In late June, Federated Co-operatives Limited will be celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Regina Refinery Complex. In September, 2022, Pipeline Online published a six-part series on the two Grant Devine-era heavy oil upgraders, and their lasting impact. One of those upgraders is an integral part of the Regina Refinery Complex, and thus, is a major part of the history of that refinery. To commemorate this momentous anniversary, Pipeline Online is republishing this series.
In Pipeline Online’s continuing mission to tell you exactly what the federal Liberal government is saying on energy and environmental policy, this is the verbatim speech of the new Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson, who spoke at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce on May 23. In this case, the ministry was kind enough to provide the transcript online, indicating this is a message they really, really want to get out there.
And it is worth taking in. This guy sounds NOTHING like Wilkinson or Guilbeault. He promises reviews in 2 years, not 5. Wilkinson wanted to keep it in the ground.
You can also watch it in the link provided in the story on CPAC’s YouTube channel. I encourage you to take the time to do so. It’s cued up to start at his speech, but if you want to hear his background, which including working on the financing for the Alliance Pipeline, rewind a bit and hear a glowing introduction from the CEO of Suncor.
Notably, the Alliance Pipeline he mentioned financing was the last major pipeline project I worked on. I started work three weeks after my wedding. And out of the 12 guys on my road bore crew, I was the only one married once.
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For giggles, if you want to see who the Anti-Zinchuk is, this is a video from Markham Hislop. He posts daily videos hating everything about the Canadian energy sector, from every angle imaginable. In this video he shoots down the idea Hodgson speaks of regarding Canada becoming an energy superpower. Didn’t Harper come up with that? That’s right, he did.
It got 14000 views in less than a day, and 255 comments.
Be sure to check out the Pipeline Online Podcast at 1 p.m. Monday, May 26, live on X, LinkedIn and Facebook, with guest Ken From, former CEO of SaskEnergy, TSASK, PTRC, and Prairie Hunter Energy.
Oddly enough, I was driving through southern Alberta at the very moment wind output cratered. Photo by Spencer Zinchuk
Alberta wind output falls to 0.05 per cent of capacity days before energy election. And the Clean Electricity Regulations, brought into force the last day Parliament sat, do not appear to be up for change according to the Liberal election platform. Read for yourself.
Poilievre’s key energy policy: a National Energy Corridor for pipe, power and rail. Here’s his speech, verbatim.
The reality is, we largely have a such a corridor already from Moose Jaw to a third of the way through Ontario. It’s Quebec and New Brunswick that are the issue.
And just a couple hours after Poilievre spoke, we recorded this with Andrew Scheer:
Pipeline Online combed through the budget so you don’t have to.
The biggest item for oil and gas is a new program meant to re-invigorate old, low producing wells by doing re-entries and drilling new legs on them of at least 500 metres. It will be interesting to see what the adoption of this program will be. I sure didn’t see it coming.
The story also does some digging into the goal of 600,000 or even 1 million barrels of oil production per day, and what the budget forecasts, which is essentially flat until 2029. There’s a big discrepancy there. Guess I better get back to working on my Reaching for a Million series and pump the ministry full of ideas before the next budget cycle.
There is no project. There is no company behind it. TransCanada split into two companies. The team scattered to the winds. There is no pipe, and if there is any left, do not let it be put into the ground because it’ll be so rotten it’ll leak like a sieve. And there’s no one making pipe these days at Evraz, although such a project would surely be welcome there.
And why they hell would we lock even more into the American market at a forever discount? If we’re going to build pipe, build it to tidewater.
OR – is this they key to getting Trump to back off on tariffs?
It was right around the time a man walked up to me, leaned close to my face and asked how much I had been paid to write a story talking about the benefits of the Weyburn wind project that I had an epiphany…
This is the column I referenced in those Weyburn wind stories. While I still very much question wind generation in a macro sense, I definitely had an epiphany when it came to NIMBY and the Weyburn wind project being presented by Enbridge. If an energy project can’t get built by an oil town, what’s going to happen when we want to start building reactors? Or a major pipeline is proposed?
And on Sunday, I stopped at the Bekevar Wind Facility. I posted a few videos from there, which I will eventually post as stories on the site. For the second time in a row, there was zero power being produced as not one turbine turned in the hour or so I was there. The wind was around 2-4 knots, according to weather reports.
Poilievre’s key energy policy: a 
