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.
What do you get when you divide 41 by 10,000?
The fraction of Alberta’s wind power generation capacity put out on Saturday, March 11.
Take out the Trash Day – Trans Mountain Expansion edition
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.
And now for something completely different
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.
A year of helping Ukrainian refugees come to Estevan
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.
We would have needed a whole lot of those spinny things on Feb. 23
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.
Pay attention to this Newfoundland offshore oil case
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?
Who pays the bills?
Year end numbers are now available for Saskatchewan oil production. Also known are the top 10 oil producers in Saskatchewan, and their total and average production for the year.
In other words, these are the people who are paying the bills for a large part of our roads, hospitals and schools.
$40 billion in oilpatch CAPEX sounds great for 2023, until you realize it is half of 2014
Back in the lofty, pre-Trudeau government days of 2014, back when oil was booming, pipelines were planned to east and west coasts, and Alberta and Saskatchewan were swimming in money, around $81 billion was spent in capital expenditures (CAPEX) in the Canadian petroleum industry. On Wednesday, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) forecast CAPEX of $40 billion, which is just about double the disaster year of 2020, but half of 2014. And that’s before #justinflation. What would it be if we had a federal government supportive of the industry, instead of trying to make it disappear?
Curiously, Enbridge announced on the same day its spending a lot of money in Texas, including a port facility for Houston. Funny how it’s not talking about Northern Gateway to Kitimat, or Churchill, or even Valdez, Alaska? Wonder why?
And here’s Brian Zinchuk’s column analyzing all this.
Norway or Canada – who is the climate hypocrite?
Ken From, retired former CEO of SaskEnergy, asks if Norway or Canada is the climate hypocrite?
Russia is finding a way to ship its oil
“Dark fleet,” anyone? U of R professor Jim Warren writes about how Russia’s doing an end run around oil sanctions. Too bad we never built Energy East and were able to replace some of those barrels.
Speaking of oil – it’s expected to have a big impact on Alberta’s budget on Tuesday.
Alberta’s wind power failed, yet again, on Thursday
Alberta wind generation fell to 0.3 per cent capacity at supper last night. And the batteries that are supposed to back them up? Yeah, in the last 30 days, they output power a cumulative 0.09 per cent. That’s not 9 out of 100. That’s 9 out of 10,000. But the public thinks they will be used every night when the sun goes down or the wind doesn’t blow.
Wonder how SaskPower’s doing? We won’t be told for another two days.
More on Quebec and Newfoundland possibly re-opening Churchill Falls agreement
Some tough negotiations between Quebec and Newfoundland on Thursday, as the wholly lopsided Churchill Falls hydroelectricity deal may be reopened. Currently Newfoundland is getting paid 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour, and Quebec sells it for 41x that same power. And it will do so until 2041, unless something comes of these negotiations.
Newfoundland will continue to get screwed by Quebec for another nearly 2 decades, just watch
Story: Ahead of Quebec premier’s visit, provincial panel recommends new Churchill Falls deal
The notion that Quebec will change this deal one minute before 2041 is laughable. Quebec locked in a fixed price, with no escalator clause for inflation, in the early 1970s. And then they were able to extend it until 2041, despite Newfoundland’s protests to the Supreme Court of Canada, which backed Quebec. It is perhaps the most lopsided, unfair deal in Canadian history. Quebec gets rich, Newfoundland starves.
Churchill Falls Hydroelectric Generating Facility, with 5,428 megawatts capacity, has more power generating capacity than the entire province of Saskatchewan, combined, if every single coal and gas turbine, every wind turbine are running at 100%, and every solar panel is entirely lit at noon. If Newfoundland actually got a fair deal from its power sales over 50 years ago, it would not have been a have-not province for the last five decades. However, numerous court cases, up to the Supreme Court of Canada, have locked Newfoundland into the deal until 2041, selling power to Hydro Quebec for $2 per megawatt-hour. In New York (which buys power from Hydro Quebec), “Higher fuel costs have led to higher average wholesale electricity prices as well. In February 2022, the average year-to-date wholesale electricity cost was $118.36/Megawatt-hour (MWh), according to NYISO data.” Where do you think they buy wholesale power from?
Poilievre says he’ll “turn dollars for dictators into paychecks for our people”
LNG, this is the way, according to Pierre Poilievre in Calgary on Wednesday morning.
Drill, baby, drill! It’s peak of the oilwell drilling season in the Land of Living Skies
This time of year is the peak of the drilling season, and the rig count is the leading indicator for the oil business. Here’s the rig report as of Valentine’s Day. While you were giving your sweetie flowers, these guys were turning to the right.
Social media feeding sloppy journalism and confirmation bias
And a whole bunch about eating red meat, too.
SaskPower may have no choice but to use SNC-Lavalin for SMRs
Ontario Power Generation recently signed up with the companies that are going to build its first small modular reactor. One of them is SNC-Lavalin.
And for those who don’t remember, SNC-Lavalin built the Boundary Dam 3 Carbon Capture Project. That didn’t work out as well as hoped. But we might not much choice in the matter.
Bringing oil money to develop lithium in Saskatchewan
There’s one company coming into the lithium game in Saskatchewan from a slightly different perspective: It’s operated and partially owned by an oil company that already has revenue coming in. Also, it looks like there may be a lithium fairway running from east of Weyburn to Torquay. Here’s Part 12 and Part 13 in the series on Lithium in Saskatchewan.
Geothermal power project near Estevan is a “Go”
“We are a go” – DEEP Earth Energy Production’s geothermal power project near Estevan is going ahead this year