Anybody remember Stephen Harper’s plan to turn Canada into “an energy superpower”? That was in July 2006, a dream articulated in Mr. Harper’s first speech abroad as Canada’s prime minister. Canada was not only about to become “a new energy superpower,” Mr. Harper told the Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce in
Continue readingTag: West Texas Intermediate
Alberta Politics: Budget Day: Creatures of the night return to the hallways of Alberta’s Legislature as boisterous protesters chant outside
The thing about Budget Day at the Legislature that news media seldom gets across is that the real news usually isn’t the budget. The budget’s broad strokes are all known long before the details roll off the press at the Queen’s Printer or its privatized equivalent. Alberta Finance Minister Travis
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Day After: Alberta heavy crude prices squirt upward in wake of Rachel Notley’s production cap announcement
It was nice for Alberta’s New Democratic Party Government that the first thing the price of Alberta heavy crude did the morning after Premier Rachel Notley’s announcement her government would cap production of Alberta oil by 8.7 per cent for three months was to squirt upward. On Friday night, Western
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Trump’s anti-Canadian antics are good news for Alberta pipeline advocates – whether or not that was the plan
U.S. President Donald Trump may not actually have intended to deliver a blow to West Coast environmentalists opposed to the completion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project, but he has done so with his recent dubious allegations about Canada’s trading practices. Building a pipeline capable of carrying diluted bitumen
Continue readingAlberta Politics: United Conservative Party stance on climate change amounts to not much more than hot air
PHOTOS: Hurricane Harvey batters Corpus Christie, Texas. (Photo: ABC News.) Below: Guest post author Barret Weber, Conservative leadership contenders Jason Kenney and Brian Jean, and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives researchers Shannon Daub and Seth Klein. Guest Post by Barret Weber One truly surprising aspect of the United Conservative Party
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Are Alberta’s cannily incompetent Conservatives quietly awaiting a ‘Bitumen Gusher’?
Everybody should be as happy about Alberta’s “Bitumen Gusher” as these two guys, your blogger and former Finance Minister Ron Liepert. Below: AUPE’s chart of the price differential between Alberta bitumen and West Texas Intermediate crude. Below that: The Alberta government’s chart showing its natural resource revenue projections to 2022,
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Alberta oil selling at 50% discount to world price…
…which explains why the Canadian government is Hell-and-High-Water-bent on building a pipeline, any pipeline, anywhere. First, the stats Over the past few months, new stories have noted that Canada’s oil sector isn’t getting full price for its heavy oil — in large part because American pipelines are well-supplied with newly-flowing
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