Here are the big pieces on Jonathan Wilkinson’s time in Saskatchewan last week. The Minister of Natural Resources came to Regina to speak about “just transition.” There’s still a few more to come from it for the rest of this week, including his faith that there will soon be electric tractors for our farmers (where will you charge them???)
Shorter version (if you can call it that)
Long version:
Wilkinson’s full speech on “just transition,” verbatim.
Video of whole speech included with both.
Lloydminster is building a new arena, and Cenovus, Saskatchewan’s largest oil producer, just ponied up big dollars for naming rights. Still waiting to hear of a wind power generator donating millions to a local community.
The climate, or perhaps weather, struck back at oil and gas on Monday, with lightning striking an oil battery northeast of Stoughton, Saskatchewan on Monday. Mother Earth gets her revenge about once or twice a summer.
Entitled “Creating a Fair and Equitable Energy Transformation,” The 56 page report outlines nothing short of the utter transformation of Canada, its economy and workforce, by way of transitioning away from fossil fuels to a largely electric economy, with the possibility of hydrogen usage as well. In doing so it means to largely do away with the fossil fuel industry which is one of Canada’s largest industries and contributors to GDP, exports and wealth. The report provides recommendations as to what to do with the people involved in that industry, but not so much the companies who employ them, create those jobs or that wealth.
On Thursday, I’ll have the detailed Conservative response from MP Shannon Stubbs.
Believe it or not, there are successful oil companies growing substantially in Saskatchewan.
Also, Quick Dick McDick goes branding. This video has way too much about prairie oysters. Way too much.
A few years ago the Weyburn Oil Show Board created a new honour called Southeast Saskatchewan Legends. There are a number of people who, over several decades, were key players in building the Saskatchewan oil industry. Many of them started and operated not one, but several oilfield service companies, and coincidentally, almost every single one of them farmed on the side. You could call them “serial entrepreneurs.”
Ron Wanner of Estevan was one of the first to be honored as a “Legend,” back in 2017. He started wheeling and dealing surplus oilfield equipment, and ended up having a trucking company, an oil company, a drilling rig and a service rig company. He passed away a few days ago. He also had a policy of buying long-term employees their own vehicle after a certain number of years. I remember around 2010 he bought a Hemi Challenger SRT/8 for the engineer who successfully built his oil company from nothing. This is his obituary, as published in Pipeline Online. They don’t make many like Ron Wanner anymore.
The new CEO of Cenovus, Canada’s second largest oil producer and Saskatchewan’s largest (after they bought Husky during the COVID pandemic), tells it like it is. There’s a healthy dose of reality in his comments, but Cenovus is also leading the charge for carbon capture in the oilsands. He also likes the idea of nuclear reactors usage in the oilsands.
Didn’t Biden say, “We’re not going to turn the faucet off and say we’re not drilling anymore?”
Well, on April 21, his Interior Secretary was singing from a different choirbook. But “We’re in a climate crisis, everyone,” she noted.
The Nemeth Report Podcast: Energy transition crisis, with Irina Slav, has some real straight-forward talk about the realities of the energy industry, and keeping people scared about climate change. Expect to see more on Pipeline Online from T Nemeth, who is originally from Saskatchewan.
One of the key leading indicators of oil and gas development is Crown land sales. And the Saskatchewan April sale saw increased interest in all four oil production areas of the province.
On the opposite end of the timeline is well abandonment and cleanups. When the crap hit the fan for the industry when COVID-19 hit, there was a cry for some sort of relief program. That ended up being the Accelerated Site Closure Program, which properly abandoned inactive wells and facilities. That program just recently concluded, having been fully subscribed.
And on the other side of the country, Newfoundland’s Muskrat Falls hydro project is finally online. This project almost bankrupted Newfoundland, but the feds quietly bailed them out during COVID. That kinda got swept under the rug. Muskrat Falls was Newfoundland’s attempt at squeezing additional power out of the same river system as the massive Churchill Falls project, which produces about 50 per cent more power than the entire province of Saskatchewan on any given day. Quebec pays Newfoundland next to nothing for that power, and uses it domestically and sells it to the US and enormous margins. Muskrat Falls, at a much lower output, was basically Newfoundland’s F You to Quebec.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
“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.
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.
Teck, one of Canada’s largest mining companies, has been around for over 100 years. But even with all that experience, they couldn’t handle the federal government’s Impact Assessment. They were going to spend $20 billion on their Frontier Oil Sands Project. The initial application was in 2012, but eight years later, they didn’t have an answer, so they pulled it. On Thursday, they sold off their last oil sands interests and are out of the oil sands entirely. Wonder why?
If you ever watched Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009), you’ve heard, “All of this has happened before, and will happen again.” Well, it might be happening in the Bakken north of Estevan.