Re: OT: Canadian Politics
It is, sort of...but don't listen to her spin.
The financial industry is dying for the Suncor & Syncrude's of the world to start getting full value of their product. Because of the glut of oil that Alberta causes in Cushing Okla, Alberta oil sells at approx 20 dollars a barrel below the West Texas Intermediary rate (which itself is typically 10 dollars lower than the world benchmark, the Brent rate). This would cause their stock prices to shoot upward (great for the returns that the big banks get from their investment arms)and the oil producers to greenlight billions of dollars in northern albertan projects that...wait for it....are bankrolled by the large Canadian banks. So she's selling doom and gloom because the Canadian financial industry really, really wants to see the additional returns from an unleashed oil sands. Not to say that it wouldn't benefit the economy overall, of course it would, but those who stand to gain the most are the shareholders and money lenders.
I'll deal with some of her individual points to further show how slanted this piece is.
The time when we could depend on the United States as our sole oil and gas customer is long gone. In 2011, for the first time in more than 60 years, the US exported more gasoline, diesel and other fuels than it imported.
This is patently untrue at it's core. The U.S still has a massive crude oil deficit. She's right on a technicality, but it's an extremely sneaky technicality. The U.S (specifically, Galveston Texas) has the bulk of the north american refinery capacity that is suited to processing the heavier oils found in the Alberta Oil Sands, as well as the Venezuelan heavy oil fields. So yes, the American's export more fuel than they import...sort of...they import the vast majority of the crude oil used in those refineries.
Thanks to the shale revolution, the United States is set to become the world’s largest oil producer – overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia – just four years from now according to the International Energy Agency.
The IEA has long been a hilarious source of projection data. It's not even worth getting into in length, but basically anyone using an IEA projection to make their point has a clear agenda that they're selling.
Among Shale's dirty secrets is that you have to continue punching holes in the ground just to maintain current levels of production. From the industry numbers I've seen, it requires 90 new wells a month in the Bakken just to maintain the current ~770K bpd production, but they're going to somehow increase that by 5 million barrels in 4-5 years? The only people I've ever heard say such a thing is possible, is people whose jobs depend on selling the message. Drill rigs and drill crews don't materialize out of thin ****ing air.
Even more worrisome is the prediction by experts that in the foreseeable future the US won’t need Canadian oil at all. Currently, the U.S. has been able to reduce its reliance on oil from unfriendly countries such as Venezuela by replacing it with increased imports from Canada. But as U.S. oil production continues to grow rapidly, its imports of Canadian oil will inevitably decline.
Again, a lot of wishful thinking there concerning US production in the future. A U.S economic turnaround would see declining oil consumption skyrocket.
