Category Archives: Energy

Apr 27 2015
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Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas

Doubling-down on government waste

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For a government that appears to believe that duplication is the mother of perdition, New Brunswick’s Grit regime has a funny way of sticking to the guns of its political principles.

As Premier Brian Gallant’s cabineteers defund and dismember the province’s energy institute – a creature of the former Progressive Conservative government, established to provide scientific research on the effects of hydraulic fracturing on soil, water and air – they convene a panel of non-experts in these matters to do precisely the same thing.

Granted, the New Brunswick Energy Institute began under crossed stars (its original head was forced to resign after it was revealed his curriculum vitae fudged his credentials), but the group has, by all accounts, conducted its work over the past two years with circumspection and objectivity.

But now a triumvirate composed of a former university president, a former board chairwoman of the province’s community college system, and a former provincial Chief Justice, are being asked to determine whether hydraulic fracturing is safe, socially acceptable and economically viable.

It bears mentioning that none of these fine, upstanding citizens – John McLaughlin, Cheryl Robertson, Guy Richard – are geologists, hydrologists, or mining engineers (unlike those who lately worked for the disbanded institute). Yet, they are tasked with determining whether “clear and credible information about the impacts of (fracking)” are even possible. Stranger still, their mandate insists that they discover how and under which circumstances these effects are perceptible in “a New Brunswick context”.

Politics, of course, is never about telling the truth; it’s about spinning the plates on which you serve your own version of veracity. The proof of life in this dictum is in the current government’s utter disinterest in the work Institute members have already performed. Apparently, and for no sensible reason, we begin again.

According to the provincial government’s terms of reference for its new panel, released to the Saint John Telegraph Journal earlier this week, “the specific role of the Commission will be to study each (of the province’s conditions) in a New Brunswick context and report its evidence based findings directly to cabinet. Government has set a period of up to twelve months  for the Commission to complete its report.”

Meanwhile (and in some trick of political mastery), “the Commission will be independent of government, transparent in all its activities, open minded. . .and accountable for all government assigned resources.” What it won’t be, likely, is informed by the research and findings that actual scientists have already produced.

Findings like this, published this week: “The first research project funded by the New Brunswick Energy Institute and carried out by the Canadian Rivers Institute has been finalized and released for public consumption. . . .‘The document serves as a scientific review to provide background information on environmental flow assessment approaches and on the current status of environmental flow guidelines used in jurisdictions across Canada and internationally,’ according to Allen Curry the scientific lead on the project.

“The project was funded by the New Brunswick Energy Institute because there are currently no federal guidelines regarding determination of holistic environmental flows in Canada, i.e., guidelines to safeguard the wellbeing of aquatic life and maintain ecosystem integrity. ‘While New Brunswick has not experienced serious pressure related to surface water abstraction to date, that will change as the Province develops more of its natural resources, therefore we see a need to define policy guidelines and best practices for New Brunswick’s environmental flow needs,’ Dave Besner, Chair of the New Brunswick Energy Institute said in releasing the study.”

Forgive my obtuseness, but is this not exactly the sort of perspicuity this government needs, and has already inherited?

Must we always follow good dollars with bad ones in this province?

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Mar 31 2015
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Energy, Environment, Oil and Gas

On the shale gas merry-go-round

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The on-again, off-again shale gas industry in New Brunswick is less impressive for its estimated 70-trillion cubic feet of exploitable resource than for its verifiably inexhaustible supply of deja-vu moments.

Last week, Energy Minister Donald Arseneault introduced a new “panel” of experts – comprised of New Brunswick former chief justice Guy Richard, former University of New Brunswick President John McLaughlin and former chairwoman of New Brunswick Community College Cheryl Robertson – who will spend the next few months assembling the “true facts” about the practice of hydraulic fracturing, on which the Liberal government has slapped a moratorium.

Said Mr. Arsenault at news conference in Fredericton last Tuesday: “It’s an independent commission. . .They have carte blanche. I don’t want to prejudge how they are going to do their work. Justice Richard, as well as the two commissioners. . .will have the opportunity to consult who they feel can contribute to this process.”

All of which feels eerily familiar. A couple of years ago, the pro-shale gas Progressive Conservative government established the New Brunswick Energy Institute (NBEI) to, among other things, conduct research on shale gas development, including hydraulic fracturing, as an “independent” body of experts, beholden to nothing no one but their own findings and consciences.

Its mandate was, and is, “to commission and oversee scientific research in New Brunswick, peer review relevant research from other jurisdictions, and provide access to the information for New Brunswickers in an easily understood format so it can be considered in forming opinions about appropriate courses of action in the energy sector.”

Its mission statement elaborates on this role “to fund and foster research, which will assist with the understanding of, and decision making related to, energy issues and potential development in New Brunswick (including exploration, production, transportation, transmission and utilization.”

It’s also charged with examining “energy-related research and observations in other jurisdictions, to assess their value and relevance to the New Brunswick scene; to communicate the Institute’s findings in a clear, objective and comprehensive fashion to all New Brunswickers, including both the public and decision makers; and, to provide advice to the Government, either unsolicited, or upon request.”

Now that the Grits seemed determined to reinvent the wheel with its own panel of  commissioners, what tidings bode for the Institute? In a brief phone interview last week, David Besner, chair of its Scientific Advisory Council, told me that he is, in effect, waiting and seeing. As for Justice Richard, et. al., and whether or not they will play with the NBEI in the same sandbox, Mr. Besner said, “I haven’t been told anything. . .it’s just what I read (in the newspaper).”

Which, in fact, isn’t very much – though not for lack of sound reporting. Clarity just doesn’t seem to be any government’s forte when it comes to managing natural resources in this province.

When the Tories established the NBEI in 2013, they spent weeks attempting, mostly unsuccessfully, to explain just what the organization was supposed to accomplish. Now, the Grits find themselves with the same rhetorical problem.

To insist that the new panel has “carte blanche” says precisely nothing about its real purpose. Is it to objectively weigh the progress (or lack thereof) on the five conditions the provincial government requires industry to meet before lifting the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing? Or, is it to provide their political masters with a convenient, if respectable, third-party endorsement of its current policies regarding shale gas development?

As Mr. Arseneault says, “It’s a very heated topic. At the same time it’s a very important topic. . .Some people will never change their minds.”

Again, where have we heard that before?

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Mar 17 2015
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Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

As the fracking world turns stomachs

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To emit or not to emit; that is the question – a reference, of course, not to the the vast amount of shale gas believed to be mercifully trapped in the ground of New Brunswick, but to the hot air issuing unmercifully and daily from Fredericton.

The deceptively simple ban on hydraulic fracturing in this province has become needlessly complicated ever since Brian Gallant sashayed into the premier’s office some months ago.

At the outset of the election campaign last spring, the matter seemed clear enough. Do five things, the surging Grits demanded of the shale gas industry:

Prove that you can make it safe; demonstrate that you won’t wreck roads and sewer systems; consult with First Nations communities before you break ground; ensure that everyone else in your exploration radii agrees with your plans; and adhere to tough, new regulations on your activities. Oh, and by the way, make darn sure that the taxpayers get a nice, juicy piece of the action.

Still, it’s never been clear that development companies want, or are even prepared, to rise to these standards – partly because many measures the provincial government imposes are hopelessly vague. How, for example, does the whole “social license” piece work in a jurisdiction that does not impose the same requirements on any other natural resource industry?

Meanwhile, the Province has just extended the exploration writs granted to SWN Resources Canada (potential fracker extraordinaire) even though that company’s ground-level executives have said – in letters to the Premiers Office and in public – that it would just as soon pull up its tent pegs and move on unless, of course, Premier “Gallanteer” reverses his position on banning the very means it proposes to make its bones in this neck of the woods.

As that’s not going to happen any time soon. Too much is at stake, politically, for a new government that promised to ride herd on industrial carpet-baggers and environmental poachers to recant its most successful election rhetoric.

No, as Energy Minister Donald Arsenault phrased it, quit revealingly, for the Telegraph-Journal earlier this week, “You don’t give an extension to a company who just wants to sit on a valuable piece of land. You still have to be committed to developing that piece of land – that’s usually how the (provincial) evaluation is made.”

On the other hand, he added, “Having said that, there are currently very extraordinary circumstances. . .It’s hard to show a program to develop the land when you’re not allowed to touch it with hydraulic fracturing. You have to be realistic. We know they (SWN) are committed, they would like to continue that work; however, they are not able to because of the conditions we set forth.”

So, then, why “give an extension to a company” who is forced to “sit on a valuable piece of land” only “because of the conditions we set forth?”

Ah, yes. . .so many soap operas in this province to peruse; so little quality downtime to watch.

Now, the official Tory Opposition weighs in with this absurd missive, issued this week: “The Liberal government’s ill-conceived policies have driven a $9-billion company out of New Brunswick, sending with them jobs for New Brunswickers at home and valuable investment dollars. This Liberal government refuses to accept responsibility for this disappointment, and have resorted to concealing the facts from the people of New Brunswick – but we deserve much better.”

We do, indeed.

We deserve clarity, coherence and political collaboration. We deserve solutions to common problems and humour instead of hubris.

To productively start, let’s first cap the gassy emissions from Freddy Beach.

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Mar 13 2015
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Business, Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

Just fracking grow up already!

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As former Quebec premier Jean Charest entreats New Brunswickers to step back, take a deep breath and, in an adult fashion, contemplate the shape of things to come in a province increasingly shy of economic options, local legislators are joyriding all the way to the political playground.

SWN Resources Canada’s vice president Jeff Sherrick sent a letter late last year to the premier’s office, advising it that the company was preparing to “suspend drilling plans and re-dedicate resources to projects in other jurisdictions.”

In other words, in the face of a government-enforced moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the province, it has decided to pick up its toys and go home or, at least, elsewhere.

“Not knowing if or when the moratorium will be lifted makes it difficult for us to dedicate money to a project that may or may not go ahead in a given year,” Sherrick explained in the memo, a copy of which Opposition Tory Leader Bruce Fitch obtained through the right to information act.

In fact, SWN is not above playing its own games. According to a recent Telegraph-Journal story, “The gas company stated its desire to continue exploration in the province. (It) has requested a long-term extension of its licenses to search, which it said (in its letter) would provide ‘the stability needed to effectively plan and lessen the financial risks’.”

So, then, is it staying or going? Only Energy Minister Donald Arsenault, it seems, knows the answer as he alone holds the keys to the playground.

Still, when it comes to a vigorous round to “red rover” – of not, precisely, serious economic development planning – all are welcome.

Here’s Fitch on the subject of moratorium, as reported in the T-J: “The sad reality of the situation is that now, in the sixth month of this government’s mandate, the government members are more confused than ever as to what to do with this gas moratorium. . .They scramble to figure out how they can meet the conditions or excuses that they made up a few months ago while gas supplies dry up and companies pull up stakes and leave the province with their investment dollars and their jobs that would have been created here if the Liberals had not gone forward with their moratorium.”

Here’s Arsenault’s rebuttal: “The Opposition is all over the place. When it comes to shale gas and hydraulic fracturing, we have been very clear for two-and-a-half years. We will impose a moratorium in New Brunswick. Do you know why? It is because we care about what New Brunswickers have said all along. We care because we know that the royalty scheme is not maximizing the benefits for New Brunswick. We also care that the then government did not want to consult with First Nations. It is not only a moral responsibility, but it is also the law.”

Now here’s Charest on the subject at a business gathering in Moncton on Monday: “We want to see development of our natural resources. We want to see it done right, but we also see a lot of projects that are stuck and not moving ahead because we are not encouraging the right debate. Fracking in New Brunswick is an example of that. The challenge for us is to have a fact-based discussion on things like fracking, so that we can make a better decision on whether we want this industry to be part of our economy.”

Yeah, good luck with that. I believe there’s still more mud to sling in the political playground that is New Brunswick.

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Mar 05 2015
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Business, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics

The Frick and Frack of shale gas in N.B.

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The absurd barn dance the New Brunswick government and the province’s gas exploration companies are performing would be mildly amusing to witness if it wasn’t so stubbornly frustrating to behold.

The Gallant government has been clear about its conditions for lifting its moratorium on hydraulic fracturing:  A “social licence” must be obtained; reliable research about the practice’s environmental effects must be undertaken; a strategy to limit the impacts on infrastructure must be written; an approach for negotiating with First Nations communities must be devised; and a royalty regime must be developed to spread the wealth equitably.

Fair enough. So, let’s get on with it.

But, no. Industry and Government are still curtseying and do-si-doing while New Brunswick’s economy – and all of its pent-up capacity – waits for this maddening hoofing to finally end.

Now, the Province finds itself in the broadly untenable position of pondering license extensions to established exploration companies, who have signed agreements to frack, only to avoid any legal repercussions that may stem from industry’s desire to sue its institutional arse in court for, in effect, revoking those agreements.

But will Government consider reversing its election promise (a moratorium on fracking), a move that would settle the conundrum once and for all, in return for closer public-private sector collaboration on all outstanding issues associated with shale-gas extraction?

Not on your life.

In fact, Energy Minister Donald Arsenault is adamant that he can dance quite well, even with his feet tied together.

To the Telegraph-Journal he declared the other day, “Despite what the (Tory) opposition is saying, SWN is not ready to run away from New Brunswick. I am not saying that they are in total agreement with a moratorium, of course not. . .But the fact that they requested an extension tells me that they are still interested in New Brunswick.”

On the other hand, he demurred, “I am not obligated to extend it (SWN Resources Canada’s license in New Brunswick). I have the authority to do it; it doesn’t mean that I have to do it.”

That’s what Frick says. What sayeth Frack?

Corridor Resources, the other major player in the provinces, is somewhat more loquacious on than subject than its competitor SWN, which refuses to respond to media interview requests.

Says Corridor CEO Steve Moran: “We have made application with government to. . .extend those leases for all the time the moratorium is in effect.”

What’s more, he says, “We pay them (Government) rental payments for our leases, but we also pay them royalties. We’re still paying them royalties on the producing wells. I don’t see why we should be paying them rental for lands that in essence are stymied.”

Frankly, neither do I.

Nor do I think that any of this even remotely serves the principle of informed consent in a province as evidently concerned about its democratic rights as is New Brunswick – let alone the long-term economic stability that necessarily girds such expectations.

Meanwhile, Moran warns darkly of the day when domestic supplies of natural gas will become scarce, forcing up the price charged to business and residential consumers.

In that eventuality, Arsenault counters, we’ll simply pull in more of the stuff from Pennsylvania where (guess what, boys and girls?) fracking is legal.

Huh?

So it’s okay to import gas, fracked from another jurisdiction at a premium; but it’s not to deploy a similar technology to produce a cheaper supply here at home.

Is it any wonder this province’s economy is on the skids.

Then again, we do love to dance with ourselves – in the dark.

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Feb 24 2015
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Economy, Energy, Politics

Dear potash, you may now kiss the bride

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Until recently, Potash and shale gas in New Brunswick have gone together like a horse and carriage if not, precisely, love and marriage.

But are we now witnessing from the sidelines of a new provincial Jobs Board – more concerned with marrying this region’s disparate economic opportunities than allowing their pervasive separations to widen – the opening gambit of some type of betrothal in the natural resources sector?

Politically, Liberal Premier Brian Gallant’s stern insistence on slapping a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing was a smart move. His Tory predecessors had utterly bungled the file with the predictable result of having neutralized any chance of engendering informed debate, let alone winning hearts and minds on either side of the controversial issue.

Those opposed to the practice of exploding rock deep beneath the ground to extract natural gas, potentially poisoning drinking water, relied on Internet research (some compelling good, some stunningly bad) to reinforce their intractability.

Those who supported the practice, believing that it could be safe as long as regulations in this province were tougher and more reliable than any found in the developed world, remained bewildered by the road blocks and burning police cruisers at Rexton, N.B., in the summer and fall of 2013.

And, as usual in these sort of contretemps, never the twain would meet.

Economically, though, Mr. Gallant’s “wait-and-see” policy regarding shale gas development (Is it benign? Can a social license be negotiated with affected communities? What’s the long-term, dollars-and-cents impact on the province’s finances?) is running down the clock.

The debt clock, that is: hundreds-of-millions of dollars in annual deficits; a $12-billion long-term debt that no degree of public-sector austerity will settle without robust, private-sector economic growth.

So, it comes as no surprise that the Grit government is now talking boldly about vastly expanding potash mining in the province.

In an exclusive for Brunswick News Inc., Adam Huras reports this week that the Province “will issue a request for proposals. . .to explore a massive stretch of land in southern New Brunswick it believes could be home to the province’s next potash mine.”

The area in question reportedly incorporates more than 24,000 hectares (240 million square meters) of land less than an hour’s drive north of Saint John.

Question: What do potash mining operations here use to power their facilities? Answer: hydraulically fracked shale gas.

Another question: Why? Another answer: Because it’s reliable, plentiful and, frankly, cheaper than any alternative.

Now, when a provincial government raises the possibility of opening up its public pocketbook to help finance a major expansion of a demonstrably successful resource industry in order to create good, sustainable, long-term jobs, the long bet appreciates that said government must also understand the importance of the fuel supply said resource industry deploys to justify embroidering its business plan.

It also stands to reason that Mr. Gallant’s cabinet and Jobs Board recognize that any move, on government’s part, to so convincingly enlarge a sector that depends on shale gas will goose opinion about the energy supply (for and against) in the public square, regardless of any moratorium.

Inevitably, that means a conversation – one that ended, unproductively, when the Grit team took office last fall.

Naturally, the talking points from the premier’s office, over the next few days, will tow the party line. No, we haven’t changed our minds, they will say. Yes, we believe there exist legitimate questions about the safety of hydraulic fracturing. Of course, until we know the truth, we will not act precipitously.

Still, that’s what every marriage broker says when he or she is conducting their due diligence.

Will the groom behave honorably? Will the bride comport herself in the best interests of her extended family and community?

How deliciously ironic that those who signed the first divorce papers might now officiate at the new wedding?

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Jan 28 2015
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Business, Demographics, Economy, Energy, Politics

The good news for New Brunswick: Here, in this place 

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“Finances bleak, but province not bankrupt” – headline news in the Moncton Times & Transcript, Friday, January 23, 2015

Dear New Brunswick,

Here’s what you do when you’re about to go under: Put on your Sunday best, paint a smile on your face, take a walk through all your favorite haunts, count your blessings, and, above all, keep your mouth shut.

You would not believe how ennobling simple measures can be when you are about to lose everything.

After all, what is “everything”?

Is it a house, a car, a snowmobile?

Is it a wife, a husband, a son, a daughter?

Oh well, easy come, easy go.

We can’t have it all.

Gone – that’s the poetry of our times.

Gone.

In fact, when you think about it (and you’ll have plenty of time for that), “Gone” is a pretty fantastic place to live.

No more obligations, expectations or dreams. No more plans, plots or potting beds. No more of. . .well, anything, really.

Just silence, sleep, and the slow inexorable crawl to the circus tent, where all are destined to find their final resting places – just some sooner than others.

Still, dear New Brunswick, don’t forget to slap on that lipstick, don that boater, adjust the suspenders on the oak barrel you’re wearing. The world is watching you. You want to be presentable when you finally succumb.

Don’t you?

Fear not at all, noble province. Those who were smart enough to leave in time to make their bones in far-off places – where big, rock candy mountains still transform black gold into fountains of toonies – will return to bless your own inert skeleton.

Speaking of them, what of Jules and Jim 15 years from now.

In January 2031, Jules is running a hand through his thinning, grey hair, glancing occasionally at the clock on the wall of the departure lounge. “Looks like we’re running out of time,” he mumbles. “What else is new?”

The storms of late December had minced the schedules of the one airline that still bothers to call on New Brunswick. Normally, any delay en route to the oil and gas fields of northern Alberta mean long lineups for itinerant Maritimers arriving late to Fort Mac’s weekly job lottery.

But, today, Jules doesn’t mind so much. His traveling companion is late. Might as well sit tight, he tells himself. A pipe-fitter by trade, 25 years of going down the road and back has taught him how to wait. He’s good at it; waiting and thinking.

He’s old enough to remember a different New Brunswick, when his native home was not just a regional staging ground in the brisk business of exporting human capital. That was before the Wall Street money lenders had called the loans, effectively throwing the province into receivership.

Really, he thinks, what other choice did they have?

In 2024, the provincial government had failed to make the minimum payment on its long-term debt of $42 billion. Sporting an operating budget deficit, in that fiscal year, of $7 billion, it had needed a miracle to cover its financial obligations. And there hadn’t been one of those in this benighted corner of Canada for some time.

Still, Jules recollects the word “miracle” being used when he was a boy and Greater Moncton, for one, was an authentic economic nexus of the Maritimes.

He checks the clock on the wall again.

“Where is that whelp?” he mutters to no one in particular. “The boy is 45 minutes late, and the plane is here, finally.”

As his 16-year-old nephew Jim’s bonded master, Jules is almost looking forward to showing his young apprentice the ropes in Alberta.

Jim, apparently, has made other arrangements.

Dear New Brunswick, here’s what you do when you’re about to go under: Put on your Sunday best, paint a smile on your face, take a walk through all your favorite haunts, count your blessings, and, above all, shout from whichever rooftop you still own.

Shout loudly and shout boldly.

“I am still here.”

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Jan 18 2015
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Business, Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas

Oh, what a messy slick we spill

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Oil has a nasty way of sticking to everything it touches, including the best-laid plans of men, governments and hired gunslingers in the spin-rooms of the nation.

Not so long ago, black gold was Canada’s economic salvation. It was better than  manufacturing, technological innovation in the non-resource sector, and even financial services at generating long-term jobs and huge dividends for high-flying investors.

Indeed, so went the fairy tale, oil was the last, best hope to power these industries and aspirations and return the country to its always mythological status as the world’s next, big superpower of opportunity.

Oh well. Easy come, easy go – which has become, in New Brunswick, our preferred provincial slogan, beating out such bromides as “Be in this place” and (my personal favorite) “Hell, it could be worse, though we don’t possibly see how”.

Still, Alberta’s blackened, big sky country may want to rip a page from the picture-perfect province’s sloganeering songbook as it begins to send thousands of expat Maritimers back home to their sea-bound coasts.

With oil hovering below $50 a barrel – down more than 100 per cent since mid-October – and no discernible bottom to the price plunge, the West’s formerly gilded streets are about to be lined with foreclosure notices, each prettily packaged in recyclable envelopes, courtesy of your friendly, neighbourhood big, Bay-Street bank.

Oh, how the ironies abound.

To Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, oil meant certain reelection in October. That’s because royalties from this resource enabled their utterly fantastical predictions of surplus, their wholly irresponsible promise to permit income splitting among families that could well afford to pay the tax man that which is properly due to him, and their cynically calculated (and needlessly costly) diversions regarding the Child Tax Credit.

Now, they’ll be lucky to muster enough cash to cover the cost of the laces for the finance minister’s new shoes come budget time some months away.

As it is, they can’t work fast enough to fit themselves for boots of clay.

According to a Globe and Mail report last Thursday, “The Conservative government will not release the federal budget until at least April, a delay meant to give Finance Minister Joe Oliver more time to assess the impact of plunging oil prices on the Canadian economy.”

As Mr. Oliver told a press conference in Ottawa, “Given the current market instability, I will not bring forward our budget earlier than April. We need all the information we can obtain before finalizing our decisions. . .“This new reality poses a great, though not entirely unprecedented challenge. . .It represents the third largest price decline in the last four decades, exceeded only by the 1986 OPEC collapse and the sharp decline and rapid recovery we saw during the Great Recession. . .Given the current volatility, there is no consensus about how low will prices fall and how long they stay there. Nevertheless, every knowledgeable person I have spoken to believes, and history tells us, that prices will eventually move well above (the) current level.”

In fact, though oil’s price may not have yet bottomed, there is, evidently, a point at which the Canadian economy’s ability to compensate for its clear and utter dependence on the stuff simply fails.

Only a week ago, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne all-but bragged about the coming resurgence in her province’s manufacturing sector. Low petroleum prices, she noted, meant a lower valuation of the Canadian dollar against its U.S. counterpart. Since south of the border is where more than $300-billion of this country’s good wind up each and ever year, logically the boon to exporting ought to be commensurately marvelous. Read: Who needs oil?

Well, apparently, we do; and the sticky, messy stuff is not cooperating.

Says former finance department deputy minister Scott Clark, in a separate Globe piece last week, “If the government tries too hard to show a surplus, in other words twists and turns in the wind and does everything to show a surplus, I think you lose political and professional creditability. . .The reality is a lot has changed and if I were the Conservative government, I’d be saying ‘that’s the fact.’ Things have changed and we should just realize that and deal with it.”

Of course, that makes just too much sense for this country’s leadership, almost more enamoured of its own talking points on oil than it is with the sticky stuff, itself – if that’s even possible.

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Jan 06 2015
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Climate, Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas

Juicing up the conversation about oil

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It may be a necessary evil with a preternatural tendency to warm the atmosphere, but it sure tanks at cocktail parties. Face it, after more than 100 years of reshaping the world in its own oily image, fossil fuel is, fundamentally, a crashing bore.

Almost no conversation about the stuff begins with, “Hey, here’s something I bet you didn’t know about oil and gas. . .” or “A funny thing happened on my way to the refinery the other day. . .”

Even those snippets about petroleum with the greatest potential to inspire mild surprise are rarely discussed in polite company, most likely because we know that, these days, such discussions lead to nowhere good and nothing ennobling.

Of course, that doesn’t stop the spin-meisters of Big Oil from doing their level best to remind consumers of the western world that without them, and the resource they plunder as a matter of quotidian purpose, we’d all come well and truly undone.

“Life without oil? Impossible!,” declares a web page from the corporate site of Wintershall, a subsidiary of the many-tentacled mega-squid from Germany, BASF. “Within our daily lives oil is used almost everywhere: Every year, 18 million tonnes of crude oil are processed into synthetic materials in Germany. Oil within our materials: 40 percent of all textiles contain oil; for functional clothing this may be as much as 100 percent. Oil within our leisure activities: 40 billion liters of oil a year are used to make CDs and DVDs. Oil helps us relax: A single sofa contains 60 liters of oil. Modern life is inconceivable without crude oil. . . the most important natural resource of industrialized nations. The world consumes almost 14 billion liters of oil each day. This affects us all.”

Yada yada. So does oxygen, but you don’t hear me go on about the stuff.

Besides, just because we use oil in, and for, everything, except maybe coffee creamer (and the jury’s still out on that), doesn’t mean we should or even must. I seem to recall a rather successful series of pre-oil civilizations – beginning with ancient Sumerian and ending with early Victorian – that did rather well for themselves without benefit of plastic water bottles and nylon thread.

Still, there might yet be a way to make fossil fuel more interesting and, therefore, less repugnant to the chattering classes.

How many products, for example, that contribute to a cleaner, greener world actually involve oil at some level?

Now that’s a question worthy of any late-night salon.

A link to a page of the Pembina Institute’s website (helpfully provided by a reader last week) begins the quest.

“Only a few tidal energy sites are in operation around the world,” the clean-energy think tank reports. “Larger sites include the White Sea in Russia and the Rance River in France (the largest site in the world). Smaller tidal power plant have been built in Canada, such as the site at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, and several in Norway. Together they have a total capacity of less than 250 MW. However, the potential for tidal energy is immense; potential global tidal power exceeds 450 terawatts, most of it in Asia and North America.”

Meanwhile, according to the Canadian Wind Energy Association’s web site, “wind energy is more cost-competitive than new sources of energy supplied by coal with carbon capture and storage, small hydro or nuclear power. The fuel that turns wind turbine blades is free and the price of electricity it produces is set for the entire life of the wind farm. Long-term cost certainty of wind farms have a stabilizing effect on electricity rates, providing important protection for consumers. Unlike other energy supply alternatives, the cost of building wind energy continues to decline, with dramatic drops over the past three years. Wind projects have very short construction periods and can be deployed quickly with many benefits delivered to local communities.”

What does any of this have to do with fossil fuel?

It is as Wintershall claims: Oil’s in just about everything, including the plastic components that comprise tidal generating arrays and wind turbines.

Now, if we could deploy our marvelous primate minds to the front lines of innovation for a change, and determine how best to limit fossil fuel’s uses solely to meritorious ends, we might actually start a conversation worth having.

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Jan 05 2015
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Business, Climate, Energy, Idiocracy

My big picture on world views

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In recent months, readers of this column have sometimes complained that my opinions about politics, the economy and life as we live it in this alternately blessed and benighted corner of the unpredictable planet are inconsistent, unreconcilable and, therefore, incoherent.

What, they have invariably demanded, is my world view?

I’d give them one, if I had one.

Frankly, the one unshakeable opinion to which I cleave is that world views, such as they are, are for dictators and salesmen.

One wants you to knuckle under; the other wants to rob you blind. In either case, you’re left with few choices, other than those your political or corporatist overlords prescribe.

Still, the complaints ring with such predictable complacency that they might as well be a popular gospel.

“Why do you hate the wonderful earth we cherish so much?” one scribe asked me in early August. “How can you support the shale gas industry in New Brunswick when, as an intelligent man, you must know how much harm it causes?”

Precisely three days later, another reader accused me of runaway tree-hugging: “It boggles my mind that you, as an intelligent man, slam the only industry that has any chance of rejuvenating the New Brunswick economy.”

Again, with the “intelligent man” stuff!

Yes, I have an IQ above room temperature, but I like to think that this fortunate happenstance engenders a predilection for at least a modicum of critical thinking.

For those of you out there who are similarly equipped, here’s a question: Is it not possible to walk and chew gum at the same time?

The shale gas industry in New Brunswick has operated without incident for more than 10 years. No spills, no poisoning of water tables, no soil decimation, no air pollution have ever been recorded, reported or, even, imagined.

These facts, alone, should prove that the industry, here, understands (at least, intuitively) its “social licence”. And if it doesn’t, provincial rules and regulations governing the locations of, and practices involved in, hydraulic fracturing (which are still on the books, despite the recent moratorium) evidently enjoins it to smarten up.

That said, other jurisdictions around the world have not demonstrated New Brunswick’s perspicacity on this socially volatile energy issue. North Dakota and parts of Appalachia have all but abandoned their side of the social-licence bargain, preferring, instead, to let the industry have its rapacious way with privately-held lots, paid for willingly with up-front buy-downs and long-term royalty agreements.

The result is exactly what New Brunswick opponents of shale-gas development fear: pollution, social dislocation and (let’s face it) death by fossil fuel.

But simply transplanting other provinces’ and states’ experiences and decisions here is a meaningless exercise in organized paranoia. It supplants the agency of our own minds with that of those who are determined to dictate or sell their own agendas, either quasi-corporatist or pseudo-environmentalist.

The middle of the road, negotiating the traffic to the left and right of us, is where we must live now if we have any hope of charting a sustainable, prosperous future.

Those who demand that the world’s petrol-economy can and must end today are either hypocritical or deranged.

At the same time, those who insist that fossil fuels still promise an eternity of risk-free, environmentally benign energy are either sadly delusional or deliberately prevaricating.

The bucket slung around the world’s neck is full of oil. Currently, there’s so much sloshing around in capital markets, literally no one knows how to prevent its pricing from decimating resource-producing economies (including Canada’s).

Still, let’s say that we – all of us in this province, at least – engage in a thought experiment. Let us suppose that oil and gas were not primary commodities, but rather seed capital for sustainable energy research, manufacturing and deployment.

Let us imagine that the engines and factories that burn fossil fuel are actually generating new ways to radically curtail its casual use.

Let us hope that the judicious, reasonable use of “black gold” produces a sea-change in attitudes about the way we treat the planet we share.

Finally, let us propose that partisan bickering about “world views” falls silently, gently, coherently to the good earth we vow to protect from (who else?) ourselves.

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