Prairie Lithium has been the undisputed leader in lithium development in Saskatchewan. On Monday, Arizona Lithium closed the deal to purchase Prairie Lithium. This is part 16 in Pipeline Online’s ongoing series on Lithium in Saskatchewan.
To provide the building blocks of 21st century technology, #Saskatchewan releases Critical Mineral Strategy. That includes helium, lithium, potash, copper, nickel, uranium, and a whole pile of rare earth elements. Saskatchewan wants to double its share of the mineral exploration pie in Canada.
In a related story, flow through shares would be great, if only they applied to helium exploration, says Royal Helium CEO.
But Saskatchewan’s Critical Mineral Strategy’s flow through shares are a big deal for junior mining company Buffalo Potash.
This stirs up serious memories for me, as I was the Canadian reporter in 2016 who asked presidential candidate Donald Trump if he would approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. He said he would, but “he wanted a piece.”
Here we are in 2023, and a Canadian Press reporter challenged President Joe Biden on cancelling the Keystone XL and delaying the Line 5 project, but approving a new oil project in Alaska. And it turns out, math is hard.
I don’t know who that reporter was, but I’d buy him a bottle of 18-year old Scotch.
Also, there’s a hell of a lot said about energy in the joint statement released by Trudeau and Biden. And some in his speech to Parliament, too.
Pipeline Online poured through the 2023 provincial budget to dig up everything possibly applicable to the energy sector.
On Tuesday, hearings began before the Supreme Court of Canada on the “No More Pipelines Act”.
And for something totally not political, an Oxbow couple saw a need for a Saskatchewan-focused oilfield services directory app, so they made one.
Saskatchewan is intervening this week in the “No More Pipelines Act” case. You know, the one that basically will kill any major energy project?
And if the No More Pipelines Act wasn’t enough, our good old CN Tower climber Minister of Environment and Climate Change wants to speed up emissions reductions by another 10 years. And remember, on any given day, Saskatchewan relies on up to 86 per cent of its power coming from coal and natural gas, as it did on March 15 (previously posted).
And when Guilbeault’s not doing that, he’s going to take a hard look at oilsands issues.
And on the lighter side of things, Quick Dick McDick shows us curling in a small-town, two-sheet rink with natural ice, perogies and curling for mickeys. Because nothing says Saskatchewan like curling for mickeys.
Pipeline Online asked the minster behind the bill, Bronwyn Eyre. Lots of talk about power production, EVs, fertilizer and more.
There’s a lot of talk about nuclear these days, but not so much about what to do with the spent fuel. Both Canada and the US still haven’t built final, permanent repositories. And New Mexico, it turns out, doesn’t want to be home to one.
By the way, there’s still a lot of potential with spent fuel. It can be reprocessed and used again in special reactors. Some people don’t think it’s that big of a problem, because with reprocessing, you can use it again and again.
The cost of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline has shot up another 44%, to $30.9 billion. Project managers say it’ll be finished this year (from what I hear, not so much). And yet Indigenous groups are seeking a 30% stake in the project. Where’s that money coming from?
And on the topic of pipelines, it turns out Repsol said it would be too much money to pipeline natural gas from Western Canada to Saint John, New Brunswick, modify an existing LNG import terminal to export, and ship LNG to Europe. Would that be because the pipeline would have to go through Quebec, by chance? So there really wasn’t a business case, or there wasn’t a business case because of a.) Quebec and b.) the federal government? Would this have worked under a Harper or Poilievre government?
Here’s some in-depth coverage about the implications of the Saskatchewan First Act, not just who was or was not consulted.
The second half of the story goes in depth as to what the NDP would do if the federal government and courts force Saskatchewan to shut down natural gas-fired power generation, after having done the same with coal. By the way, the day this act was discussed in committee, SaskPower used natural gas for 47 per cent of our power production, and coal for 39, for a total of 86 per cent. Watch for a story on that soon.
Last summer, SaskPower said it was going to beef up its interconnect to North Dakota and the Southwest Power Pool, (which runs down to Texas). This will increase our ability to buy and sell power from 150 megawatts to 650 megawatts, or more than Boundary Dam Power Station. We’re going to be paying $52 million a year for this privileges. Well, next week there will be open houses held in Estevan, where this power line will be due south of.
Note this at the end of the story from the SaskPower website, one of the benefits:
“gaining financial benefits through selling power to the rest of North America and avoiding carbon taxes”
This is an obvious case of carbon leakage. We will shut down our coal facilities to buy carbon-tax free coal power from the US.
Grounded Lithium drilled the second targeted lithium well in Saskatchewan last summer. Now, it has released its development plans for the Coleville area in west central Saskatchewan, and picked up more land as well. This includes a drilling plan for a number of production and disposal wells.
Wait, didn’t First Nations protests dramatically hold up the Coastal GasLink pipeline? And yet another BC First Nation wants to use that very same pipeline to supply its own liquefied natural gas terminal at Kitimat? How can this be? And the BC government just gave that LNG terminal the environmental go ahead?
Did you know that Lampman and the Kerrobert area are neck-and-neck when it comes to the top producing conventional oil wells in Saskatchewan? And it’s really close, despite being over 500 km apart.
Whitecap Resources is moving along with its plans for a “carbon hub” connecting five Regina and Moose Jaw industrial CO2 emitting companies to the Weyburn Unit. This will entail a substantial CO2 pipeline from that area to Weyburn. An engineering firm has been chosen to do the front-end engineering and design.
The fraction of Alberta’s wind power generation capacity put out on Saturday, March 11.
So, if you didn’t see this news come out on Friday, because all horrible news is released on Friday, the Trans Mountain Pipeline just went up something like 44 per cent in cost. That’ll be paid for by us, by the way. The cost is now $30.9 billion. But wait! In 2013, Kinder Morgan figured they could build it for $6.8 billion. The current cost is only 4.5x what Kinder Morgan had planned.
Is it any wonder why ExxonMobil is walking away from longstanding, but never used offshore oil and gas leases off the BC coast? Any guesses why a company would walk away from a major oil and gas project in BC?
By the way, this clip from the first season of The West Wing is the absolute best nugget of political knowledge you can sum up in one minute (the first minute of this clip). Fridays are “Take out the Trash Day.”
A similar thing happened the Friday of the Family Day long weekend, when the feds released their just transition plan. Watch for upcoming stories on that.
Does this mean pipeline companies now have a soul? Who woulda thunk?
TC Energy chose Calgary artist Billie Rae Busby, originally from Yorkton, educated at the University of Saskatchewan, to decorate an entire floor of its headquarters.
When the war in Ukraine started, grassroots movements across Canada sprung up to assist refugees come here, to Saskatchewan. Brian Crossman, columnist with Pipeline Online, recounts how the Sunflower Network, a small group of volunteers, has done their part to help out. So far, the ground has helped over 20 families to come to southeast Saskatchewan and another 20 to Saskatoon area.
On Feb. 23, when wind power generation produced an average of 10 megawatts throughout the day, you would have needed two wind turbines covering every single square mile south of Gravelbourg, from the Alberta to Manitoba borders, to provide the same amount of power as natural gas and coal did that day. Or, you could have around 10 reactors.
Uncertainty about the regulation of downstream emissions was one of the things that ultimately killed the Energy East Pipeline project. This was one of the clearest cases of the federal Liberal government “moving the goalposts.” If legal ecowarriors Ecojustice are successful in this case, it could have profound implications for all oil production in Canada. That’s especially is we are to be “net zero” by any particular date.
Note in the story how the Bay du Nord offshore project was approved by CN-tower climber himself, Steven Guilbeault. The story notes how it was one of the hardest choices in his life. Interesting, how a Newfoundland offshore project could get approval from none other that Guilbeault, and yet the rest of the oil industry feels it has no hope with him. Would that have anything to do with Newfoundland’s consistent election results of nearly every seat going Liberal red for decades? And that this project will be enormously profitably for Newfoundland? Yet when it came to the $20 billion Teck Frontier oilsands project in Alberta, the company walked away because it didn’t feel it could get any regulatory confidence from the feds?