25 Replies to “Can we be serious?”

  1. Brian….won’t need the ice breakers, global warning will see to that.

    2. Clearly. Except from Stewardpid’s post below, you can see there’s still ice, in July. So there’s that. Obviously we haven’t warmed the planet enough. Burn more coal!

  2. cost of ice breakers.
    how much does Alta &sask pour in to welfare Canada?

    GO WEXIT

    1. For those +/- 4 months shipping window, there would be 2 million bpd of extra Canadian oil available on the world market, and prices for those 4 months wouldn’t be near to current prices.

      Strawberries in winter are $8 / pound, for the 4 summer months they’re close to $4 / pound.

  4. Many more millions for Clown Carney’s friends in the Chinese shipbuilding industry.

  5. You must be a serious country with serious people in charge to have such a discussion.

  7. Totally agree. From the moment this was announced I thought it was a bad idea. The three premiers might be clever in other ways but they know shit about oil transportation. In addition to all the negatives you identified there is one other critical item. The oil in storage will need to be heated, otherwise there will be just a number of very large bitumen bricks on the shore. And the cost of pipeline(s) to Churchill will be extremely high. Of course you could always put a large nuclear plant in for heating if you really wanted to start throwing (as they say) gold bars off the Titanic.

    1. I was going to get into the heating issue, but I had to cut it somewhere. Can you imagine how much energy it takes to keep 100 million barrels of bitumen warm during -45C winters? One reactor wouldn’t cut it. The amount of natural gas alone would be enormous. Otherwise, you are correct, you’d have giant hockey pucks. I suppose insulating the tanks would help, and the thermal mass of the already warmed up bitumen should last a while. But geez….

  8. I’m old enough to remember when drilling for oil in Alaska and piping that oil to navigable ports was going to utterly destroy the Arctic. The caribou! Think of the caribou! But now eco-Canadians want to ship oil North? Really?

    1. Only you can prevent forest fires.
      Moving all that flammable material out of temperate climates and north to the frozen tundra will save millions of acres of forests.

  9. Brian:

    It can be done using specially designed and built lighters in the 100000 barrel range and transshipment in Newfoundland. That gives you twenty per day in the channel so the ice can not normally build up enough to become dangerous. You would need one major breaker on standby ( storm stops or pipe breaks can reduce flow and allow thick ice to form) but total costs are in range.

  10. If we have decided to go full pie in the sky, why not have Canada build it’s first Nuclear Powered Submersible Oil Tanker, and just go under the ice.

    1. Now we’re brainstorming! I thought about SOT’s, but then I wondered, why not a submerged pipeline under the ice? It could be rubber-ish, like a hose, not steel. Max ID 60″. It would have to come up to a pumping/heating station occasionally, and there would need to be ways (or two) to mitigate leaks, of course. If we can’t make the “hose”, I’d bet the Chinese could. Use it year-round, forget the tankers and ice-breakers.
      OR … why not ask Elon/DOGE/AI for an alternative cost-effective transportation method? Rockets delivering loads landing gently in TX? Or, what’s the Boring Co. doing these days? For a piece of the action, I’m sure Elon could be interested. Maybe we only need a link to the nearest US terminal?

      Reagan’s “Star Wars” got everyone off the bottom-dead-center of MAD. Neither Canada, EU nor the US governments will solve the West’s challenges. Time for AB/SK to take the lead on their own future.

      1. I forgot to mention autonomous tanker trucks. Elon would be up for them. It would probably make him laugh.

  11. This discussion leads to to recall the recent talk of reincarnating Port Nelson as a shipping point for oil, as if the photos of a dredge marooned on top of a pier were not enough to convince people that the port was abandoned, mid-construction, for a lot of very good reasons.

    1. That’s why I referred to shipping out of Hudson Bay, as opposed to Churchill, because either port is then inclusive.
      Silting is clearly an issue, as you noted. The Nelson River is the outlet for the river system for almost the entire Canadian Prairies. The ammount of silt is incredible, although truthfully Lake Winnipeg does function something like a septic tank where solids can and do settle out. If they want deep draft tankers, they are going to have to build something WAY out there and hope it doesn’t get destroyed by ice, which it will.

  12. Agreed. This was always a ridiculous idea. Our only real option, given the entrenched power structure in Eastern Canada that is perpetually both hostile and corrupt, is west. Far better to buy access to western ports and then ship from there. And/or negotiate with the US as a separate nation to bypass the criminals who pretend to speak for us in Ottawa.

    1. Well, we could swap them for shipping US coal out of Tswassen for oil out of Tacoma?
      Thar be lotsa oil storage tanks in Edmonton(refinery row), Ft Sask, Hardisty, Lloydminster, Ft Mac, lotsa heat tracing on above ground piping too.
      The only thing missing is the “will”.

  13. Then it’s agreed: The only thing Manitoba could bring to WEXIT was a port. Now that we all know the futility of that little exercise, they can stay w/ the ROC when AB/SK WEXIT’s.

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