The Farce just goes on and on… #nlpoli
The farce that is the provincial government’s effort to sell the Muskrat Falls project continues to roll along. There are no timelines, the Telegram tells us, or at least none…
Muskrat Falls
If Ontarians jumped off the wharf… #nlpoli
Ontarians subsidized electricity exports from their province to the tune of about $2.50 a kilowatt hour according to a recent report by the Council for Clean and Reliable Energy and…
Kathy’s Experts #nlpoli
Would you take advice on a megaproject from a company whose own megaproject is 86% over budget and 26 months behind schedule – and counting? ladies and gentleman: Manitoba Hydro…
A Big Tell on Muskrat Falls Exports #nlpoli
A meeting of the Eastern Canadian premiers and all the New England Governors and the provincial government here sends Keith Hutchings. Who? The minister in charge of the innovation and…
A finalized term sheet? #nlpoli
Nalcor and Emera signed a finalised term sheet to develop Muskrat Falls in November 2010. The next step was supposed to be negotiation of a final agreement between Nalcor and…
The Magic Number #nlpoli
“Nalcor’s position”, wrote the joint federal-provincial review panel on the Lower Churchill project, “was that up to 800 MW of energy from the Project would be required to meet provincial…
Demand Forecasts #nlpoli
Yesterday’s offhand reference to Nalcor’s electricity demand forecasts brought home a couple of points to your humble e-scribbler. The biggest one is that a great many people still do not…
There’s no greater yada than a yada yada #nlpoli
The Nunatukavut are a group of aboriginal people living in Labrador. They used to be known as the Labrador Metis. In October 2003, Danny Williams told them – in writing…
Managing Electricity Demand #nlpoli
Nalcor’s forecast for electricity demand on the island of Newfoundland doesn’t really show a massive increase over the next couple of decades. Earlier this year, Memorial University economist Jim Feehan…
There’s reality and … #nlpoli
Premier Kathy Dunderdale decided to talk about reality on Monday. A reality check she called it: “Everybody sees what’s happening with the price of oil, and I see every day…
Magical Thinking and the Muskrat Falls Tax #nlpoli
Muskrat Falls seems to be intimately connected to magic, at least in some people’s minds. For a while there, the gang at Nalcor sounded like they had found a way…
More Muskrat Falls Sunk Cost #nlpoli
That $350 million in sunk costs from Monday morning’s post wasn’t the whole story, of course. You’ll find more detail – and lots more cash – documented in the public…
Rae backs Muskrat…sort of #nlpoli #cdnpoli
Big screaming CBC headline: Federal Liberals support Muskrat Falls project: Rae Then you read the story. “Newfoundland is rich in hydro-electricity, and it’s not right that hydro-electricity should be cooped…
Sunk Cost – Muskrat Falls #nlpoli
The chart below is taken from a Nalcor information hand-out describing the project’s capital expenditures to the end of March 2011. What that covers are the various costs for engineering,…
Dazed and Confused: Swinimer version #nlpoli
You know things are bad when even the people who back Muskrat Falls without question start challenging stuff that has long ago been proven correct. The heir to the Moon…
The Stuff We Don’t Know #nlpoli
Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns: there are things we know we know. We also know…
Going down by the front end #nlpoli
In the late 1980s, the Progressive Conservative administration in Newfoundland and Labrador committed more than $11 million to a plan to grow cucumbers and tomatoes using hydroponic technology developed by…
Executive Politics and Muskrat Falls #nlpoli
In this series, we are not concerned with whether or not the Muskrat Falls project is good or bad. That is a separate issue. Nor are we presenting information you…
High Politics and Muskrat Falls #nlpoli
“ega-projects”, writes political scientist Will Jennings,” exhibit a ‘performance paradox’ …being prevalent and popular among planners despite suffering from extremely poor track records in terms of completion times, cost escalations…
Cost Over-Runs and Muskrat Falls #nlpoli
When announced in November 2010, the Muskrat Falls dam, the line to the island the connection to Nova Scotia were supposed to cost $6.2 billion. The dam and the line…