‘Bitumen bubble’ not top source of Alberta’s financial pain, poll says

April 25, 2013 By

By Sarah O’Donnell, Edmonton Journal April 25, 2013

EDMONTON – Most Albertans do not believe the so-called “bitumen bubble” is the prime source of the province’s financial woes, according to a new poll.

Since Premier Alison Redford introduced the “bitumen bubble” to mainstream conversations during a televised speech in January, the government has warned the discounted price for Alberta crude will inflict a $6-billion hit on the provincial treasury this year.

But an online survey by Leger Marketing found that only one-fifth of Alberta voters believe the combination of pipeline constraints and oil price differentials is “primarily responsible” for the government’s financial problems.

A majority, 65 per cent, said the bubble was not the prime culprit behind the budget crunch. The remaining 16 per cent said they “don’t know.”

Leger’s Alberta vice-president, Ian Large, said he was surprised to see that nearly two-thirds of respondents reject the “bitumen bubble” explanation as the main reason for Alberta’s financial woes.

Calgary voters were slightly more likely than Edmontonians and residents in other parts of the province to say the bitumen bubble was the main source of money problems.

Large said he believes several factors are influencing public opinion on the issue.

For one, it is complicated to explain the causes behind Alberta’s fluctuating oil prices compared to the North American benchmark. At its low point in January, Alberta crude was selling for about $37 less per barrel than West Texas Intermediate, but that gap shrank to about $14 per barrel in March.

Meanwhile, other questions previously released from the Leger poll, commissioned by the Journal and the Calgary Herald, found that the Tories face a sharp slide in support as they are dogged by an array of trust and accountability issues.

Though the government is correct to point to problems with resource revenue caused by pipeline capacity and fluctuating oil prices, “because of all the frustrations with all the other issues, people aren’t buying it,” Large said.

The controversial 2013-14 budget delivered March 7 also distracted from the overall revenue challenges, Large said. The budget included a freeze to overall operational expenses, cuts in some areas and a sixth consecutive deficit. It also laid out a plan to borrow billions of dollars for infrastructure, in addition to a plan to start saving money again in 2014-15.

“I think that this message was lost both in the budget and then in the push back from the opposition,” Large said. “The opposition’s comment was: ‘This isn’t news. We’ve always had this problem. Why is this all of a sudden news?’

“So the government was not able to really make this argument very clearly.”

Faron Ellis, a political scientist at Lethbridge College, said the Redford government deserves credit for educating Albertans about the different price it gets for its oil.

If pollsters asked a different question, such as “Are you aware that pipeline capacity and what’s called the ‘bitumen bubble’ is an important long-term problem?” most Albertans would probably agree it is an issue.

“They’ve done a good job bringing the issue forward,” Ellis said. “Moving to the next stage and saying, ‘It is the cause of our current problems,’ there is considerable skepticism.”

Leger also asked 1,011 eligible voters in its non-random online survey if they had a favourable or unfavourable impression of the March 7 budget. Only 20 per cent reported a strongly or somewhat favourable impression, while 60 per cent said they somewhat or strongly disliked the spending plan.

Another 20 per cent said they could not offer an opinion.

Ellis, who studies and teaches polling methods as director of Lethbridge College’s Citizen Society Research Lab, said it should come as no surprise to anyone that six in 10 Albertans are unhappy with the budget.

“The Redford government was not given an austerity mandate. They campaigned on the progressive side,” Ellis said.

But Ellis said he was impressed Redford acknowledged Monday that she expected to take a political hit in opinion polls in the aftermath of the budget.

At this point, one year into a four-year mandate, her government is in a classic majority position, making tough calls early in the term, he said.

“We’ve seen many governments, federal and provincial, get through this,” Ellis said. “The test will be in three years. Has the situation been resolved? If it hasn’t, they will pay the price on the negative side. If it has, they’ll be rewarded.”

On the subject of cuts to post-secondary education, one of the most contentious pieces of the 2013-14 budget, more than 60 per cent of those polled said they disagreed with the decision to slash operating grants to colleges and universities by $147 million.

Edmonton residents were most unhappy about the cuts, with 67 per cent disagreeing compared to 60 per cent in Calgary and 57 per cent in the rest of Alberta.

“What’s surprising about this question is it wasn’t as universally condemned as I would have expected,” Large said. “There’s 26 per cent that agree with the decision.”

Although students, faculty and the mayors of Edmonton and Calgary have vocally opposed the advanced education cuts, Large said the government seems to have done a good job managing the fallout.

“I don’t think the government is going to hang on this one,” he said. “It really does affect a fairly small minority of the population.”

Leger conducted its online survey from April 9 to April 12. It does not a report a margin of error, but the company says a probability sample of this size would result in a maximum margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

That margin of error increases to more than five percentage points for regional breakdowns.

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Twitter.com/scodonnell

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
Filed Under: News

Political sharks circling as Alberta Premier Alison Redford marks her first year in office

April 23, 2013 By
By ,QMI AgencyFirst posted: | Updated:

Naysayers come from the right. They come from the left. They smell blood.

And they aren’t shy to say so.

That’s when Stefan Baranski steps up.

Baranski is Premier Redford’s communications front man and doesn’t mind dropping the gloves.

So when he hears the opposition slamming his boss on the first anniversary of her election he takes to the streets.

“If I were a betting man I’d be doubling down on Red,” he advises.

“All we’ve seen from the opposition in the last year is their extreme ideology at play — personal attacks and sabotage of Alberta’s best interests.”

He says Wildrose leader Danielle Smith and NDP top gun Brian Mason are “united in doing everything possible to ensure projects like the Keystone pipeline are dead on arrival.”

Baranski maintains Wildrose “doesn’t believe in climate change” and the NDP “find every opportunity to publicly undermine Alberta’s record at fighting climate change.”

“So I’ll put Alison Redford’s record of fighting for Alberta up against Danielle and Brian’s campaign against Alberta’s best interests any day of the week.”

Baranski says it is Redford “who reflects the mainstream conservative values so many Albertans share.”

He casts Wildrose as “the Social Credit Party with a new name and prettier lawn signs” who would “slash and burn health care and education while building none of the infrastructure we need today let alone tomorrow.”

He ends by saying Redford has “great courage” and a way of “toughing it out in the face of a challenge.”

The premier definitely has a challenge with her party voting in November on whether they have confidence she can lead them into the last election.

Baranski adds claims she’s in serious trouble “are overblown to say the least.”

Smith, the Wildrose leader, asks “what does this say if they have to replace the leader again?”

She then adds whether the Tories do or they don’t, “they’re in trouble either way.”

“Regardless of what the PCs choose to do I think they are over. They’re just not that good.”

If they keep Redford, Smith says, the Tories are “systematically dismantling what they’ve been.”

If they dump her it will show “they’re in complete disarray and have badly lost touch.”

“What Albertans have to look at is what will Alberta look like after the PC dynasty is over.”

Smith says Redford is good on the national and international stage, but even there she wonders if the premier is “selling Alberta out.”

She believes Redford is for big government and she believes that’s not where most Albertans want to go.

“I’m prepared to fight an election on this in 2016,” says Smith.

Then the biggie.

“I don’t think Albertans believe her. She has a major credibility problem. She tried to use people’s own money to buy them but now she can’t deliver,” says the Wildrose boss.

“And when you lose trust and credibility it’s hard to win back.”

Smith says Redford is unable to “make modest trims” in the bottom line without “hammering the front line” and that’s “rank incompetence.”

Mason says the government is “really floundering.”

Wildrose are upset over Redford borrowing billions but Mason sees the freezing of operating spending and the cuts now following as something Redford doesn’t have the mandate to do.

She didn’t run on it and Mason doesn’t believe she didn’t know going into the election she couldn’t bankroll what she was promising.

Redford wooed self-styled progressives to win the Tory party leadership and the election, and now, says Mason, “she has betrayed them” and “they have walked away from her.”

“She’s left with the people who she defeated in the leadership by tricking the progressives who voted for her. That creates a real problem for governing.”

That is, she is left with the card-carrying Tories who will vote in November on her fate.

Mason believes she doesn’t even have their confidence.

“People don’t know what the PC brand stands for anymore, she’s bounced around so much.”

Personally, Mason says he likes Redford but he thinks she has a “certain disdain for the little guy.”

“She also tries to change the definition of things. If you say she promised us black and gave us white she says it’s actually a shade of grey and that’s close enough.”

A year ago, two days before the election vote, Redford was in Calgary campaigning hard.

She looked happy. She said she would be in fine shape after the ballots were counted.

She repeated how she “wanted to bring change.”

And on April 23 she won a healthy majority.

So much has happened in the last year.

“It reminds me of a story,” says Mason.

“When you’re up to your neck in alligators it’s hard to remember your original goal was to drain the swamp.”

[email protected]

Filed Under: News

Alberta Premier Alison Redford says tough budget decisions has lost support for the party

April 23, 2013 By
By ,Edmonton SunFirst posted: | Updated:

As the opposition calls for an investigation into the finances behind Budget 2013, Premier Alison Redford acknowledged the fiscally-tight budget hasn’t earned her party any favours among Albertans.

While dismissing recent poll results that show her government’s approval rating is going down, Redford recognized the government’s recent string of tough budgetary cuts is causing a loss of support among Albertans.

“I think as we move through this difficult time and deal with the fact that there was a sort-of $6 billion hit to the budget, things will settle out,” said Redford, addressing reporters Monday on the eve of her first year in office.

“But no doubt, we did say there would be some tough times and we did need to make some tough choices that have impacted people. From that perspective, I can understand why some of that might be reflected (in the polls).”

When asked what she would have done differently in her first year, Redford took a deep breath and considered the question.

“It was important to come out of that election and really set expectations with Albertans with respect to fiscal planning,” she said, noting how important it is for Albertans to understand the government’s decisions on growing infrastructure.

“It’s something that I think communities and Albertans understand and it’s something that I would continue to emphasize and would’ve emphasized more into last summer.”

Redford said she’s “very proud” of what the government has accomplished.

When she was on the campaign trail, Redford promised to balance the budget and return Alberta to a debt-free status. However, the economic austerity of the “Bitumen Bubble” brought a meaner budget with major cuts to several ministries like education and health care.

Liberal Finance critic Kent Hehr is asking Auditor General Merwan Saher to conduct an investigation into the new financial reporting practices introduced in Budget 2013 under the unratified Fiscal Management Act.

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@SunMattDykstra

Filed Under: News

Alberta Looks at Renewable Energy Amid Push for Keystone

April 19, 2013 By

Date of Article: April 11, 2013

Source: Bloomberg

Author: Jeremy Van Loon

Link: www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/alberta-looks-at-renewable-energy-amid-push-for-keystone.html

Alberta may boost the use of renewable energy to cut carbon dioxide emissions as the province lobbies U.S. officials to approve TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline.

Officials are in talks with companies that produce power from wind and water turbines about the best way to spur more development, Energy Minister Ken Hughes said yesterday in an interview from his Edmonton office. Options include importing hydro-electric power from Manitoba as well as changing policy to increase hydro and wind-power development, he said.

“I’ve put the challenge out to the renewable industry to bring forward proposals and ideas that might help us continue to green the grid,” Hughes said. “We’ll be open to any specific suggestions” proposed, including policy that boosts the use of renewable power, he said.

Alberta is struggling to convince U.S. officials that its efforts to reduce carbon-dioxide output are making a dent in oil-sands emissions as Premier Alison Redford wraps up a trip to Washington this week to lobby for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry bitumen from the province’s oil-sands deposits to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The U.S. State Department is reviewing the $5.3 billion project because it would cross an international border.

The western province, Canada’s fourth-most populous, is responsible for a third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and the oil sands are among the fastest-growing sources, according to the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, an environmental research group and consultancy.

Change Perception

Reducing emissions from Alberta’s coal power plants by boosting renewables would change the perception of the province’s efforts to tackle climate change, Matt Horne, Pembina’s director of climate change research, said in an interview.

“Certainly one of the motivators has been the pressure around Keystone XL” for the province to address carbon output, he said. “Coal is a big part of the emissions profile, with three of the biggest sources of emissions in Canada coming from coal-fired power plants in Alberta.”
“If there was action on the scale of what Ontario has done on its coal phase-out, that would definitely shift the conversation,” Horne said.
Alberta is the only province in Canada with a deregulated system of electricity generation, with companies such as TransAlta Corp. (TA) producing power and selling it directly to customers. Unlike Ontario, which implemented a feed-in tariff for renewable energy in 2009 and plans to eliminate coal for power generation, Alberta hasn’t provided any major incentives to spur development of wind farms, solar power arrays or hydro, according the Energy Ministry’s website.

Eschewed Subsidies

Alberta’s dependency on coal for electricity is down to about 40 percent, from 66 percent a few years ago, said Hughes. The province has traditionally eschewed policy that offers subsidies to renewable power generation.

“If they were really serious about environmental stewardship, then they would concentrate on keeping the oil underground,” said Daniel Kessler, a spokesman for 350.org, an environmental group that opposes the Keystone XL pipeline. “It’s tremendously important that they go after the coal industry because the coal industry is a huge problem, but you can’t go after one while facilitating the other.”
Alberta’s wind and solar resources are among the best in the country, and the region has the third-most installed wind generating capacity in Canada after Ontario and Quebec, according to the Canadian Wind Energy Association. Wind power accounts for about 6 percent of generation in Alberta.

Hydro Power

In addition, the province has the potential to add as much as 6 gigawatts of hydro output, according to a report published last month by the provincial government. That’s the equivalent of about half the current electricity production capacity in the province.

As part of its climate change policy, Alberta levies a fee of C$15 ($15) a ton of carbon emitted by the larger producers. The province is also spending C$1.3 billion on two carbon capture and storage projects, a technology that removes the gas during fossil fuel processing and buries it underground.

More action on climate change would allow Alberta to “earn its social license to operate so that we have the full confidence of our customers and have the opportunity to get our products to market,” Hughes said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Calgary at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Susan Warren at [email protected]; David Scanlan at [email protected]

Filed Under: News

Gunter: Premier Alison Redford and Health Minister Fred Horne must take blame for Alberta health care fiasco

April 19, 2013 By
By ,QMI Agency

First posted: | Updated:

The Alberta provincial government claims it will spend $36.4 billion on operations in the coming year.

Of that sum, $17.1 billion (47%) will go to health care — nearly half.

Of that $17.1 billion, $10.9 billion will be given to Alberta Health Services (AHS) to run the public system of hospitals, clinics and care centres.

That means AHS is responsible for a full 30% of all the money the Alberta government spends in a year — not just on health care, but on all operations including education, environment, welfare, municipalities, transportation and so on.

More accurately, AHS is irresponsible for nearly a third of the province’s operating funds. AHS is the elephant in the provincial treasury.

But while Albertans have focused on the role of AHS in the myriad spending scandals that have spewed out of the public health-care system over the last nine months, it is time to begin pinning the blame where it squarely belongs: on Health Minister Fred Horne, Premier Alison Redford and the Tory government.

After all, it is the government that hands over nearly a third of its operating budget to AHS and the government that then seems to wash its hands of any culpability.

Albertans will pay $14.8 billion in provincial income tax in the coming year, meaning the equivalent of 75 cents of every $1 we pay goes to AHS. Then when AHS blows millions upon millions on expense accounts for its army of vice-presidents, regional managers, local managers, consultants and just plain old managers, Fred Horne expresses his regret that he can do nothing.

Wednesday, the Wildrose opposition revealed yet another spending irregularity at AHS. Former Executive Vice-President for Strategy and Performance Alison Tonge, a Brit, was reimbursed $1,570 for health care tests to support her immigration application to Canada.

This doesn’t strike me as all that outrageous. Lots of private-sector employers do the same for employees they are recruiting from other countries. If you want someone to say yes to your job offer, you have to pay their relocation expenses, and immigration health tests are a relocation expense.

What is outraging about the Tonge file, though, is that she was here just 26 months (Nov. 2009 to Jan. 2012), after which she returned to Britain. Yet Alberta taxpayers paid her nearly $427,000 in severance. That’s more than $16,000 a month for each month she was here. That’s quite the parting gift.

More significantly, it is standard for the scores of executives that have traipsed in and out of AHS or its precursors over the past decade. Exorbitant goodbye packages for short-term work are the norm.

Yet each time a new scandal tumbles out of AHS (almost tripping over the corpse of the one before it), Minister Horne and Premier Redford shrug their shoulders, turn their palms skyward and claim to be powerless to do anything.

Last summer, when Allaudin Merali was exposed for having expensed more than $350,000 for butlers, Mercedes repairs and fancy trips, Horne said there was little he could do because it was an AHS matter.

Ditto when AHS Chairman Stephen Lockwood quietly cancelled the audits of nearly 30 top execs, ordered by Horne in the wake of the Merali affair.

It was the same after the auditor general discovered $100 million in AHS expenses over just 17 months in 2011 and 2012, and when the AHS announced last month that it would be paying out millions in executive bonuses. Each time Horne claimed to be angry, but simultaneously insisted he lacked the authority to change things.

The AHS is a train wreck that cannot put itself back on track. It is precisely Horne, Redford and the Tories who must act.

Filed Under: News

Environmental Protection Policy Question Period: April 15, 2013

April 16, 2013 By

Click here for the Video

Ms Notley: Mr. Speaker, in Washington the Premier told the story, and I quote: the truth is that Alberta is home to some of the most environmentally friendly, progressive legislation in the world. Clearly, the Premier is confused about how to use the word “truth” in a sentence. As renowned scientist David Schindler said last week: just because you shut your eyes and say the oil sands are clean four times doesn’t mean they are. So to the Premier: why don’t you understand that intentionally and knowingly making public statements that are not correct jeopardizes our industry in the long run?

Mrs. McQueen: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Premier was quite accurate in her statements. I’d like to actually mention a few statements that Dr. Schindler has made in the past as well about when we look at the work that we’re doing with regard to land-use planning, with regard to the monitoring in the oil sands, and doubling that monitoring. Dr. Schindler has actually made very positive comments about from where we were to where we moved to. The Premier was very accurate in her statements in Washington.

Ms Notley: Well, interestingly, given that Dr. Schindler said that even the village idiot couldn’t deny the significant impact the oil sands have on the environment and given Alberta’s inaction and denial on almost every facet of environmental protection means that this government has not yet risen to village idiot status, why is this minister standing by while the Premier intentionally and knowingly makes public statements . . . [interjections]

Mrs. McQueen: Mr. Speaker, let’s talk about the facts about Alberta, the first jurisdiction in North America to put a price on carbon, to have a technology fund to reduce emissions. As we grow the oils sands region to supply access to markets, worldwide markets, we continue to make sure that on integrated resource management, land-use planning, monitoring, and the climate change policy – show me anywhere else that has the kind of environmental policies that this Premier and this government have taken.

Ms Notley: Well, Mr. Speaker, given that this PC government just handed over most environmental protection in this province to the founding member of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and given that Alberta will miss its reduction targets by miles and has absolutely no plans to fix that, why won’t the minister admit that the failed PC environmental record seriously damages Alberta’s international credibility and simultaneously hurts industry and the environment?

Mrs. McQueen: Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. You can do solid environmental policies while being efficient and effective in the regulatory process, and that is exactly what this minister is doing along with the Energy minister. As well, we’re making sure that our environmental policies are being reviewed as they pertain to climate change policy to make sure that our emissions will be reduced. That is the commitment we have made.

Filed Under: News

Proposed carbon tax increase sparks debate; Bikman

April 16, 2013 By

Written by Trevor Busch

Wednesday, 10 April 2013 16:53

A controversial proposal by the province to radically boost levies on carbon production and place imposing greenhouse gas emissions targets on large-scale oil producers has been viewed with surprise by industry insiders and the federal government.
The long-term plan, which calls for emissions reductions of up to 40 per cent per barrel of production, was dropped by Environment Minister Diana McQueen during a recent meeting  in Calgary with senior oil executives and representatives of the federal government.
Reaction to the proposal has been swift, with industry warning emissions targets that are too ambitious could serve as an impediment to international investment in the oil sands sector at a time when it is striving for increased competitiveness.
“I think we need to be very careful that we’re not sending industry a message that creates some nervousness or some uncertainty about just what exactly is going to be happening,” said Cardston-Taber-Warner MLA Gary Bikman.
“Capital investment craves certainty — they want to be able to invest with confidence that things aren’t going to change.”
While acknowledging a need for increased emissions reductions, Bikman is wary of the approach until more details have been revealed.
“Having said that, do we need to be good stewards of the environment? Of course we do. Do our customers, the countries that we do business with expect us to be good stewards? Yes they do. It is important that the province send a clear, consistent message about real plans, genuine plans, that will actually produce good results, not just make good headlines.”
Critics have attacked the proposal as a bargaining chip with the U.S. government in pushing for approval of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline project.
“I think that is probably true, that there would be an aspect of that,” said Bikman. “The premier has said we need to send a message out to our customers. Danielle Smith (provincial opposition leader) has said the same thing, that people need to know that we are good stewards. We have suggested some real ways to cut back on emissions, as well as particulate contamination, by moving towards natural gas-powered (electrical) generation, as opposed to coal-fired generation. If you phase that in over time, then you’re going to have a much greater impact in an economical way, and a productive way, on reducing carbon emissions. Whatever contribution that plays toward global warming, it will happen in a significant way, as opposed to just raising the price.”
Regulations introduced in 2007 in Alberta required oil sands producers and large-scale emitters to reduce per-barrel emissions by 12 per cent per base year, as well as implementing $15 per tonne penalties for every ton of emissions over their limit.
McQueen’s plan, already being dubbed “40-40”, would require 40 per cent reduction in per barrel emissions and a $40 per tonne penalty when the limit is exceeded. Estimates indicate the regulation could increase the cost per barrel by $2 for oil sands producers.
While an improved environmental policy is a laudable goal, Bikman is concerned about what this plan might entail.

“The best time was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. If our record hasn’t been all that our customers think it should be, we need to give serious weight to their opinion. I think everything needs to be a balanced approach, it needs to be a cadenced approach that’s phased in, so you’ve got the environmental reality versus the economic reality.”
Bikman stressed that Alberta’s oil needs to be considered not just from an environmental perspective, but from an ethical one.
“You can meet both of those realities if you’re consulting all of the stakeholders, because some of those stakeholders are obviously customers for our oil. And what are they doing in their own countries? They can say ‘We think that its dirty oil’, but its ethical oil, in the sense that its not being produced in countries that support terrorism. It needs to be part of the discussion.”
Describing the proposal as a possible “knee-jerk” reaction to speculative pressure by the Obama White House over Keystone XL, Bikman counselled a more cautious approach to emissions reduction.
“Sometimes I get the feeling that some politicians and government people talk out of both side of their mouth, and I’m thinking more about our customers than I am necessarily within our own province. But we don’t knee-jerk. Maybe the premier is getting a clear message that Keystone XL won’t get support from the Obama administration if we aren’t making efforts to make our oil cleaner. Well, that’s a reality. You don’t knee-jerk to that. You say you have a serious plan after some lengthy and intense discussions — when I say intense I don’t mean heated, but deep — about what the science really is. Politicians aren’t scientists, and we shouldn’t mix politics and science.”
More specific details of the proposed plan have not yet been revealed, and it would still require official approval by the provincial cabinet.

Filed Under: News

Council debates merits of energy program

April 16, 2013 By

Written by Trevor Busch

Wednesday, 03 April 2013 15:42

Town council is investigating the advantages of further enrolment in a province-wide municipal energy aggregation program designed to save costs on electricity and natural gas.
Currently, the Town of Taber is enrolled in the 2009-2013 energy aggregation program administered by the Alberta Municipal Services Corporation (AMSC), which fixed base load electricity rates at $82.97/Wh, and natural gas rates at $8.52/GJ. The current contract is set to expire on Dec. 31, 2013.
In preparation for the expiration of the contract, AMSC has announced a partnership with TransAlta and the offering of a new program, the 2014 AMSC Energy Program, relating to the further aggregated procurement of electricity and natural gas for municipalities.
“They came to us with some information, and they’re basically looking for support from municipalities to start their first rounds,” said Dale Culler, director of corporate services, at the March 25 meeting.
“If you’re not locking in your rates, you would be subject to market rates and fluctuations at the time. This may not be our only option — there are other ways to lock in prices. This is one we’ve participated in for a number of years.”
Incorporated in 2005, the AMSC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA), and provides aggregated services to member municipalities and other related organizations.
The current 2009-2013 energy program had 768 participants.
Coun. Randy Sparks commented under the previous aggregation program contract, the Town of Taber had been “hooped” when paying a locked-in rate due to a drastic reduction in the price of natural gas in the marketplace.
“If memory serves me right, has not the town been waiting for this day to come, that we got out of this previous contract? Because the previous contract did not work to the town’s advantage at all, and I think we actually got hooped pretty good on the last one. So I think we’ve got to be very prudent and wary of locking in at this time, because of what happened the previous time. We need to make sure that all of the ducks are in line here before a commitment is made. I think they need to come up with a pretty sweet deal — as sweet as possible — before the town would venture into such a thing again.”
Culler pointed out the timing of the previous contract had been unfortunate considering the current cost of natural gas, but this had hardly been a foreseeable outcome.

“The timing of the last one happened just before the market corrected, and there was actually a lot of interest in municipalities wanting to lock in, because prices were going up fairly steadily. Based on the market price at the time, the amounts that were being offered over a five year period were lower than the market. In other words, there was some advantage.”
Rolling the dice on energy costs by not participating in an aggregation program will expose the town to possible market fluctuations and increased risk, according to Culler.
“One of the things you look at when you’re considering these is where has the market gone, and has the market pulled back to a point in which you’re comfortable, and where’s the risk point. If you feel that energy prices are going to be lower, then you would hold off. If you feel that they’re going to be slowly coming back up, you might want to consider locking it in. The unknown is always a difficult thing to try to manage. Do we want to have risk in price, or not really, is what it boils down to with these programs.”
Mayor Ray Bryant came out in favour of participation in the program, while still noting the previous contract had not been advantageous with regard to natural gas.
“It would seem to me with the information they’ve provided that certainly there are more options, more flexibility, this time around. I think from what I gather with the power we were in the ball park, but it was the natural gas that we took a hit on, keeping in mind our power costs are about $1.2 million per year and our natural gas was about $400,000. Now, knowing full well that natural gas is down, maybe if that is the bottom and it’s starting to trend up this might be a good time.”
Following discussion, council voted unanimously to authorize town participation in the 2014 Energy Aggregation Program administered by AMSC for the first round of aggregations, but reserved any final decisions on the matter until any potential advantages or disadvantages of a renewed contract have been fully investigated.
The first aggregation round of negotiations is scheduled for this month, with a requirement that all requisite documentation to be submitted by April 5.

Filed Under: News

When oil meets emotion: the Keystone conundrum

April 15, 2013 By
 By Darcy Henton, Calgary Herald April 15, 2013 10:17 AM

Nebraska farmer Jim Tarnick vows to fight the Keystone XL pipeline to the finish because he believes its approval will be the death of his farm.

It’s a battle Tarnick says he can’t afford to lose.

“I will carry it on to the end,” the 38-year-old farmer said Friday. “They will really have to take my land from me.”

If approved by United States President Barack Obama later this year, the Keystone XL pipeline will carry up to 830,000 barrels per day of oil-sands bitumen from Alberta and across Tarnick’s farm in central Nebraska to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The decision is critical to Alberta, which is relying on the $5.2-billion TransCanada project to help overcome a so-called bitumen bubble that has dramatically discounted the price of oilsands crude to the point where the provincial government is projecting a $6-billion shortfall this year in resource revenues.

Although the differential between the price of bitumen and West Texas crude has narrowed since the March 7 budget, International and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Cal Dallas said in an interview this week that Keystone could generate hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity for Canada and Alberta over its life.

“For the future of Alberta I think it is a critically important project,” Dallas said. “The development of our industry in Alberta is in no small part contingent … on making sure we have access for our products.”

But Tarnick, who raises cattle and grows corn and soybeans on 640 hectares of land 70 kilometres from Grand Island, Neb., fears the line through the sandy, corrosive alkali soil will almost certainly leak or rupture. He believes that will destroy the aquifer farmers in his state rely upon for their lives and livelihood. In his mind, it’s not a question of if the pipe leaks, but when.

Tarnick said Friday he never pictured himself as an activist but he has already been arrested for chaining himself to the White House fence. “It’s been quite an experience,” he said. “I never would have expected to be this much into it, but it is a fight I believe in.”

The next skirmish is set for Thursday when Tarnick and other state farmers affected by the line will raise their concerns at a U.S. State Department hearing in Grand Island, a town of about 50,000 residents and home to the Nebraska state fair.

Tarnick thinks the State Department, based on its preliminary report on the project, has already decided to recommend approval of the pipeline. And he rejects the contention that America needs Alberta’s oilsands bitumen and that the pipeline ensures a safe and secure supply.

“It’s crazy. It helps Canada, but it does nothing for the United States. I don’t see why I need to be a mule for Canada to pump its tarsands oil through my ground and through my water. We don’t want to take that chance – not for a product that’s not U.S.”

The clash between the economy and the environment is at the heart of much of the raging debate over Keystone on both sides of the border.

Alex Pourbaix, president of energy and oil pipelines for TransCanada Corp., told a U.S. Congress subcommittee this week the line will provide seasonal jobs for 10,000 workers, add $3.4 billion to the U.S. economy and result in $3.1 billion in American purchases and contracts.

“The Keystone XL Project is fundamentally about meeting the needs of U.S. crude oil refiners – and hence U.S. consumers – for a reliable and sustainable source of crude oil to either supplement or replace reliance on declining foreign supplies, without turning to greater reliance on Middle Eastern sources,” Pourbaix said. “There can be little dispute that this purpose enhances U.S. energy security at a critical juncture.”

He billed Keystone as the safest pipeline in the world, but critics remain unconvinced.

Jane Kleeb, a spokeswoman for the advocacy and property rights group Bold Nebraska, said her organization is not an environmental group, but got caught up in the Keystone debate when the pipeline was proposed through the state.

While construction of the pipeline could provide 2,000 to 4,000 temporary jobs for Americans, it’s still not a good deal for Nebraska and other states the pipeline crosses, she said.

“I acknowledge those are good jobs for those families, but what they are putting into the ground, what they are leaving behind for our families, is not good,” Kleeb said. “Sure, those are good jobs for two years for those families, but then our families have to live with the risk forever – and that’s not fair to us.”

The land rights and pollution concerns of Nebraska farmers are part of a much larger issue: greenhouse gases and climate change.

Opposition to the Keystone XL line has morphed into a movement to wean North America from its reliance on fossil fuels and to prevent expansion of Alberta’s oilsands, which environmental activists have branded “the world’s dirtiest oil.”

“This is an issue that has fired up the environmental movement more than any other in the past 40 years,” said Daniel Kessler of the environmental group 350.org.

He called Keystone “a fuse to one of the largest carbon bombs on the planet.”

The issue has galvanized North American environmental groups and celebrities to stop the Keystone at all costs and to date about 1,500 people, including actress Daryl Hannah, have been arrested in demonstrations against it.

“Beyond the obvious worries about spills and such, the most important thing about the pipeline is what it connects to. The tarsands are one of the planet’s largest pools of carbon; it needs to stay in the ground if we’re going to be able to do anything about climate change,” said 350.org founder Bill McKibben. “Burn it on top of everything else we’re burning and it’s game over for the planet.”

McKibben said there are other deposits of carbon around the world that pose a similar threat, but without Keystone the tarsands expansion will slow or stop.

Earlier this week, Pulitzer Prize winning author and U.S. energy consultant Daniel Yergin called the Keystone the most famous pipeline in the world, which he noted is quite an achievement since it hasn’t even been built yet.

Mark Jaccard, a Simon Fraser University professor who sat on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Prize in 2007, said change has to begin somewhere and slowing development of the oilsands would be a big step.

He told a congressional committee hearing in Washington this week that expansion of the oilsands will prevent Canada from meeting its commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.

“I really believe that our first priority, whether you care about economic development, your children, a Third World, whatever, is to try not to have global temperatures rise more than two degrees Celsius, and that’s going to be extremely difficult to meet,” he said. “The question has to be: ‘How do we collectively stop aggregate emissions from continuing to rise?’ It’s going to have to be stopping one project as part of an effort to stop a lot of projects.”

The U.S. State department concluded in its interim report that rejecting Keystone would not significantly impact oilsands production – a conclusion Jaccard vehemently countered in his congressional testimony Wednesday.

But Premier Alison Redford said repeatedly during this week’s visit the U.S. State Department is right.

“What we’re seeing is a continuing growth in the oilsands,” she told the Brookings Institution Tuesday in a speech and discussion interrupted repeatedly by environmental protesters. “If Keystone didn’t go ahead, we really wouldn’t see much of a slow down.”

The province still expects to see production triple to three million barrels per day by 2020, she said.

She rejected hysteria over the oil-sands carbon emissions saying they were seven per cent of Canada’s total emissions, and less than states like Ohio, Indiana and Iowa.

Alberta will market its oilsands bitumen in Asia or India if the United States rejects Keystone, she told her audience.

“We know the developing world is thirsty for our energy,” Redford said. “But it’s Keystone that offers the U.S. the most direct and tangible rewards. And I hope that not just Washington, but Americans across your country understand them, and recognize the precautions Alberta is taking to produce energy safely.”

The premier also pointed out that Canada supplies 30 per cent of the American oil imports and without almost two million barrels per day from the oilsands, the U.S. has no prospect of North American energy independence.

Redford has made four trips to the U.S. Capitol in the past 18 months to preach the merits of Keystone for both countries and to refute the contention that the issue comes down to either Keystone or the environment. She has also been boasting about Alberta’s efforts to combat greenhouse gases through a $15-per-tonne levy on carbon emissions in the province that funds climate change research and technology.

Industries that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon a year are required to reduce their “carbon intensity” – emissions per unit of production – by 12 per cent a year or pay a $15 per tonne levy on carbon that exceeds the intensity target.

Jaccard said that compared to British Columbia, which requires industry to pay a $30 per tonne tax on all carbon emissions, Alberta’s levy works out to about $2 per tonne – a number he called “inconsequential” at the hearing.

The U.S. Congress subcommittee on energy and power is debating a bill – the Northern Route Approval Act – that would enable Congress to approve the Keystone pipeline even if Obama rejected it.

Committee chairman Ed Whitfield, a Republican from Kentucky, noted Wednesday during the hearing that the approval process has dragged on four years “and there is still no clear end in sight.”

Passage of the bill will provide 20,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs and nearly a million barrels a day of “much-needed oil” flowing from Canada to refineries in the Midwest and Gulf Coast, Whitfield said.

“America is a nation of builders and the American people want to see Keystone XL built,” he said.

Although Whitfield is not optimistic the Democrat-dominated Senate will even consider the bill, Republican North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said in an interview this week he believes the pipeline would be approved by Congress even if it is rejected by Obama.

A non-binding vote on a pro-Keystone bill he co-sponsored in the Senate last month passed by a 2-1 margin. Environmentalists discounted the vote because it wasn’t binding, but were miffed that Democrats who pledged support for climate change voted for it.

“We weren’t happy about it,” said Kessler, of 350.org

Gary Doer, Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S., said the Senate vote was significant because the Democrat senators voted in favour of the pipeline knowing the environmental community was watching.

He noted all the governors in the states through which the pipeline is passing support the pipeline and several public opinion polls have shown the majority of Americans support it as well. A Pew Research Centre poll, conducted March 13-17, pegged support for building Keystone at 66 per cent.

Doer said the comment period on the State Department report closes on Earth Day, April 22, and then there’s a 90-day period for responses before the final decision is likely to be announced by the president.

“If the decision is based on science and merit, I feel it is trending in a positive way, especially with the State Department report,” he said. “Some of the allegations about greenhouse gases fell like a house of cards with that report.”

But Doer said if the decision is based on “noise” or rhetoric, rather than facts, the decision “is a little bit more unpredictable.”

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© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Filed Under: News

Believing in clean oilsands like believing in ‘magic fairies,’ top scientist says

April 14, 2013 By
 By Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen April 13, 2013

OTTAWA — Claims that Alberta’s oilsands are environmentally harmless are “lies” and won’t convince anyone in Washington, one of this country’s most famous ecologists said Friday.

Political leaders in Alberta and Ottawa “seem to think that Americans believe in magic fairies — just shut your eyes and say the oilsands are clean four times and it happens,” said David Schindler of the University of Alberta.

He said this reflects the current federal ideology — not anti-science, but “anti-some kinds of science. Anything with ‘environmental’ in it seems to be anathema.”

Schindler, a freshwater scientist, was speaking at Carleton University. He has been a leading researcher on pollutants ranging from phosphates to acid rain to toxic waste, and in 2001 won the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, a national award given to the country’s top scientist.

Showing his audience an aerial photo of a scarred landscape in oilsands country, he said environmental assessments commissioned by oil companies show there is no impact and those same companies claim the damage is later remediated.

“Why are people allowed to lie to the public like this? I just don’t understand this. We have to challenge them,” he said. “Obviously the people who used to challenge them, the civil servants, are no longer allowed to.

“If you got towns around the world to nominate the village idiot from every town and flew them over the oilsands, and asked them: ‘Yes or no, is this a significant impact?’ I think I know what the answer would be.

“It gives you an indication of how stupid this must seem to people in Washington. They must think we’ve all just fallen off a turnip truck … We’ve had premiers and prime ministers and ministers of the environment spouting this stuff.”

He said tailings ponds in the region total 170 square kilometres, forming “a toxic Great Lake.”

A few years ago, Schindler decided it was time to test claims that the oilsands industry is benign. He joined toxicologist Peter Hodson of Queen’s University and Jeff Short, a pollution chemist with experience from the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill.

They took snow samples up and down the Athabasca River valley to see what airborne pollutants were falling, in an echo of old acid rain research. Melted down, the snow showed more toxins near the oilsands and downstream than in clean snow upstream. They published results in the journals Nature and PNAS.

“The (samples) near the oilsands actually had an oil scum floating on top of the melted snow,” said Schindler, showing a photo of oily droplets on water. Also, “when it starts to melt in the spring the snow turns black.”

Yet federal and Alberta politicians branded opposition the work of “radicals,” he said.

Schindler was incensed, and still is. “Suddenly if you want to protect the environment you’re an enemy of the state,” he said. He was educated as the Joe McCarthy era was ending and said today’s political climate is similar. “This just makes my spine crawl.”

People keep pulling deformed and diseased fish out of the water downstream from oilsands but we don’t know enough about the causes, he said. He believes this would be an ideal project for the Environmental Lakes Area, but these small field labs on lakes are being closed by Fisheries and Oceans to save money.

At Fisheries and Oceans Canada “there’s nobody who knows any science in about the upper 10 levels of management … They’re accountants, they’re business people.”

Schindler worked for Fisheries and Oceans in the 1970s and 1980s as founding director of the ELA.

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© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Filed Under: News
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