Energy Archives - Page 4 of 6

4Jul

By Bob Ascah2 Comments

Agencies, Energy, Environment, Opinion/Research

Alberta’s environmental bills coming due. Who will Pay?

The release of The Big Cleanup: How enforcing the Polluter Pay principle can unlock Alberta’s next great jobs boom on Tuesday 29 June by the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project is an important next step in the Province coming to terms with its oil and gas legacy. The easy-to-read 40-page report comes complete with nuggets of information to jar government and industry policy-makers along with a dozen recommendations to minimize the costs to Canadian and Albertan taxpayers. Preliminary There is little doubt that Albertans have enjoyed the fruits of the periodic capital investment booms of the energy industry since the 1950s. These fruits included low unemployment rates, highest incomes in Canada, generous government services, low taxes, and Canada’s highest “standard of living.” Standard...

22Jun

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Agencies, Energy, Environment, Health, Politics

The times they are a’changin

Come senators, congressmenPlease heed the callDon't stand in the doorwayDon't block up the hallFor he that gets hurtWill be he who has stalledThe battle outside ragin'Will soon shake your windowsAnd rattle your walls… Bob Dylan On Thursday 18 June a remarkable event took place. The near simultaneous release of an Alberta Energy Regulator (AER)/Canadian Environment Impact Assessment Agency (CEIAA) joint panel rejection of the controversial Grassy Meadows coal project and a news release from Alberta's Environment and Energy ministers "respecting" the Joint Panel’s recommendations. The Thursday announcements followed declarations by federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson that all coal projects which produced selenium would be subject to federal review due to the environmental impa...

13Jun

By Bob Ascah2 Comments

Agencies, Energy, Environment, Government Finances, Opinion/Research

Exploring the Regulatory Maze (3): The Auditor General Reports…

The bizarre story of the Mine Financial Security program (MFSP) continues to unfold. In May, the Minister of the Environment and Parks, Jason Nixon announced a review of the program noting depressed profits in 2020 motivated the government to reset the rules in calculating security requirements. This meant that increased security requirements under the existing requirement would be reduced. Then on 10 June, Auditor General Doug Wylie released a report which focused on processes to provide information about government's environmental liabilities. The report unfortunately raises serious questions about the competencies of provincial officials at all levels as well as the failure of senior officials and ministers to accept responsibility for environmental cleanups. Wylie’s report addres...

30May

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Energy

Exploring the regulatory maze (Part 2): Mine Financial Security Program

On 6 May the Minister of Environment and Parks, Jason Nixon announced a program review on the Mine Financial Security program (MFSP). According to the news release, "(A)s of June 30, 2020, $1.48 billion was being held in security under the MFSP. Oilsands mines account for just under $1 billion of this total." The program "helps manage coal and oilsands liabilities by collecting financial security from mine owners and protects the public from paying for project closure costs" (emphasis added). In addition to security deposits, the oilsands producers “use their reserves as collateral for financial security." This promise from Nixon to protect the taxpayers was backed up by Laurie Pushor, the new CEO of the Alberta Energy Regulator. In a one-year on the job interview with The Canadian Press’...

28Mar

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Economic Data, Energy, Fiscal History, Government Finances

The Perils of Economic Forecasting in a Commodity-based Economy

In the wake of the "energy settlement" of August 1981 when Trudeau and Lougheed toasted champagne, economists at Alberta Treasury's Budget Planning and Economics group were refreshing their economic forecasts. In the Economic Outlook reproduced below, attention focused on the anticipated mega-projects expected to drive Alberta's economy in the medium term. The Outlook reinforces the notion of Alberta as a single-commodity based economy relying on the construction and engineering sectors to drive economic growth and employment. As the Chart shows, things did not turn out quite what the analysts have thought they would based on econometric models based upon assumptions about the trajectory of various mega-projects. Very shortly after the projection, an inflection point was reached in 1982 ...

23Jan

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Agencies, Employment, Energy, Government Finances, Intergovernmental, Opinion/Research

GOA’s investment in Keystone XL looks shaky

Updated 25 January 2021 to reflect Kenney-Trudeau letter It was perhaps a foregone conclusion that Joseph R. Biden Jr. would sign an executive order soon after his inauguration rescinding the permit allowing TC Energy to build the Keystone XL pipeline. But hope springs eternal in some locales in Alberta. And yet, the heavily signalled order sat on the newly -minted President's desk. Executive Order on "Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis," a lengthy discourse of executive actions, revoked the March 2019 Permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. According to the Order The Keystone XL pipeline disserves the U.S. national interest. The United States and the world face a climate crisis. That crisis must be met with action on a scale an...

11Jan

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Energy, Fiscal History, Government Finances

Hyndman Papers-Budget, NEP and Production Cutbacks

In this densely worded 4-page memorandum and Appendix from Deputy Provincial Treasurer A.F. "Chip" Collins to Treasurer Lou Hyndman, a financial analysis is undertaken by the staff within Fiscal Policy & Economic Analysis. The initials at the end of the memorandum indicate G. Lynn Duncan an Assistant Deputy Provincial Treasurer and A.G . (Arnie) Heisler, the Comptroller were its principal authors. This memorandum responds to a number of questions posed to the department in early March. The central question to be answered was "what is the value of the foregone production and is there a financial reward from shutting in production?" This would have been also been a central question for the Notley government back in 2017-18 when the differential was so low certain segments of the oil ind...

10Dec

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Budget, Energy, Fiscal History

Hyndman Papers: Excerpts from Old Budget Speeches (Part 2)

Updated 16 December 2020 In this remarkable and lengthy undated memorandum from Jim Dinning, a future Treasurer and candidate for the premiership of Alberta, to Lou Hyndman, Dinning highlights some historical issues which still confound Alberta finances to this day. (The italics are Dinning classification of issues for Treasurer Hyndman.) Central to preparing a budget in the 1980s was the reliability of non-renewable resource revenue. Back in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s natural resource revenue was also front of mind. The growing dependence on resource revenue was underlined in Ernest Manning's 1950 budget. A dilemma for provincial treasurers then, in 1980, and today is the balancing of pressures for spending, the proper stewardship of resource revenue, and the need to contain "insatiabl...

25Nov

By Bob Ascah1 Comment

Capital Spending, Economic Data, Energy, Environment, Fiscal History, Government Finances, Politics

Presentation to EQUS directors- 23 November

EQUS is a small, co-operative distributor of electricity to 12,000, mostly rural, customers. The organization is the product of a series of mergers of rural electrification co-operatives over the past two decades. EQUS employs about 100 staff with its head office in Innisfail. The presentation, provocatively entitled "Alberta's Crumbling Economic and Fiscal Foundation" builds on concerns about the future health of Alberta's economy in a world where international financial capital places more emphasis on renewable energy solutions. The presentation highlights the pivotal role of capital expenditures of the oil and gas sector which have driven the Alberta economy since 1947. Alberta's gross fixed capital formation (oil and gas, institutional, industrial, residential and non-residential bui...

Peter Lougheed- Address to Calgary Chamber of Commerce- 13 March 1981

16Nov

By Bob AscahNo Comments

Energy, Fiscal History, Intergovernmental, Politics

Peter Lougheed- Address to Calgary Chamber of Commerce- 13 March 1981

Background From Lou Hyndman's papers, this speech is given to a friendly business audience at the height of the energy fight between Ottawa and ALberta. The parallels between 1980-81 and today are many, but there are considerable differences. In 1980-81, inflation was rampant over 10 per cent and interest rates had soared. Oil was trading at historic highs due to the 1979 Iranian revolution. The Alberta economy had enjoyed six straight years of boom conditions. Unemployment was very low and cranes dotted Edmonton and Calgary's skylines. Joe Clark's administration had been dethroned and Pierre Trudeau was back in office. Jimmy Carter had lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan and the rest of the world outside Alberta was spiralling into recession. The National Energy Program was an attack o...