Energy policy
EDMONTON—Despite the fact that we are running out of natural gas, and that we import 49% of the oil we consume, NAFTA dictates that Canada’s government cannot reduce the percentage of oil and gas we now export to the United States even in times of domestic shortages. A new report released today by the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) says that the only solution to this and other potential scenarios is for Canada to pull out of NAFTA’s “proportionality” clause.
Inside this issue:
BC’s Climate Change Strategy and the Fossil Fuel Industry
TILMA: A Major Hurdle to BC Climate Action Plan?
Privatization by Another Name: BC’s Alternative Service Delivery Plan
‘Welfare to Work’ Didn’t Work
The Olympics, Housing and Homelessness in Vancouver
Workplace Rights for Recent Immigrants
Hopes are being pinned on bio-fuels as a way out of the agriculture crisis. Ethanol and bio-diesel, the hopeful say, will increase the demand for crops like wheat and canola enough to make farming profitable again. Farmers and governments have pinned so much hope on bio-fuels because the traditional things that used to be trotted out as reasons for hope have pretty much crashed and burned.
It took intense pressure and heat over millions of years to turn buried plant and animal life into the natural gas that energy companies now suck out of the ground with increasing speed in northeast BC.It will take just 34 years, based on current rates of production and reliable estimates of what remains, to deplete that irreplaceable, publicly owned natural resource – and half that time if, as BC government leaders have sometimes advocated, energy companies were to double their efforts.
These are pretty exciting times for Canada’s oil patch.
Crude oil prices are at record highs, and showing no signs of declining. Most of its current production is either conventional or from the oil sands, both at historic costs that are far below current price levels. The oil industry’s success in limiting Canada’s refining capacity has paid off massively, quietly generating superprofits in the refining and distribution end of the business.
For several years, BC has been hooked on revenues from the fossil fuel industry. Skyrocketing royalty payments to the province from companies pulling oil and natural gas out of BC's energy-rich northeast corner now outstrip income from forestry. Over the past 10 years, production of natural gas in BC has increased by more than 40 per cent, and the number of wells has more than tripled.