What was a year or two ago "crazy talk", nuke energy for oil sands production continues to show up in conversation among serious people in Alberta.
There are a few things that would be interesting to look at vis a vis Alberta oil sands production forecast reliability:
Natural Gas availability
Water availability (Alberta has something of a water deficit at times already; oil sands production and climate change may make this a limiting factor)
Policy impact of growing consensus that climate change mitigation must be done sooner than later
what youre suggesting is a model for 'multicriteria analysis' - something that takes into account other important characteristics other than the 'ends' that are denominated in barrels (or dollars). I believe most tar sands 'investors' are not of the multicriteria viewpoint, except when they get their dollar returns and can exchange those dollars which had multiple non-dollar costs to produce, into the smorgasbord of things they might purchase with them...
In effect, they value multicriteria analysis POST-investment, not PRE-investment.
"They'll be Pie in the Sky when you Die"
_Joe Hill, Industrial Workers of the World song writer , organiser and martyr.
For some reason it is an American characteristic to act without any forethought and with a strong denial of all evidence, sort of like a religeous crusade.
Let's burn the mothership first and ask questions later.
I know that the production of these stats and charts are the work of a dedicated creator of charts and stats, perhaps a scientist, and certainly one who believes that science will lead us all from the dark cave to the brilliant light of reason.
And I understand the mantra of the scientific community that we must know what we are facing before we can fix it, but I fear this slow moving beast, which stomps blindly on people with impunity, consoling itself with the platitude that it is helping people in the short term.
That's the problem. Short-term thinking. Everyone seems to only be concerned with keeping the oil flowing, no matter the cost. And the scientists who are putatively trumpeting the concerns of the peak oil crowd are unwittingly contributing to the downfall of humanity by advocating the go-slow approach. They would have us try to find other destructive methods to fuel our anti-nature lifestyle, to create dubious technologies to mitigate our short-sighted ruinous rush to embrace technology (think CO2 sequestration, Methane Clathrate mining and other potentially disastrous technologies), and finally they would have us believe that this is the only way, asking us not to look too far into the future.
The basis for our technological civilization is flawed at its core: perpetual growth and the injection of human values into a non-humancentric natural system. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that nature will strike the balance, effectively killing off all but a few hundred million humans in the next two hundred years. No amount of rational thinking, strident pleading, careful individual preparation, or scientific humbug will stop this immense catastrophe.
This site has become like a club of Aeronautical Engineers holding court on the Hindenberg. While they head for their doom, they debate and trade memos and laud each other their efforts, inscribing beautiful colored charts that in fact describe their doom, but at the same time counseling calm, letting us know that they take certain measures to keep the balloon aloft. Though we all know it will all end in tears and recriminations.
You will undoubtedly ask, "So, what do you want us to do?"
Fair enough.
Make peace with your invisible sky being of choice.
All your base are belong to us.
There is nothing you can do. You are a mere 6.8 billionth of the social mass on this planet. You are but a speck on the backside of a massive survival engine that has evolved to seek the way of Paleolithic man, to survive day to day, no matter how destructive that short-term survival impulse coupled with high tech may be to future generations. Our natural inclination is to put individual over family, family over clan, clan over tribe, tribe over nation, nation over humanity. We are the selfish, thinking species and think we do. Witness this page.
So...Go on thinking. Go on chatting. Go on drawing charts. I'm going to trade my Prius for a Hummer and start drag-racing through the wilderness preserves. I hope, by speeding up the destruction of the environment, we can kill off this most perniciously self-centered species post haste.
The smoldering ruin that will mark post oil earth will be barren and wounded, its species decimated, the remnants of humanity doomed to live on the polar margins, scraping a living, learning to forget and forgetting to learn, and, with luck, the polar bears will eat those last survivors.
Cherenkov, I hear you. But, in the words of Jay Hanson, how could it be otherwise? (the mechanism to value the present steeply over the future being hardwired)
In August 1973 (a couple months before the first oil shock) when aged 17, I went on a solo cross country (USA) bicycle tour. This gave me a lot of time to observe and think as I dodged the thundering steel beasts that dominated the road and saw nature in retreat everywhere. By the end of the summer, I came to all the conclusions that Jay Hanson, AMPOD, and Cherenkov have seconded.
Homo sapiens is no different from yeast or any other organism, it will reproduce and consume its environment to the point of overshoot and collapse. If space aliens had beamed all the inhabitants of the OECD (developed) nations away, the end result would be the same. If all monotheists were raptured away, it would make no difference. The great majority of people everywhere love having children and love a motor. On Rarotonga, where it never drops below 20C, and the only road is just 32km in circumference (no place is more than 16km away), no adult will walk or ride a bicycle. In Shanghai, bicycles are banned from the CBD to make room for cars.
People will not powerdown willingly. Only collapse and dieoff can humble humanity. Therefore, both are inevitable because people will keep on with their monkey business (tar sands, oil palm plantations) until Gaia stops them.
Here I think a mini-collapse and a mini-dieoff might cause people to be aware of the situation in time to mitigate a total collapse and dieoff, and choose a better path. Then they will choose the powerdown path because they will have internalized (by learning) that that path is better for them. Powering down, and being happy and healthy about it, will be a new target for relative fitness. But not from being told that, only from experiencing it. At our DC conference Governor Schweitzer offered the challenge to be 'cool' about energy conservation with the slogan "How low can you go?" This might work in the framework of our evolved neural pathways, but not while profligate energy users still have more access to better mates and more stuff.
Nate, we are pretty close to agreement. While some might believe in human extinction, I don't. What I mean by collapse and dieoff is the the world will become a lot like Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island) after the last tree was cut. Rapa Nui continued to be habitable post collapse, just with a smaller and poorer population.
Of note, Niue and the Cook Islands have only avoided collapse by exporting their excess population growth to New Zealand and importing food. If the planes and boats stopped coming, they would have to revert to the old method of sustainability - warfare.
As long as someone is allowed to make money mining tar sands or destroying rainforests to grow biofuels, it will continue. I just can't see nature lovers ever outnumbering auto lovers or becoming more powerful.
Of course, just by being alive I am part of the problem. How else could it be? I am a self serving yeast just as is Jay Hanson, James Lovelock, Al Gore, and David Suzuki, none of them has committed suicide either. The only non yeasty thing I ever did was decide not to have children. Beyond that, I am following the AMPOD path of not trying to save the world, but just trying to use the mechanisms of our society to build a lifeboat for extended family and friends so I can finish my days as a (relatively) comfortable yeast while the world continues to burn up.
Your Prius does a great disservice to society et al. By burning less fossil fuel you are leaving some on the table to grow even more food to supply more bodies to support more crime gangs in Washington DC and Mumbai.
If someone wants to make a difference then use all your resources to burn as much fossil fuel as possible. The growth of food production must be halted to limit the human race to its current numbers. :-)
There is still too much slack in the system and vastly higher numbers could be supported by all 6.5 billion becoming vegetarians for example. So eat as much meat and dairy as possible.
BTW I do not blame the poor countries for their problems; these countries and great civilizations were destroyed by the two destructive "Semitic Religions" Islam and Christianity.
(you can't have Christianity and Islam without Judaism, a point explicitly recognised by Islam 'people of the book' to describe Christians and Jews)
- human beings of other religions (see various Chinese civil wars since 500 BC, Genghis Khan etc.) have contrived to destroy each other without help from Christianity
What you can say is the explosion of Christianity across the face of the planet 1500-1900 was an absolute ecological and human disaster for the peoples of the New World, Australia, Polynesia. Population collapses of as much as 90% and enormous loss of life. Let's not mention the Slave Trade (international, there already was one from Africa to the Arabs), the Opium Wars, the Indian Wars etc.
But I am only 50% inclined to blame Christianity. it wasn't the religion of Northern Europeans, it was a combination of technological revolution (that gave them a decisive military and political advantage), demographic explosion and a transformation of the economy.
And of course, our old friend the smallpox virus, which did more for the domination of the planet by Western Europeans than anything else.
We are biological in nature. Will there be a plague, prion, or some form of "organic" population control? I find this the best possible solution for those left to survive in our post petrol wake. Good God what have we done...to ourselves and our planet. Go Bird Flu!!!
Alberta permiership contenders who are promising to keep all facets of production in the province, something that runs counter to the grand visions behind the Keystone pipeline, which would pump bitumen as far as Texas refineries
From that same link: the realization that under current provisions, oil companies can keep paying a 1% (or less, see below) tax on bitumen just about indefinitely, as long as there is expansion
"As a result of higher deemed bitumen prices offset slightly by lower production, royalties totalled $1.5 million," Western's report revealed.
At the same time, "Western generated record net revenue of $206 million" for the third quarter of 2006.
That's 0.75%, or, as reported earlier this year: 50 cents in tax per $70 barrel of oil.
How long will that last? Even Albertans down the line are smart enough to see they're being ripped off royally.
And if the tax becomes 25%, how will that affect investment and production?
The whole scheme feels like ethanol subsidies: the taxpayer pays.
Social aspects. Fort McMurray becoming unlivable, a triple murder in Edmonton this weekend, part of a trend. These things escalate easily when disgruntled people start feeling unsafe
First Nations. Expect protests to rise along with production and its environmental consequences. Land rights are not spelled out all too clearly, which may lead to long trails of litigation, and related potential development delays
I still feel the most likely option for the oilsands is implosion. Hard to predict which factor will be the decisive one, but there's plenty choice. The pressure to develop too fast is enormous.
PS Nuclear has far too long a run-up time to mitigate the sharp drop in available natural gas, so much seems clear. Where oh where will the power come from?
canada only needs the power for exports. If they were not part of NAFTA, theyd have plenty of natural gas and oil (at least for a while) for their own domestic use. But then where would canadian industry sell its products? If tar sands implode (and I tend to agree with you) other things implode too.
Before ASPO, I spent the last 5 months traveling around Canada looking for land, hiking etc. Given global warming, increase in energy prices, decrease in energy availability, increase in societal special interest chaos, etc, my thought was canadian land and canadian girlfriend(wife) would be good long term thinking. During this search, I witnessed 2 VERY passionate rallies against local coal bed methane developments - as we pass the best first spots for fossil fuels, the places left are increasingly on native lands, or environmentally valuable areas and the public animosity towards increasing energy supply will be high. My guess is that oil companies are underestimating this, among other things.
Of course, 99% of those opposed to these projects arent doing much to reduce their own usage, they just want their cake and be able to eat it too.
Well, truthfully, I met quite a few I liked, in a friendly sort of way, but there is a strongly evolved, cultural and otherwise, instinct to be wary of solo traveling men (though the golden retriever copilot helped). In our past, single men who showed up in a community usually meant they were kicked out from somewhere else and we typically unwelcome - of course fossil fuels and speed machines have changed that, but the cautious impulses remain.
And 'on average', I have found Canadian women prefer Canadian men (though on the value scale, I am probably more Canadian than American)
Did you know that Canadians use more fossil fuels than their US counterparts? I guess it makes sense given colder winters, and further distance between cities.
Canada is relatively highly industrialised compared to the whole of the US. Particularly in the area of raw materials: pulp and paper, mining, basic chemicals, oil sands, etc.
An example, California only uses 40% more electricity at peak than Ontario-- 50GW v. 30ish GW. But California has 30 million people (plus say 2 million illegals?). Ontario has about 11 million people. GDP per head in California is 50% higher than Ontario (roughly).
California summers are a lot hotter (but less humid, generally). Most people in Ontario heat with gas, so the winter peak is less relevant.
I think the main difference is Ontario is a major manufacturing centre: mining, automobile manufacture, basic industries like chemicals (the Sarnia belt opposite Detroit), pulp and paper. Also California electricity prices are a lot higher whereas Ontario has had perverse incentives to consume power.
Canadian women? Complex subject. The analogy to California is apt. Canadian women tend to be feminist (in both a small f and a Capital F sense). There are some quite good books out there about Canadians (Mondo Canuck, The Xenophobes Guide to Canadians, etc.)-- Canadians are in some ways very like Australians by which I mean very egalitarian, very 'PC' (perhaps that is less like Australians ;-), and tend to be quite collectivist relative to Yanks-- standing out is admired but also criticised. Also fairly straightforward.
And a Newfoundlander is not a Bluenoser (Halifax) is (of course) not a Quebecoise is not a Torontonian is not an Ontarian is not a Prairie Dog (Winnipeg) is not a Calgarian is not an Edmontonian is not a Vancouverite... regional differences matter in a country that is 3000 miles wide.
The Economist put it well (travel guide to Toronto)-- 'Canadians have a complex inferiority and superiority complex with regard to Americans. Tread carefully'.
As an American woman once said 'I would have had a lot easier time in Canada if someone had told me at the beginning that to a Canadian, I am YELLING every time I speak' ;-).
Your best route to living in Canada is actually the Immigration Canada points system. Trying to marry a Canadian, if you don't have a permanent work permit, is hard work.
Calgary is the destination du choix of the ambitious Peak Oiler. Edmonton is closer to the production, but oil industry HQ is Calgary. Sadly the city itself is absolutely not geared up for PO etc. A big urban sprawl of very large homes, spreading up the highways into the mountains. Traffic jams everywhere. Think Denver North.
You are talking to the son of a power plant engineer, from Canada. So it's my 'sweet spot' eh?
I know Eastern Canada much better than Western. Vancouver is a fantastic place, but expensive (not enough land for housing) and the career opportunities can be surprisingly restricted (big companies tend to HQ in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary). Also it rains pretty solidly from November through to April-- much more than London, say.
Toronto is urban sprawl personified and quite ugly for that-- the 401 Highway has 22 lanes at one point (11 each way) and at 4pm they are completely blocked with traffic. I love the place (because it is home) but I have heard it described by outsiders as 'cold, insular, smug, New York without the class'-- socially a very hard city to break into (quite London-like in that regard). Some of the downtown neighbourhoods are really cool.
Montreal is about learning French-- there are lots of successful immigrants in Montreal, but only the dying Anglo old guard doesn't speak French well enough to do business there. Probably the most European city in North America, though.
Edmonton is a nice place but is cold and comparatively bleak. Mountains and forests not so far away. And 'entertainment' can be as meaningful as spending time in the West Edmonton Mall (the world's second largest indoor mall, with its own fleet of submarines). Nice people, though. Taxes are way lower in Alberta than anywhere else in Canada.
Ottawa is a somewhat dull national capital. A great place for outdoors (skating on the canals, skiing in Quebec, cycling in summer etc.) and for families. Main industries are government and some hi tech (Nortel has seen tough times though).
Ft. McMurray is a boomtown with a tight housing market and solvable civic infrastructure issues. Awash in jobs and development, its inhabitants are making stacks of money and see a bright future in front of them. Criminal activity some 500 kms due south is not going to affect their fortunes nor tar sands production in the least. That's just the way it is in Edmonton - always has been.
As for 'implosion' of the sector - I highly doubt it.
Royalty/subsidy redress, NatGas usage, plus growth and environmental concerns are all factors that will culminate in a call for a moratorium on further production as has already been proposed.
I agree with you -the natives are restless- however so are the farmers and the latter represents a disproportionate chunk of the electorate and if they mobilize on water... watch out.
The only thing that has happened in the US is that farmers can be persuaded to sell their Riparian Rights (right to draw water).
Farmers scream a lot, but they are driven by money like everyone else. My cousins lived their life selling off bits of the family farm to become new subdivisions in the fastest growing entity in Canada (Barrie, Ontario)-- such was Toronto urban sprawl.
For each 100 hundred barrels of synthetic crude oil obtained from the oil sands, the up graders must remove one metric ton of sulfur. The present reserves of oil sands are described as 175 billion barrels of SCO. As the reserves are recovered, there will be 1.75 billion metric tons of sulfur to manage, either in Alberta or where ever the un upgraded bitumen may be sent. Elemental sulfur is roughly two metric tons per cubic meter. The Great Pyramid in Giza is roughly 2.7 million cubic meters. A Great Pyramid Unit of sulfur is 5.4 million metric tons. Speaking only of oil sands sulfur stranded in NE Alberta, there is 1 GPU of stranded sulfur on the ground now. According to recently published forecasts, by 2025 there will be 31 GPU of sulfur on the ground. By the time the present reserves are recovered, there will be over 300 GPU on the ground.
Sure hope the folks at Alberta Sulphur Research Ltd. in Calgary are right in suggestinging that all of that stranded sulfur will be used for non carbon based energy before it is sequestered as liquid sulfur dioxide in sour gas fields along the Alberta foothills. The advantage will be that the SO2 will react with the H2S in situ to reform sulfur and water. The economically problematic sour gas field will be sweetened. Of course, the means of transporting that sulfur from the oil sands to the sour gas fields without using economically and environmentally inefficient unit trains and non existant rail lines has to be worked out.
The folks at SPI, LLC (www.freeflowingsulfur.com) urge that elemental sulfur should be transported from remote points of production to advantageous points of use or sequestration in liquid sulfur dioxide slurries by pipeline at ambient temperature without plugging and corrosion of prior art. The synergy of that solution will be an enhances utility and market value for sulfur dioxide coupled with production of hydrogen, sulfur dioxide, sulfur, and heat from mineral resource hydrogen sulfide now burdened with the necessity to avoid production of excess sulfur dioxide.
By the way, harvest of energy from one metric ton of sulfur
avoids emission of one metric ton of CO2 to the atmosphere. I would be pretty neat if the process is actually put to good use to manage energy intensity, sulfur and GHG production from Alberta's oil sands and sour gas production industry, eh?
The water shortage issue is probably more serious in the south of Alberta than in the north. The reason can be found in the figure below, which shows that the province's oil and gas industry as a whole is a relatively minor consumer of water.
The figure breaks down the combined allocations for surface water (98% of the total allocation) and groundwater (2%). This is not to diminish the situation in locations without ready access to surface water, where adequate supply is a problem.
A decent bet with global warming is that Southern Alberta will become too dry for farming. Eventually that activity will be abandoned either due to water shortage or salt penetration (the usual consequence of long term irrigation).
As I understand it an early stage in the oil sands upgrading process is, to heat the newly extracted bitumen, usually with natural gas. I have wondered, why not situate a refinery near the upgrader? That way one could heat the bitumen with resid produced by the refinery, and sell the lighter and high value products for profit. It seems so simple to me, there has to be a reason why no one does this.
Do you or or one of the other members who works in the industry, know the answer to this one?
GAIA Host Collective
There are a few things that would be interesting to look at vis a vis Alberta oil sands production forecast reliability:
In effect, they value multicriteria analysis POST-investment, not PRE-investment.
_Joe Hill, Industrial Workers of the World song writer , organiser and martyr.
For some reason it is an American characteristic to act without any forethought and with a strong denial of all evidence, sort of like a religeous crusade.
Let's burn the mothership first and ask questions later.
I know that the production of these stats and charts are the work of a dedicated creator of charts and stats, perhaps a scientist, and certainly one who believes that science will lead us all from the dark cave to the brilliant light of reason.
And I understand the mantra of the scientific community that we must know what we are facing before we can fix it, but I fear this slow moving beast, which stomps blindly on people with impunity, consoling itself with the platitude that it is helping people in the short term.
That's the problem. Short-term thinking. Everyone seems to only be concerned with keeping the oil flowing, no matter the cost. And the scientists who are putatively trumpeting the concerns of the peak oil crowd are unwittingly contributing to the downfall of humanity by advocating the go-slow approach. They would have us try to find other destructive methods to fuel our anti-nature lifestyle, to create dubious technologies to mitigate our short-sighted ruinous rush to embrace technology (think CO2 sequestration, Methane Clathrate mining and other potentially disastrous technologies), and finally they would have us believe that this is the only way, asking us not to look too far into the future.
The basis for our technological civilization is flawed at its core: perpetual growth and the injection of human values into a non-humancentric natural system. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that nature will strike the balance, effectively killing off all but a few hundred million humans in the next two hundred years. No amount of rational thinking, strident pleading, careful individual preparation, or scientific humbug will stop this immense catastrophe.
This site has become like a club of Aeronautical Engineers holding court on the Hindenberg. While they head for their doom, they debate and trade memos and laud each other their efforts, inscribing beautiful colored charts that in fact describe their doom, but at the same time counseling calm, letting us know that they take certain measures to keep the balloon aloft. Though we all know it will all end in tears and recriminations.
You will undoubtedly ask, "So, what do you want us to do?"
Fair enough.
Make peace with your invisible sky being of choice.
All your base are belong to us.
There is nothing you can do. You are a mere 6.8 billionth of the social mass on this planet. You are but a speck on the backside of a massive survival engine that has evolved to seek the way of Paleolithic man, to survive day to day, no matter how destructive that short-term survival impulse coupled with high tech may be to future generations. Our natural inclination is to put individual over family, family over clan, clan over tribe, tribe over nation, nation over humanity. We are the selfish, thinking species and think we do. Witness this page.
So...Go on thinking. Go on chatting. Go on drawing charts. I'm going to trade my Prius for a Hummer and start drag-racing through the wilderness preserves. I hope, by speeding up the destruction of the environment, we can kill off this most perniciously self-centered species post haste.
The smoldering ruin that will mark post oil earth will be barren and wounded, its species decimated, the remnants of humanity doomed to live on the polar margins, scraping a living, learning to forget and forgetting to learn, and, with luck, the polar bears will eat those last survivors.
Homo sapiens is no different from yeast or any other organism, it will reproduce and consume its environment to the point of overshoot and collapse. If space aliens had beamed all the inhabitants of the OECD (developed) nations away, the end result would be the same. If all monotheists were raptured away, it would make no difference. The great majority of people everywhere love having children and love a motor. On Rarotonga, where it never drops below 20C, and the only road is just 32km in circumference (no place is more than 16km away), no adult will walk or ride a bicycle. In Shanghai, bicycles are banned from the CBD to make room for cars.
People will not powerdown willingly. Only collapse and dieoff can humble humanity. Therefore, both are inevitable because people will keep on with their monkey business (tar sands, oil palm plantations) until Gaia stops them.
Here I think a mini-collapse and a mini-dieoff might cause people to be aware of the situation in time to mitigate a total collapse and dieoff, and choose a better path. Then they will choose the powerdown path because they will have internalized (by learning) that that path is better for them. Powering down, and being happy and healthy about it, will be a new target for relative fitness. But not from being told that, only from experiencing it. At our DC conference Governor Schweitzer offered the challenge to be 'cool' about energy conservation with the slogan "How low can you go?" This might work in the framework of our evolved neural pathways, but not while profligate energy users still have more access to better mates and more stuff.
Hard times for sure, but end of times I doubt.
Of note, Niue and the Cook Islands have only avoided collapse by exporting their excess population growth to New Zealand and importing food. If the planes and boats stopped coming, they would have to revert to the old method of sustainability - warfare.
As long as someone is allowed to make money mining tar sands or destroying rainforests to grow biofuels, it will continue. I just can't see nature lovers ever outnumbering auto lovers or becoming more powerful.
Of course, just by being alive I am part of the problem. How else could it be? I am a self serving yeast just as is Jay Hanson, James Lovelock, Al Gore, and David Suzuki, none of them has committed suicide either. The only non yeasty thing I ever did was decide not to have children. Beyond that, I am following the AMPOD path of not trying to save the world, but just trying to use the mechanisms of our society to build a lifeboat for extended family and friends so I can finish my days as a (relatively) comfortable yeast while the world continues to burn up.
= www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
If someone wants to make a difference then use all your resources to burn as much fossil fuel as possible. The growth of food production must be halted to limit the human race to its current numbers. :-)
There is still too much slack in the system and vastly higher numbers could be supported by all 6.5 billion becoming vegetarians for example. So eat as much meat and dairy as possible.
BTW I do not blame the poor countries for their problems; these countries and great civilizations were destroyed by the two destructive "Semitic Religions" Islam and Christianity.
- 3 - Judaism, Christianity, Islam
(you can't have Christianity and Islam without Judaism, a point explicitly recognised by Islam 'people of the book' to describe Christians and Jews)
- human beings of other religions (see various Chinese civil wars since 500 BC, Genghis Khan etc.) have contrived to destroy each other without help from Christianity
What you can say is the explosion of Christianity across the face of the planet 1500-1900 was an absolute ecological and human disaster for the peoples of the New World, Australia, Polynesia. Population collapses of as much as 90% and enormous loss of life. Let's not mention the Slave Trade (international, there already was one from Africa to the Arabs), the Opium Wars, the Indian Wars etc.
But I am only 50% inclined to blame Christianity. it wasn't the religion of Northern Europeans, it was a combination of technological revolution (that gave them a decisive military and political advantage), demographic explosion and a transformation of the economy.
And of course, our old friend the smallpox virus, which did more for the domination of the planet by Western Europeans than anything else.
That's 0.75%, or, as reported earlier this year: 50 cents in tax per $70 barrel of oil.
How long will that last? Even Albertans down the line are smart enough to see they're being ripped off royally.
And if the tax becomes 25%, how will that affect investment and production?
The whole scheme feels like ethanol subsidies: the taxpayer pays.
I still feel the most likely option for the oilsands is implosion. Hard to predict which factor will be the decisive one, but there's plenty choice. The pressure to develop too fast is enormous.
PS Nuclear has far too long a run-up time to mitigate the sharp drop in available natural gas, so much seems clear. Where oh where will the power come from?
Before ASPO, I spent the last 5 months traveling around Canada looking for land, hiking etc. Given global warming, increase in energy prices, decrease in energy availability, increase in societal special interest chaos, etc, my thought was canadian land and canadian girlfriend(wife) would be good long term thinking. During this search, I witnessed 2 VERY passionate rallies against local coal bed methane developments - as we pass the best first spots for fossil fuels, the places left are increasingly on native lands, or environmentally valuable areas and the public animosity towards increasing energy supply will be high. My guess is that oil companies are underestimating this, among other things.
Of course, 99% of those opposed to these projects arent doing much to reduce their own usage, they just want their cake and be able to eat it too.
And 'on average', I have found Canadian women prefer Canadian men (though on the value scale, I am probably more Canadian than American)
Did you know that Canadians use more fossil fuels than their US counterparts? I guess it makes sense given colder winters, and further distance between cities.
Canada is relatively highly industrialised compared to the whole of the US. Particularly in the area of raw materials: pulp and paper, mining, basic chemicals, oil sands, etc.
An example, California only uses 40% more electricity at peak than Ontario-- 50GW v. 30ish GW. But California has 30 million people (plus say 2 million illegals?). Ontario has about 11 million people. GDP per head in California is 50% higher than Ontario (roughly).
California summers are a lot hotter (but less humid, generally). Most people in Ontario heat with gas, so the winter peak is less relevant.
I think the main difference is Ontario is a major manufacturing centre: mining, automobile manufacture, basic industries like chemicals (the Sarnia belt opposite Detroit), pulp and paper. Also California electricity prices are a lot higher whereas Ontario has had perverse incentives to consume power.
Canadian women? Complex subject. The analogy to California is apt. Canadian women tend to be feminist (in both a small f and a Capital F sense). There are some quite good books out there about Canadians (Mondo Canuck, The Xenophobes Guide to Canadians, etc.)-- Canadians are in some ways very like Australians by which I mean very egalitarian, very 'PC' (perhaps that is less like Australians ;-), and tend to be quite collectivist relative to Yanks-- standing out is admired but also criticised. Also fairly straightforward.
And a Newfoundlander is not a Bluenoser (Halifax) is (of course) not a Quebecoise is not a Torontonian is not an Ontarian is not a Prairie Dog (Winnipeg) is not a Calgarian is not an Edmontonian is not a Vancouverite... regional differences matter in a country that is 3000 miles wide.
The Economist put it well (travel guide to Toronto)-- 'Canadians have a complex inferiority and superiority complex with regard to Americans. Tread carefully'.
As an American woman once said 'I would have had a lot easier time in Canada if someone had told me at the beginning that to a Canadian, I am YELLING every time I speak' ;-).
Your best route to living in Canada is actually the Immigration Canada points system. Trying to marry a Canadian, if you don't have a permanent work permit, is hard work.
Calgary is the destination du choix of the ambitious Peak Oiler. Edmonton is closer to the production, but oil industry HQ is Calgary. Sadly the city itself is absolutely not geared up for PO etc. A big urban sprawl of very large homes, spreading up the highways into the mountains. Traffic jams everywhere. Think Denver North.
I could never live in Calgary. Dead ecosystem from my perspective - I need contrast, water, and trees.
I know Eastern Canada much better than Western. Vancouver is a fantastic place, but expensive (not enough land for housing) and the career opportunities can be surprisingly restricted (big companies tend to HQ in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary). Also it rains pretty solidly from November through to April-- much more than London, say.
Toronto is urban sprawl personified and quite ugly for that-- the 401 Highway has 22 lanes at one point (11 each way) and at 4pm they are completely blocked with traffic. I love the place (because it is home) but I have heard it described by outsiders as 'cold, insular, smug, New York without the class'-- socially a very hard city to break into (quite London-like in that regard). Some of the downtown neighbourhoods are really cool.
Montreal is about learning French-- there are lots of successful immigrants in Montreal, but only the dying Anglo old guard doesn't speak French well enough to do business there. Probably the most European city in North America, though.
Edmonton is a nice place but is cold and comparatively bleak. Mountains and forests not so far away. And 'entertainment' can be as meaningful as spending time in the West Edmonton Mall (the world's second largest indoor mall, with its own fleet of submarines). Nice people, though. Taxes are way lower in Alberta than anywhere else in Canada.
Ottawa is a somewhat dull national capital. A great place for outdoors (skating on the canals, skiing in Quebec, cycling in summer etc.) and for families. Main industries are government and some hi tech (Nortel has seen tough times though).
As for 'implosion' of the sector - I highly doubt it.
Royalty/subsidy redress, NatGas usage, plus growth and environmental concerns are all factors that will culminate in a call for a moratorium on further production as has already been proposed.
I agree with you -the natives are restless- however so are the farmers and the latter represents a disproportionate chunk of the electorate and if they mobilize on water... watch out.
Farmers scream a lot, but they are driven by money like everyone else. My cousins lived their life selling off bits of the family farm to become new subdivisions in the fastest growing entity in Canada (Barrie, Ontario)-- such was Toronto urban sprawl.
Sure hope the folks at Alberta Sulphur Research Ltd. in Calgary are right in suggestinging that all of that stranded sulfur will be used for non carbon based energy before it is sequestered as liquid sulfur dioxide in sour gas fields along the Alberta foothills. The advantage will be that the SO2 will react with the H2S in situ to reform sulfur and water. The economically problematic sour gas field will be sweetened. Of course, the means of transporting that sulfur from the oil sands to the sour gas fields without using economically and environmentally inefficient unit trains and non existant rail lines has to be worked out.
The folks at SPI, LLC (www.freeflowingsulfur.com) urge that elemental sulfur should be transported from remote points of production to advantageous points of use or sequestration in liquid sulfur dioxide slurries by pipeline at ambient temperature without plugging and corrosion of prior art. The synergy of that solution will be an enhances utility and market value for sulfur dioxide coupled with production of hydrogen, sulfur dioxide, sulfur, and heat from mineral resource hydrogen sulfide now burdened with the necessity to avoid production of excess sulfur dioxide.
By the way, harvest of energy from one metric ton of sulfur
avoids emission of one metric ton of CO2 to the atmosphere. I would be pretty neat if the process is actually put to good use to manage energy intensity, sulfur and GHG production from Alberta's oil sands and sour gas production industry, eh?
Regards to all, 'Mud
Source: Alberta Advisory Cttee on Water, 2004
The figure breaks down the combined allocations for surface water (98% of the total allocation) and groundwater (2%). This is not to diminish the situation in locations without ready access to surface water, where adequate supply is a problem.
The technical deliberations of a large, multistakeholder monitoring committee do not indicate much impact on either surface water quality or quantity downstream of oil sands operations.
As I understand it an early stage in the oil sands upgrading process is, to heat the newly extracted bitumen, usually with natural gas. I have wondered, why not situate a refinery near the upgrader? That way one could heat the bitumen with resid produced by the refinery, and sell the lighter and high value products for profit. It seems so simple to me, there has to be a reason why no one does this.
Do you or or one of the other members who works in the industry, know the answer to this one?