What is a “World Leading Practice”. Sounds like a lot of bull.

promises, promises I dont believe a word. And in the end we will get the shaft.
Cheers

A massive BC tax grab on every litre of bitumen that goes through the proposed pipeline, say in the range of 60 to 80 percent should kill the pipeline in its tracks. For 100 percent of the risk I think those numbers are fair.

Projected numbers of jobs and royalties doesn’t seem to be enough to gain the support of a lot of and perhaps the majority of Canadians or the people of BC to allow these pipelines. Assuming the environmental issues could be made to be seen by most as adequately addressed, then the issue remains as to the economic benefits of having these pipelines built.

Why is it that all other energy producing and energy exporting superpowers see the values of their energy wealth being DIRECTLY distributed to their own people? Hugo Chavez was made out to be quack by the oil bribed US government when in fact he was looking after his own people and country’s economic interests. Do we have any political representatives that are that smart in this country? Apparently not.

Why is it that Canada and BC just ignore this and stick their heads in the sands..oilsands to be exact? If the ballooning revenues and royalties which our energy sector is supposed to generate from all this expansion then why not lower taxes that Canadian consumers pay in energy taxes? Just say that fuel taxes went down by 25 or 50% and what that would do to the disposable income which would further stimulate our economy?
Why is it that our government claims to “get out of our pockets” and “lower taxes” and yet does not lower taxes on energy? If governments want the support for these projects then they should give the incentives which are due to their voters and the shareholders of Canada rather than the shareholders of these oil and gas companies who run the world’s economy and makes slaves out of us.

If the oil and gas giants are going to see the increases to their productions, the increases to their sales prices, the likely reductions to their production costs, and all that from dramatically increased market access then why is it they cannot share that wealth with the people of Canada by reducing domestic prices for the energy which Canadians use? Canadians deserve some sort of incentives to this mass exploitation of this precious resource. Canadians also deserve some sort of protections from the market manipulations that occur everyday in this country that ends up costing us more than we should even have to pay now. Manipulations of fuel shortages and retail price fixing and stories of supply and demand problems which are all used to hose the Canadian energy consumer. This globally dominating energy cartel is not our friends and they will not volunteer to help Canada or its citizens and industries to have affordable energy. The more access to other higher priced markets they have the more we are going to pay and it will destroy our economy as we have the most energy reliant economy on earth.

If these pipelines are built the way they are proposed then the price of energy in Canada is going to go up, WAY UP as all of other industries and consumers will suffer from the world forces of energy prices until the only economy we have left is the energy economy and guess who wants that.

I don’t care if it upsets the people who subscribe to Greenspan’s mission to destroy the earth but market controls are needed to protect countries from being exploited and depleted of their wealth by being made to believe that all that matters is they might have a job…for a while.

This is from one of the submissions to the hearings.

In 2009, the Government of Alberta estimated that an investment of $314 billion in value-added upgrading industrial cluster in Alberta (upgrading, refining and petrochemical production) over the course of 20 years would increase provincial, federal and municipal revenues by $748 billion, add nearly 2 million jobs to the economy, and increase cumulative GDP by more than $5 trillion.

In the same study, the Government of Alberta noted that bitumen alone captures only about 35 per cent of the value chain associated with the full spectrum of products from the oil sands. With synthetic crude oil (SCO) upgrading, this figure rises to about 70 percent. Optimization of the value chain of products from the oil sands can capture nearly all of the value (up to 100 per cent), but requires refining in addition to upgrading.

In a study commissioned by the Government of Alberta, Kline & Company, a market research firm, estimated that upgrading bitumen in Alberta results in approximately four times the value per barrel of bitumen processed. In other words, if the amount of bitumen that would be exported by the Northern Gateway Pipeline project were to be upgraded in Alberta instead, its value would quadruple to be in the $48-billion range. This would result in an incredible windfall for Alberta‘s workers and the governments of Alberta and Canada alike.

As the saying goes, “one cannot fix stupid”. However, one does not have to go along with stupid.

If it makes sense – let’s NOT do it!

Seems to me that if all these billions are available to be made in Alberta, that the Oil Companies would go ahead and do the upgrading etc.

The fact that they want to export this oil to China, or the USA makes one think that they stand to make more money exporting it, otherwise why would they do it.???

When it comes to making money, oil companies are not stupid.

How about “supplly and demand”.What will happen is thatif this oil is exported it will increase the demandm and drive up the price of gas for the comsumer in Canada.

The oil companies will make bigger profits and the government also wins by taxing the cost of gas for the consumer. its a win win for globalization which we have been led to believe is the only way we can survive
The consumer gets the shaft and the corporations get our hard earned money.
Ceers

This is just reckless behavior.
Has anyone noticed that B.C. seems to be having a lot of land slides lately. I’m not thrilled that P.G. is below this pipeline. P. G. had better pray that these pipes don’t burst, the human body needs good clean water. I don’t believe that Harper is for us, but rather against. I would like to see his bank acc. after he finishes his stint office.

When Newfoundland and Labrador developed hydro projects in Labrador, they set up a transmission through Quebec. Quebec charged a fee for this line, much to the chagrin of Newfoundland. So when Newfoundland and Labrador planned another project, they decided to transmit the power across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and New Brunswick because it would be cheaper. The idea of a province charging another province a fee for transporting energy products is not new in this country. If Alberta gets its way and the pipeline is built across BC, they better be ready to pay the price of using the province of British Columbia as a gateway.

I for one am not in favor of giving the proposed pipeline any traction whatso ever. I don’t trust Crusty Clark and I don’t trust Harper. Niether one of them has BC’s interest at heart. I believe that we need an NDP government that would ensure the average Canadians’ interest would see the light of day.

Liberals should just lay down altogether

There is nothing new about the public being directly paid for natural resource extraction.
It is political suicide to not incorporate that into this economic formula of extracting and shipping this oil from Alberta and across BC.

Alberta and Alaska both pay their citizens a share directly of this oil wealth and it wasn’t good enough for them to just promise the benefits of it through general revenues and expenditures.

There is nothing new about countries restricting the exports of their natural resources.

The nations which are big oil producers look after their own interests and their own people such as Venezuela and the OPEC countries. Even the US placed restrictions on Alaskan natural gas being only for domestic consumption.

It is said that if the latest Chinese takeover bid of another Canadian Oil and Gas company goes through that China will then directly own 20% of the entire oilsands.

What reason would they have to want to share (at any price) what they see as a critical life support of their economy by buying and owning their oil and gas supplies in Canada? Their national security is seen by them as much more important than what we see as our national energy security.

We are allowing ourselves to be bought out like some sort of desperate 3rd world country and the short sighted supposed emergency of job creation. There are already an endless amount of jobs that Canadians are not filling and hence the need for immigrant workers in many places in western Canada.

Just how many years of promised employment are we selling our souls as nothing more than being temporary employed surfs in our own land? When all this expansion to producing the oil from the sand is done, how long will it last and just how much of it will Canadians actually have access to? or at what price?
How much of the total oilsands are actually profitable to produce and how much of this information is smoke and mirrors so as to prevent the concerns of this country running out of its own oil supplies?

People freak about sustainable forestry, but trees grow back. People freak about log exports, but trees grow back and we can legislate restrictions to all this and repair what mistakes are made. Can we repair any of the mistakes that are being made with our non renewable energy resources as they were sold as exportable in raw form and it doesn’t grow back?

Have we already past the point of no return in that the influences of the world scale oilsands mega-mega developments are so big that they are not only too big to control but that they are too big to remain as a Canadian resource for Canadian energy security? The answer seems to be YES and perhaps the best we can do is to receive a better share of the proceeds of what are for the most part already sold. Perhaps that extra revenue can afford the more urgent development of renewable and alternative energy sources here in Canada.

All Canadian and provincial governments need to realise there is a huge national importance to retaining control over our resources rather than just selling the resource in place to the highest bidder who then dictates to us that they do what they like with them.

The Quebecois could take some of the $100 billion that Western Canada has given for free since ’95 using it for investments in oil sands companies, and pipelines like the Chinese and Americans are doing. It appears that the Bloc Orange would  prefer to ‘hold a gun to the heads of western Canadians ‘ bullying, stealing their oil at a reduced cost, denying unimpeded acess to global markets with a campaign of misinformation whilst hiding behind the skirts of percieved doomsday scenarios. Thereby stagnating the Western Canadian economies, and forcing the western provinces inhabitants to lose the financial benefits of a free market economy, reducing Canada Pension Plan members benefits, and health benefits funding in the process.

This current National Socialist Workers Party style of instigating fear, and denial of scientific fact is unnecessay especially in BC. Propagating ‘racist’ remarks about globalization, foreigners taking your countrymens jobs, and the ‘giving away’ your countries resources, being preached of late are eerily similar to what one may find in “Mein Kempf”.

Nothing is stopping any Canadian from putting counter offers to purchase oil sands on the table.

Currently  the provincial wing of the party is popular however as time passes more evidence is demonstrating ‘jackbooting’ methods in attempts to silence the very same science that proves anthropogenic pollution, also proves their anti-pipeline fear campaign is unsubstantiated.

Please educate yourselves do not be scared or intimitated or hood winked below are some excerpts from NRCAN

“Canada is the 6th largest oil producer in the world, and a price taker in a global oil market. Canadian crude oil is sold both domestically and in the US market at the world price. Despite the fact that Canada is a major net exporter of crude oil, refineries in Atlantic Canada and central Canada continue to import crude from producers overseas. This occurs because of the low cost of moving crude oil by ship, and the relatively high cost of pipelining crude oil across Canada. Some of the crude imported is re-exported to the US in the form of refined petroleum products.

For geographic and economic reasons, oil is exported from the west and the Atlantic offshore and imported into eastern and central Canada. On balance, Canada is a large and growing net oil exporter. Domestic sources supply all of the crude oil used in Western Canada and close to three quarters of Ontario’s crude oil demand. Most crude oil demand in Quebec (365 kb/d in 2009) and the Alantic provinces (372 kb/d in 2009) is met with imports.

Canada accounts for about 12% of the world’s proved oil reserves, and 97% of Canadian reserves are in the form of oil sands. Based on the current rate of production, Canada has at least 175 years of crude oil reserves.

Alberta holds around 35% of Canada’s conventional oil reserves and the Western Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba collectively account for about 61% of Canada’s conventional oil reserves.

Canadian refineries constantly replenish their supplies of crude oil through pipelines and crude oil tankers to ensure that adequate supplies are maintained for Canadians. Refineries in Atlantic Canada have the highest crude oil inventories in terms of forward supply levels as they rely on imported crude almost exclusively.

In 2009, 360 kb/d or 45% of Canada’s crude oil imports came from OPEC member countries. Twenty-seven percent of Canada’s crude oil imports came from the North Sea, and other regions accounted for the remaining 28% of imports.

Based on weekly crude oil runs as reported to the National Energy Board, the Canadian refining industry typically operates at approximately 90% of capacity. However, in 2008 the industry operated at an average of 87% capacity. This decreased again in 2009 to 78% – the lowest refinery utilization rate in a decade. Essentially, low petroleum product demand due to the

Canada exports significant volumes of gasoline, primarily to the US eastern seaboard, from refineries in Atlantic Canada. In fact, in 2008, 65% of the products manufactured in Atlantic Canada were exported, accounting for over 77% of Canada’s total exports of refined petroleum products. Atlantic Canadian refiners have been very successful in marketing their ultra-low sulphur products into the US In 2008, Irving Oil announced plans for a new petroleum refinery, the Eider Rock project, that could process up to 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day. However, in July 2009, Irving Oil and its partner BP announced that the proposed new refinery would be postponed.

In addition to being a large exporter of petroleum products to the US, Atlantic Canada also has good access to petroleum product imports. Domestic refiners must thus compete with supplies from the Northeastern US and Europe.

The Quebec and Ontario markets are becoming increasingly integrated with significant Quebec refined product being transported to Toronto via the Trans-Northern pipeline. Quebec also serves as a gateway to Ontario for imported products.

In Western Canada the supply and demand balance for petroleum products has become increasingly tight because much of Western Canada is landlocked, there is limited access to supplies from other regions. Refineries had been operating at near full capacity for several years. However, supply constraints from planned turnarounds and unplanned refinery maintenance and closures resulted in the region becoming a net importer of gasoline and distillates in 2007 and 2008 and of gasoline in 2009.”

http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca.energy/files/pdf/eneene/sources/crubru/revrev/pdf/revrev-09-eng.pdf

I think ecotruth misses the point.

We all know the great things that happen in a wide open unrestricted free market economy like the financial collapse that the world is still trying to find a way through. Thanks mr greenspan for all your wisdom.

Foreign ownership or foreign controlled supply of their demand? How does that square with your free market economy?

The Canadian government is something that has a big problem when it comes to counting stuff and relying on a nrcan estimate from 2009 doesn’t exactly give me any confidence in anything that matters. They cannot count fish and they certainly cannot count money and they have no idea of what the actual output of the oilsands will be. They cannot estimate the rate of expansion that will occur nor what demands will be either domestically or internationally. It does however work for them to be seen as good fiscal managers if they can somehow stop the bleed and increased national debt. No big deal to say a bit more oil exists than what it does if they can keep the people onside to keep increasing exports of it.

Just say that a country such as china needs all the oil that could be had from the oilsands. Just say that they were to buy and own all of this resource. It doesn’t matter what anything else does as they will ensure their national interests are served.

If oil is doing Alberta such wonders then one wonders why it is running a provincial deficit.