hold over environmental concerns.

What ensued was a fight between environmentalists on the one hand and pro-oil-sands lobbyists on the other, over who can claim to be “ethical.” ForestEthics often wins these battles. Ten years ago, to cite one example, similar persuasion forced the U.S. office supply chain Staples Inc. to sell more recycled paper, a commitment that required it to introduce fundamental changes to its procurement practices. “When we find that wild places and forests are being destroyed, we determine which corporations are purchasing the products of that destruction,” ForestEthics says on its website. “If a corporation refuses to change its practices, we hold that company publicly accountable—with protests, websites, email campaigns, national advertisements, and more.” In other words, the group goes on to boast, “we turn our corporate adversaries into allies.”

With Chiquita it’s been tougher going. That’s in large part due to a counterattack engineered by the Alberta-based Ethical Oil Institute, a pro-industry group that touts Canada’s oil sands as more “ethical” than oil sourced from human rights basket cases like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In response to Chiquita’s promise to forgo oil sands crude “where possible,” Ethical Oil launched a campaign to boycott its bananas. The gambit spawned what the group calls a “grassroots” movement among Canadians, who began voicing their disapproval of Chiquita via Facebook and Twitter (one handle that appeared: @BloodBananas). “Canadians should be fighting back,” Ethical Oil spokeswoman Kathryn Marshall says. “We’re proud of our record when it comes to the environment and human rights, and we’re sick of being picked on—we’re the good guys, not the bad guys.”

Continue…

Iran threatens to choke key global oil route

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 28, 2011 at 11:39 AM - 0 Comments

The chief of Iran’s navy has warned that Iran could easily close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in response to western sanctions, according to the Globe and Mail. Admiral Habibollah Sayyari announced on Iranian state-run Press TV on Wednesday, “closing the Strait of Hormuz is very easy for Iranian naval forces,” echoing similar remarks made on Tuesday by Vice President Mohamed Reza Rahimi. The comments come as the Iranian navy conducts a ten-day military exercise in the region. The West has shown increasing concern over Iran’s nuclear program, accusing the regime of attempting to develop weapons under the guise of civilian nuclear energy and medical research. Meanwhile, Saudi officials have said Gulf countries can step up oil production to make up for any potential shortfalls in Iranian oil. The nation currently produces about four billion barrels daily, and depends on oil exports for 80 per cent of its revenues.

Globe and Mail

Harper shrugs off Keystone stall

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 1:35 PM - 0 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he’s serious about selling Canadian oil to Asia, and cast doubts on a U.S. approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in an interview with CTV National News to be aired on Boxing Day. The comments were made a day after the Obama administration signalled it could reject the $7-billion project linking the Alberta tar sands to Texas, following approval by the U.S. Senate of a bill that could force his government to make a decision on the project within 60 days. Although approval of the project is still possible, pending a U.S. State Department review of alternate pipeline routes, Harper seemed skeptical it would actually go forward. When asked about the likelihood of selling oil to China at the expense of angering Washington, the prime minister said he was recently told in the U.S. that Keystone would get done, but added that Canada is now on a different track.

Postmedia

Alberta’s oil for Alaska’s natural gas?

By macleans.ca - Monday, December 12, 2011 at 10:22 AM - 0 Comments

The Obama administration’s move earlier this year to delay approval—or rejection—of the proposed Keytone XL pipeline, which would link Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the American Gulf Coast, rocked the Canadian energy industry. The decision on Keystone won’t now be made until after next year’s U.S. presidential election. Into the policy void steps Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom: A Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the New Global Economy, with a proposal for an entirely new pipeline strategy. In this New York Times commentary, Easterbrook argues Washington’s strategic priority should be shifting its energy economy from heavy reliance on imported oil to more consumption of American natural gas. That includes huge Alaskan natural gas reserves. His proposition: “American consent for moving Canadian oil-sand products across the Midwest should be tied to Canadian consent for an Alaskan natural gas pipeline across British Columbia.” This “package deal” would satisfy the Alberta oil patch and the growing U.S. lobby for a made-in-America energy strategy. As well, Easterbrook points out that natural gas contributes considerably less to global warming than oil or coal.

The New York Times

It’s time for Canada to seek other friends besides the U.S.

By the editors - Monday, November 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Charles Dharapak/AP

From no-brainer to brainless in just a few weeks—Canada’s best interests have once again been trumped by American politics.

Just a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was calling the approval by the United States of TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico a “complete no-brainer.” The benefits to both countries in terms of employment, energy security and trade from the $7-billion project were so obvious and manifest that U.S. President Barack Obama’s consent seemed a sure thing.

Then Hollywood got involved. Superannuated stars such as Robert Redford and Daryl Hannah added their names to over-the-top civil disobedience protests against a “tar sands” pipeline from Alberta. Among the few coherent complaints expressed by green groups was concern the pipeline would cross the Ogallala aquifer that provides several Midwest states with drinking water. The project quickly became a test of Obama’s environmental credentials.

Continue…

Tony Hayward’s comeback

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

Alex Wong/Getty Images

He became infamous during the Gulf of Mexico spill. Now he’s drilling for oil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Drilling for oil has become an increasingly risky business. Most unexploited reservoirs are either far below the ocean, or in parts of the world where extracting the fossil fuel is either exceedingly expensive (like Alberta’s oil sands), or too dangerous. And Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP, doesn’t seem fazed by any of it.

After leaving BP last year in the wake of the disastrous Gulf of Mexico spill, Hayward recently re-emerged at the helm of a London-based energy investment company that, far from playing it safe, is hoping to strike it rich in one of the most geopolitically challenging places on earth: Iraqi Kurdistan. With Americans still furious about his now infamous Gulf crisis remark, “I want my life back,” Hayward earlier this year joined forces with financier Nat Rothschild, ex-Goldman Sachs banker Julian Metherell and entrepreneur Tom Daniels to create a so-called “blank cheque” investment company. Called Valleres PLC, it promised to buy and run an oil company somewhere in the world—and raised US$2.2 billion. “He is one of the most talented oil executives in the world,” says Karl Moore, a business professor at McGill University. “And some rich people saw that and said, ‘Hey, now we can get this guy to work for us.’ ”

Continue…

Chevron reports possible oil leak off Louisiana coast

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:46 PM - 0 Comments

A Chevron oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico may be leaking, the company reported Tuesday. Parts of two pipelines connected to the facility were closed to help cope with the possible spill. Chevron has not said how much crude may have leaked from the installation, which sits off the coast of Louisiana. Meanwhile, oil prices slipped below US$90 a barrel Wednesday amidst falling consumer demand.

Reuters

Canadian Press

Choking the oil sands

By Chris Sorensen and Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 9:21 AM - 18 Comments

Jiri Rezac/WWF/Polaris

Over the next few weeks, as many as 2,000 climate change protesters are expected to descend on Washington in an effort to draw more Americans into the debate over Alberta’s oil sands—one of the most carbon-intensive sources of fossil fuel on the planet. But this time, anti-oil sands groups aren’t focusing on the vast open pit mines near Fort McMurray, which one activist memorably compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s fire-spewing and charcoal-covered realm of Mordor, but on a major pipeline project that the industry needs to move forward with its expansion plans.

Supported by such high-profile environmentalists and left-leaning luminaries as David Suzuki and Naomi Klein, the protesters, who will risk arrest during their White House sit-in, hope to stop President Barack Obama’s administration from approving the proposed 2,673-km Keystone XL pipeline that is being built by TransCanada Corp. and would move crude oil from northern Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, north of the border, anti-pipeline rallies are scheduled to take place over the next few months in Vancouver and Ottawa. In addition to the Keystone XL project, the Canadian rallies will also focus on a proposed 1,170-km pipeline, built by Enbridge Inc., that would connect northern Alberta to an oil-shipping terminal in Kitimat, B.C., running through an area that opponents claim is pristine wilderness and the habitat of a sacred species of bear.
Continue…