Revenues have gone down, taxes have gone up and folks have lost jobs thanks to the trend of hysteric opposition to the safest form of oil/gas transport known to man: pipelines. Time and reality will win in the end and Canada will continue to increase exports of oil and gas products despite the irrational blanket opposition to all development coming from groups that purport to care about working class Canadians.
The usual union backed suspects are already gnashing their teeth in opposition and rounding up bored hipsters and natives to try and stage protests against Canada’s latest effort to bring jobs and prosperity. The ink isn’t dry on the proposal and it does not need to be. Reality and facts are of no consequence as organized labor claims to care about the working man yet consistently opposes all efforts to create infrastructure to support an industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people. Screeching members of the loony-left automatically oppose all energy development while howling for more expenditure on a myriad of social programs. The folks truly have no concept of where the cash comes from for their beloved arts projects, welfare and even health care. They really believe Canada will be fine without the billions and billions of tax dollars brought in annually from the energy industry.
Now on to reality. The aforementioned chronic opponents of development can and will be dismissed as they are truly irrational and there is no reasoning with them.
Reality: THERE IS NO REASONABLE ALTERNATIVE TO CARBON BASED ENERGY YET!!!
We can make windmills, talk of tidal and geothermal and dream of solar energy. The reality is that none of those sources can generate power in nearly the volume required or at a cost that is at all reasonable at this time. What happened to the hydrogen fuel cell powered car anyway? How about the Volt? How is that biofuel black hole going? Governments can be pressured into investing into many pie-in-the-sky alternatives but fiscal reality inevitably returns to bite them (and the taxpayers in the arse).
Reality: CANADA’S PRODUCTS MUST GET TO MARKET!!!
Canada has some of the largest energy reserves on the entire planet. Our prosperity as an entire nation is not only dependent on our development of these carbon based products but on our selling of those products to consumers outside of Canada. Protectionism is always a shallow farce. We need trade and oil/gas are our strongest items for this. It is not reasonable to turn ourselves into a third world country in refusing to trade with our best asset.
While keeping our energy in could indeed lead to cheap domestic fuel prices, we would be broke otherwise. Venezuela is a wonderful example of foolish policies (socialism). While they have some of the cheapest domestic fuel prices of earth, damn near none of their citizens can afford cars. Not really a good trade.
Reality: THE USA DOES NOT NEED OUR OIL AND GAS
Peak oil has been a myth propagated to keep folks in fear for over 50 years. A few minutes on google can find countless predictions of the world running out of energy and they have all of course been wrong. There has always been somebody predicting the end of the world and to date none have been correct.
New fields are still being discovered and new extraction technology is always coming on-stream.
In the last five years I have spent more than half of my time working South of the border on American oil/gas exploration projects. While we piss and moan and delay domestic energy projects, a very mobile workforce has been taking it’s expertise (and tax dollars) out of the country. We are not going to sit and go broke and wait for common sense to ensue.
I have worked in oilfields in Pennsylvania that are literally well over 140 years old that are now getting new life thanks to fracturing and seismic technology. Texas and Oklahoma are booming as new wells are being drilled and product is flowing. North Dakota is discovering whole new and giant reserves.
I spent three years working in the Arctic on the ice North of Inuvik. I assure you there is at least a couple more generations of oil and gas sitting up there and not a drop has been taken out yet. We need to look ahead but we are a long way from running out of reserves yet.
The USA does not need our energy and pricing ourselves out of the market will not help. We need to get our product to the coastlines in an increasing amount if we want to retain our standard of living across the country.
Reality: OIL AND GAS ARE ALREADY GOING TO OUR COASTS AND IT HAS FOR DECADES!!
It is painful listening to the daft, shallow souls howling about tanker traffic suddenly coming to Canada’s West coast or pipelines spanning our Rocky Mountains when we consider that tankers have been going to the coast already for decades and we have been pipelining oil across the mountains for over sixty years already.
We have transported untold millions of barrels across the mountains and then the Pacific without major incident and our technology is only becoming safer.
Rail traffic in crude oil has quadrupled in just the last few years and it will continue to grow if we keep foolishly delaying pipelines. More bears will get splattered and a much higher risk of spills and derailment will continue if we keep forcing the use of rail despite a safe means of transport being in front of us.
Governments are sensitive to the environmental lobby but they are even more sensitive to revenue. These new pipelines will get approved and will be built no matter how hard the union funded opposition howls. What we have to ask ourselves is how much more time and resources we will waste before getting on with it. We can’t afford as a nation to keep pissing around with this and we will not no matter who heads the next federal government. Reality dictates this, lets accept it and work with it.
I hope you are right, but there seems to be at least as much stupid and ignorance in those that set public policy as there is fossil fuels in the ground. They always seem to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Opposition to technological progress is just one more example of man’s perversity to the point of deathwish. Good analysis, but just try getting this point of view across to knee-jerk obstructionists. The fatal flaw in democracy is clearly that puffed up nay-sayers can win on any issue that their contrary nature urges them to contest. Their advantage, of course, is a sycophantic MSM.
Also, from an environmental perspective, oil is much cleaner than coal, even in terms of GHG emissions.
Well. I think Canada is doing a terrible job when it comes to the Green Standard. In fact it could be said that they don’t give a rats arse about Climate Change, or in fact investing a whole lot in the Green Energy Sector Or Perpetual Energy. Or for that matter in which the environment & Health of our People, Our Citizens have to live in, especially those who live close or around oil production estates.
Simply Put, the government is doing everything in its power to make it seem like there is no pollution going on. None what so ever. But I guess thats easy to do when you control the people like Blind Sheep.
To say that the future prediction of the end of oil is baloney. From Sources like
World Proved Reserves of Oil and Natural Gas, Most Recent Estimates – Energy Information Administration (EIA) – Data from BP Statistical Review, Oil & Gas Journal, World Oil, BP Statistical Review, CEDIGAZ, and Oil & Gas Journal.
And Yet, they all agree that we have some 14,000 days left to the end of oil and gas. Now, unless these Top Organizations are lying. Then yes we don’t have nothing to worry about is there? But the fact that they are coming out with this information, is startling wouldn’t you agree?
So you are saying that “Pie in the sky” Alternatives don’t exist. Okay. That’s fair enough to say. That and you are not a physicist? Are you a inventor? Are you a Engineer or a Scientist? No, you are not. In-fact you are Simply a Writer defending Oil and Gas and I presume you are Hired by them as well to write this Crap literature.. So I guess you cannot relate to any pie in the sky alternatives can you?
Fact is. Our Specie will not rely on Fossil fuels in the future. The future is in Electricity. Electricity will do everything better and more efficient in the future. And more than likely. 100percent safer.
If I offended you and your Oil Bureaucracy. (Which I know I just did) Then I am truly sorry. But for myself. I dont see things as ‘Pie in the Sky”. I see them as your lack of sympathy, lack of self worth, lack of moral obligation to the people who inhabit this animal kingdom. And Last but not least. Towards the Very Creator who placed you Here. May God have no mercy for those who TRESSPASS against HE.
Wow, not only must I apparently be paid by Big Oil to write these things (I wish), I apparently am trespassing against the Creator.
The eco-kook crowd never ceases to entertain if nothing else. 🙂