Are we not at the whim of all companies and governments when it comes to all prices of goods and services? Sometimes that works in our favour, other times it works against us.

Just imagine the price of electronic consumer goods, clothes, etc. if we had access to only domestic products.

As far as oil goes, it appears to me that if there is a windfall profit to be made by putting in infrastructure which will allow improved access to markets outside of North America, we are not charging enough royalty at source and tariffs for allowing the transport through a dedicated corridor to the coast. The oil producing nations of the world do not fill their government coffers by giving the oil away. Neither should we.

Let us make sure that we keep a fair share of the windfall by increasing the money to Alberta for having the oil, Canada, for assisting Alberta by imposing a corridor on BC (if that is the way it will eventually be decided), and for BC for having to accommodate Alberta and the companies.

It will still mean that we will be paying more for gasoline and other oil products, but the government can take the additional revenue and reduce the taxes at the pump to compensate, thus keeping the gasoline prices the same as we currently have.

I think that it’s criminal that a sovereign nation such as Canada does not have full control over its natural resources. Its also criminal that the majority of our natural resources gets shipped off to other countries to be processed into refined products and sold back to us at higher prices….

I agree ….. OPEC had/has it right.

“the principal aim of OPEC is to harmonise the petroleum policies of its Member Countries as part of its efforts to safeguard their interests.

“It further states that members of the Organization shall work together to ensure stable oil prices, secure fair returns to producing countries and investors in the oil industry, and provide a steady petroleum supply to consumers.”

What is interesting is North America has enough oil and gas to supply our needs for hundreds of years. Shutting off exports does not make us money though. Also many oil producing countries do not charge there own people the world price, but we do.

Sorry, Gus, increased share to prov govts or federal will not happen. Sadly, all our friends and neighbours will be out there waving the flag of totally free markets in lock-step with the oil companies who feel that the resources actually belong to them. The war in this country was lost a long time ago.
Interesting news note I ran across yesterday — because of a shortage of gasoline in California right now some stations are closing down — prices have risen but there are stations that have closed down because they say they just cannot sell gas above $5.00 US for a US gallon — apparently they don’t think it is reasonable or else people refuse to buy it. They should sell here — there is no problem selling above that price.
What does that tell you about us??

Since Canada is lacking a National Energy Policy.
We as a nation will not benefit.

Natuaral resources are the Provinces.

and provide a steady petroleum supply to consumers.”
—————————————-
Isnt it wonderfull that the oil barons are concerned about us. lol
There concern is about maximizing their profit.

Ben has it right. We are just pawns and are being move by profit and our government is providing the game.

Saw a piece in the free press where the writer claimed that if the natural gas solidifying planr built at Kitimat will further reduce the cost of natural gas for the consumer in the Northwest..

Allan has just toldd us that the Enbridge project would increase our gas prices. Its the old story of supply and demand as the demand increases so does the price of the product.
Cheers

There are many things at work in Canada that are making us a country that is being steered/sucked into an economic death spiral.

We are being manipulated to sell off our key natural resources and hence our ability to sustain our nation, namely the general population of this country. Our GDP will look fine as the zillions in energy exports are reported and employment will look fine as the shortage of temporary workers takes the limelight…caused by a relatively short period of dramatic development of our energy extraction facilities/pipelines….but we will skid to a stop once that is completed. This is the “boom and bust” of the oil and gas industry and the faster exploitation is allowed the sooner and bigger the bust will be.

We are being mislead to believe the “vast and nearly endless reserves” of oil sands is the holy grail of the Canadian economy which is leading the wide open and unparalleled level of exploitation of this limited and non renewable resource anywhere else on earth. So the bust is immanent and much sooner than anyone is telling us.

One example of how we are being made oblivious: It is supposedly justified that we the people and industries/our entire economy, here in BC should pay carbon taxes and the muffinheads who believe that are the people who are making western Canada into being entirely reliant upon the energy economy as all other industries fade into uneconomical predicaments because of the increased costs of their energy. The “green” spin on everything has made many/most of us oblivious to the economic realities which this country is based. Canadian energy efficiency will not reduce the world’s carbon emissions when we simply charge ourselves more (enough to break our economy) while we export bitumen to countries who could care less about how the stuff is mined and burnt or piped and tanked or consumed with nearly non existent emissions controls.

How many 2x4s will be produced and sell for 2 dollars when the price of energy to produce and transport a 2×4 rises to 3 dollars? So in the end there will be no 2x4s being made where there are long distances from where the trees grow to the mills that manufacture it or to the distant markets where a 2×4 can be sold. We are already experiencing the gradual reduction in tangible benefits of making 2x4s that are eroding because of the degree of which the price of energy keeps taking a larger share from that of employment and royalties that can be charged. So..as the price of energy increases our traditional industries such as farming,forestry and mining are doomed in most parts of this cold vast land called Canada.

This is not Canada selling a barrel at a time to independent greedy oil companies in a free market way, it is Canada selling the absolute wholesale and complete rights of our oil, a finite and non renewable strategically important national security asset to foreign COUNTRIES. The false assumption is that when the chips are down (aka when oil shortages happen/are caused) that we will still have access to our oil/any oil at some price/ANY PRICE.

If I was the Chinese government I would do the same thing; find gullible countries which are stable, lawful and loaded with the resources which the Chinese will need to SUSTAIN ITS ECONOMY. If I was that foreign interest, at best I would not care if Canada could sustain its standard of living as long as the population of my country was increasing its standard of living. At worst I would structure my strategic investments into the long term natural resource assets that not only sustain my economy/ propel my economy to global dominance but also lead to the economic collapse of other countries which allow me to control their entire economy. The Americans are now facing this reality of what it cost them to sell their souls for a bailout from their economic collapse. They are worried and they should be.

We as Canadians are being sold out “lock-stock” for a barrel!

I was in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia last week where prices were less than here. 35.3 at one point. In New Brunswick, there is a government group that regulates the price at the pumps. The price is set every Wed at midnight for the following week. I do not know what they look at but relative tells me that NB is always lower than PEI or NS.

Still doesn’t explain why gas last week was $1.22 in Hope and $1.38 here??

Foresight …. I love your post …. I think you hit the nail on the head in your paragraph where you state you would do the same if you were the Chinese Government. I would as well.

China has a strong central government. Any government like Canada and Australia does not have the ability to fight back if we stick with our man-made regulations. Those regulations may have worked in the 19th and even 20th centuries, but they do not work in such cases as we are now confronted with.

Here is a one year old article from Australia about its similar dilemma.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/chinas-resource-imperialism-a-risk-for-australia-us-analyst-20110929-1kysg.html

“Leading American investment analyst James Dines has criticised Australia for allowing China to buy large swathes of its natural resources in what he calls “resource imperialism”.

“Australia was in danger of squandering it’s “irreplaceable inheritance … traded for easily printed paper”, Mr Dines said.

“Mr Dines, editor of the Dines Letter and author of numerous books, described natural resources, including farmland, as a source of real wealth that should be kept for “your descendants”.

“By pursuing resource imperialism, China was building stockpiles of commodities well above its immediate needs, such as rare earths – it already produces 97 per cent of the world total – and copper.

“The world’s most populous country wants to secure its resource needs for centuries to come.

“Instead of seizing the means of production, as Karl Marx advocated, the Chinese Communist Party was legally buying it in what Mr Dines believes is the end of capitalism as we know it.

“They are not buying a copper mine to re-sell at a higher price. They are buying it to use all that copper for China,” he said.

“China are storing (commodities) as a form of hard money for next century and beyond.”

“What they’re doing is legal and far-sighted thinking.”

“He contrasted that with the US, where investors were fixated on quarter to quarter earnings.”
===================================

So waht are we doing about it? Not a peep out of our governments …. no intention of stating that some commodities are important enough to be national security issues. Energy sufficiency, water sufficiency, and agriculture sufficiency would certainly be part of that. (Note the reference to farmland)

A ‘strong central government’ is a very poor replacement for properly relating a country’s REAL credit to its FINANCIAL credit. All it means is that the basis of credit has shifted from what Consumers can and will pay for any product in money to Administration. Where some centralised, all powerful, ‘Authority’ tells everyone what they will produce, and how much they’ll be allowed to have of it. It is a policy common to Communism, Socialism, and Fascism ~ where the ‘individual’ is nothing, and the ‘State’ is everything. Where it’s posited every individual exists to serve some system, rather than systems being created to serve each individual. It’s something that those on the Left in this country would love to see, and those on the Right currently haven’t got enough brains to know how to successfully oppose.

Forsight;

Ditto/
Cheers

You mistook my reference to a strong central government for a strong authoritarian government.

I was referring to a federal government which has a realistic hold on matters of national security. It was written in the context of the opinion that matters of energy supply should be matters of national security.

I believe that we’d find they’re one and the same, gus.

So far as energy supply goes, or anything else, for that matter, the problem is that there’s currently a disconnect between the REAL credit of the country, (or Province) ~ which is a correct estimate of its actual capacity to produce and deliver real goods and services to its citizens as, when, and where required and desired by them ~ and the present method of FINANCIAL credit that is supposed to be an accurate ‘reflection’ numerically of actual physical facts. There is no proper nexus between the two, at present.

There is no question that if there were a genuine national emergency of some nature, say a natural disaster, or a need for us to go to war, that governments would very quickly move to protect our national security by mobilizing energy supplies the same way they’d mobilise anything else that’s needed.

This happened in the last major war we were involved in, despite the fact that many of the things mobilised were foreign owned. Car production, for instance, at the ‘big three’ American owned Canadian auto plants ceased, and those factories were quickly converted to produce needed military vehicles. Even though the foreign owner was neutral in that war for the first two years we were engaged in it.

I do not personally believe we’ve even scratched the surface when it comes to developing new oil supplies in Canada. Additionally, science keeps improving the amount of energy we can get out of every gallon of gasoline, and other fuels. And we’re nowhere near the potential we will eventually achieve.

This is not to say we should waste our present known reserves with reckless abandon. Or be in such a big hurry to get them on the markets of the world, at whatever price (eventually, because we’re not the only oil rich place doing this), global buyers are going to give us for them.

It is to say that we should take a very close look at why we think we HAVE TO export these resources in greater and greater quantities in the first place.

There is a big difference, I think, between a country being free TO trade, to be able to dispose of its relative surpluses in exchange for the alternate relative surpluses of some other country; and one that (believes) ‘free trade’ is necessary because it HAS TO trade for more than that to make up an inherent overall deficiency in the internal purchasing power of its money.

So far, any National Energy Policy I’ve ever seen DOESN’T posit that we should get the products of our own oil and gas resources, or anything else we produce, at a price to each of us, as Consumers, that ‘reflects’ to us, as individual Consumers, the TRUE COST of making those products. If you consider that all ‘costs’ represent money that WAS distributed to the community as a whole as ‘incomes’ ~ either as wages, salaries, or dividends, how then can that community pay MORE, again as a whole, that what was given to it in money in the first place? But that’s what we’re being told we must do. And it induces a mindless race to try to make FACTS fit flawed ‘Figures’, which they can NEVER do.