There's not much Rachel Notley won't do, it seems, to try to fend off her near inevitable loss in next year's Alberta elections. The misery of the Athabasca Bitumen Pits has become Notley's obsession and she is indeed desperate.
Notley, who still parrots the nonsense about a lack of pipeline capacity undermining her province's bitumen bounty, now wants to encourage producers to cut production to raise the going price for Alberta heavy oil. That's "less = more" but "more = even more" or Alberta economics 101.
Notley's latest brain fart? A Bitumen Black Friday. A zero royalties holiday to encourage production cuts.
Alberta is weighing incentives and credits – including the prospect of a royalty holiday – to get producers to reduce output against a proposal from parts of the industry to impose across-the-board production cuts, said a person familiar with the deliberations. The Globe and Mail granted anonymity to the person because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the private discussions.
Alberta’s heavy crude prices have dropped faster and farther than falling U.S. and global oil prices in recent weeks, squeezing profits of some of the sector’s biggest players and forcing others to curtail production.
...Major producers such as Cenovus Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. have urged the government to step in to address what they insist is a market failure.
But big rivals such as Imperial Oil Ltd., Suncor Energy Inc. and Husky Energy Inc. oppose intervention because their refining operations benefit from cheap crude. They have warned that such a move could provoke a backlash from the United States.
This fall, the price gap between Alberta’s heavy oil and the U.S. benchmark oil price topped a record US$50 a barrel. Prices have improved somewhat, but the discount is still double levels typically seen by the industry, sapping revenue ahead of what is normally the busy winter drilling season. Oil sands barrels for future delivery fetched about US$17.81 in Tuesday trading, according to Calgary oil broker Net Energy Exchange.The Globe and Mail, so predictably blames the bitumen blunder on "acute pipeline constraints." Not a mention of the glut of cheap, vastly cleaner gas and oil in the United States. Of course not.
Notley and crew were given a unique opportunity to bring a new vision to Alberta. Instead they have done everything they could to be orange Conservatives.
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ReplyDeleteI think Layton taught the NDP that the quest for power trumps principle in the new-NDP.
.. a big believer in 'natural consequences' - I say 'give em what they deserve' - If Albertans want 'all hat - no cattle' Jason Kenney .. and his pithy evangelical pipeline pimping .. well, 'give er' and go big or don't go !
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I suggest beautiful British Columbia locks down their border.. and lets Alberta isolate itself. Hell, that's Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney's wet dream - firewalled Alberta. I was living and working there before any of those carpetbugger scumbags bought cowboy hats, lizard skin boots and shirts cut from cheap Italian restaurant tablecloths.. you know the red n white tiny squares?
If miss Redford thinks she got a rough ride, wait till Jason Kenney and Ezra Levant start catching heat after four putrid years of promises promises. Do British Columbians really want a piece of this horseshit political twaddle ? Slam those Alberta dilbit pipelines down into the USA I say.. pump the living daylights out of Alberta's tar sands if they must.. get it into Minnysoda Koch World ASAP and let them have the Petcoke residue. Frack the living daylights out of Northern Alberta & leave no untoxified freshwater or a single boreal caribou still twitching. Keep just enough actual oil to refine and be Energy Secure in Alberta..
BC can do the same.. but not just the same - just enough to be energy secure and focus on developing or salvaging all the other aspects and resources and opportunities of BC (which probably is the most blessed region on the entire planet, folks) Make no mistake, I think ms Notely is a fine person.. but she's missing any sense of vision while fending off political pus sacs like Kenney et al.