I wonder if Morneau can still put a 'stop payment' on that $4.5 billion cheque to Kinder Morgan?
A new report from a major French bank, one of the world's largest, says oil prices are heading for the tank.
The report from French financial giant BNP Paribas estimates that the market price of oil will have to fall dramatically in the next decade or two, or the industry risks losing its entire ground transport customer base.
“The oil industry has never before in its history faced the kind of threat that renewable electricity in tandem with electric vehicles poses to its business model,” wrote Mark Lewis, global head of sustainability research at the bank’s asset management division.
He described his estimates as a “death toll for (gasoline).”
Lewis’ analysis found that within a decade or two, oil will have to fall in price to around US$10 to US$20 per barrel to be competitive as a transport fuel. For comparison: Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil prices, has been trading at around US$58 per barrel recently.That's not good news for guys who've just bet the farm on bitumen pipelines or provinces have figure bitumen royalties mean they don't need a sales tax. Tough.
“If you can’t produce oil below $20 a barrel within 10 years, you’re going to have a big problem selling oil as a transportation fuel,” he said.
Justin, Jason - sorry boys but it sounds like there's a real constrictor coming your way and it might just squeeze the life out of your Athabasca tar pits. While you're waiting you might want to figure out how you're going to raise the nearly quarter trillion dollars needed to clean up those tailing ponds, the tar pits and those thousands of orphan wells. Just a suggestion.
6 comments:
Prices headed for the bottom despite all efforts to either sabotage or derail supplies. Recent case in point: 'Yemen' or 'Iran' drone attacking Saudi Arabia. Sure.
The Oil Barons would be content with WW III before letting go of their daily take from all of us suckers who continue to pump gas.
.. I'm certain you recall my highly contraversial plan to end the Boat Harbour, Nova Scotia debacle.. Mound. It entails Remediation .. shutting down the pulp and paper mill yet without killing off the community. All current employeees would be offered new paid training as 'remediation exemplars' to clean up Boat Harbour and also ensuring the local businesses and comminity are not trashed or affected adversely. What cost might that entail ? I seriously doubt 1 Billion gets it done till all current employees are moving on as remediation experts & possibly to other parts of Canada or other nations.. and the local community prospers accordingly.
Again, Boat Harbour is a small Atlantic inlet trashed and ruined by astonishing daily toxic polloution.. the ecology died within a week of the mill opening.. as millions of litres of toxic liquids were flushed into it daily, starting in the 1960's - so lets say 50 years ago
So look at Alberta and/or BC now.. the vast tar sands tailings ponds, the toxic ponds from fracking, here there and anywhere in Alberta or BC.. where fresh sparkling inland waters were used as toilet paper prior to pollution dumping or toxic abandonment.. And does not water flow downstream always ? Last I looked, gravity still applies except in politics. Where will the toxic waters and sludge be disappeared to ? Mars ? The moon? Mexico ? Think more in the trillions.. not billions.. and that its an impossible task that will be dumped upon a shocked nation, provinces and taxpayers. Alberta elected a premier who will not or cannot utter the word 'remediation'
Boat Harbour Nova Scotia, Grassy Narrows, Ontario or Mt Polley BC show us that the political will re remediation is unicorn fantasy. The cost is beyond estimating.. and even if possible, would have to be accomplished while we seek financing and solutions for replanting trees, desertification,. or saving the Amazon or a fishery or two..
How are we doing at remediating the east coast fishery ? And even if we were attempting it, at what cost daily ? And how exactly ? Hell, we can't save the wild salmon of the Pacific.. or the herring and instad we will wipe out the shellfish, orca and marine coast wildlife.. Its sayonara boreal caribou and wolf.. that's the grand plan & the only plan of bitumen and fracking.. Environment, habitat and species are seen by government as 'impediments' to 'Nation Building' and neverending economic growth.. bring on the temporary foreign workers at minimum wage the new war cry !!!
Oil will not be decreasing so the news from Saudi indicates.
"the political will re remediation is unicorn fantasy" It's the Love Canal mentality and it has taken hold with our leadership. Northern Alberta as one giant Superfund site. It will make Trudeau's $4.5 billion blunder look like chump change.
I lived in the Pictou County area after returning from the UK in 1974. Boat Harbour ruination had been going on for seven years following Scott Paper's Abercrombie plant opening a couple of miles away. Then there was all the mercury pollution from Canso Chemicals located next door to Scott Paper, now shut down thank goodness. God knows what pollution Michelin emits just a few miles down the road and where it goes.
These days the Abercrombie Poibt plant is owned by some foreign entity or another trying to operate on the cheap, and has managed to rouse its pulp suppliers who are NOT local, thousands of wood cutters, operating on private land because NS has few Crown lands, spread over thousands of square kilometres. The locals are just the plant operating staff, a few dozen. The woodcutters are the lobbyists for keeping the plant open no matter what. Still, the provincial government has said, if nothing's done by next Jan 20, it's shutdown time. A plan the plant presented a couple of months ago for remediation was returned as a failed exercise after just a few days, and the plant was told to get serious instead of presenting a Grade 7 project as a solution. So we'll see.
Now, there are many pulp mills across this country, with presumably the same kind of effluent as Abercrombie sends to Boat Harbour. What do they do for remediation, or is there a complete blind eye turned towards them by governments? You never hear a word about all the other pulp mills. Is it all wonderful with unicorns grazing in green pastures next door? One wonders, because I simply do not know and the internet is not exactly bursting with this kind of info.
BM
There are many disastrous operations in most provinces that go unnoticed, BM. I dealt with the bankruptcy of an ore crushing mill in the BC interior. Bidders were keen to get it because it came with a grandfathered permit allowing it to dump tailings, including cyanide, in an adjacent lake. The banks who held the paper on it, even the courts, looked the other way.
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