Harbir Chhina helped develop the game-changing steam technology that allowed companies to tap the world’s third-largest reserves in Canada’s oilsands. It was a moonshot that paid off.
Now the oilsands industry, still recovering from last month’s wildfires, needs another one. Without a technological breakthrough like steam injection three decades ago, the flows that have transformed the country’s economy could slow to a trickle. In a world that has plenty of cheap crude, and increasingly demands cleaner energy, the oil sands look dirty, as well as expensive.
If anyone wondered where the sizzle over B.C’s 19 LNG projects went, consider the seismic shifts in global natural gas trade.
Even if a B.C. LNG proponent is able to successfully navigate Canada’s regulatory maze and accepts Canada’s track record of megaproject cost overruns and works through its formidable aboriginal consulting requirements and then does this all over again to build a connecting pipeline, it still needs to factor in a forecasted 45 per cent leap in global liquefaction supply over the next five years, leaving demand growth far behind.
June 3, 2016 - On the second floor of Royal Bank of Canada’s headquarters in Toronto’s financial district, traders Ryan Holm and Rostik Radik buy and sell allowances in a carbon market that will serve as a crucial element in Ontario’s ambitious effort to reduce greenhouse gases.
June 6, 2016 - The Tesla Powerwall home battery system should finally be appearing in the basements and garages of Canadian homes this summer, giving people a chance to store solar power or time-shift their electricity consumption. But there may be sticker shock: Installation is likely to double the $3,000 (U.S.) hardware price.
In his May 23 opinion piece, Tim McMillan, president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, claimed that “New pipelines will help connect Canada’s landlocked oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, to tidal ports and from there to global markets where demand for oil is growing.”
[A 2012 article that discusses lax oversight and uncertain science about industries who dump trillions of gallons of waste underground.]
Photo: A class 2 brine disposal well in western Louisiana near the Texas border. The well sat by the side of the road, without restricted access. (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)
According to new estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2015 the country retained its newfound position as the world’s top producer of oil and gas. It's a position the U.S. has held for less than five years, having surged ahead of both Russia and Saudi Arabia thanks to fracking technology.
“U.S. petroleum and natural gas production first surpassed Russia in 2012, and the United States has been the world's top producer of natural gas since 2011 and the world's top producer of petroleum hydrocarbons since 2013,” the EIA reports.
The federal government has rejected a call from the Royal Society of Canada and some 250 scientists and academics to put a halt to British Columbia’s Site C hydroelectric project despite concerns that the federal-provincial approval in 2014 ignored serious environmental impacts and trampled on First Nations’ rights.
For all the political noise coming from municipalities and provinces in opposition to various pipeline projects, in reality they may lack any legal leverage to stop the projects or insist on conditions.
