Canada

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has announced her government is imposing cuts to oil production in the province.

The premier announced the news in a live address to the province on Sunday evening. It was a widely expected move to address what the government and its official Opposition say is costing the province hundreds of millions of dollars in losses due to global market prices.

Nov. 26, 2018

Richard Smith argues for an emergency plan to meet the climate emergency and "do what the science demands before it's too late."  This is an abridged version of a paper that will appear in the March 1, 2019 special issue of Real-World Economics Review.[1]

November 29th 2018

Canada’s current climate policies are "very insufficient" and would help increase global temperatures by a catastrophic 5 C by the end of the century, according to a new study that ranks the climate goals of countries around the world.

November 26th 2018

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is aggressively advancing a false narrative about heavy oil’s deep discount. She presents the problem in two parts, neither of which stand up to scrutiny.

First, Notley purports that the abnormally wide price spread affects every barrel of heavy oil leading to millions of dollars a day in losses to the Canadian economy. And second, that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is crucial. Neither of these claims are supported by the facts.

Bitumen prices are low because the province has ignored at least a decade of warnings.

The Alberta government has known for more than a decade that its oilsands policies were setting the stage for today’s price crisis.

Nov 26, 2018

Nov. 23, 2018

When it set out to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline, Kinder Morgan knew it faced serious marine transport safety hurdles. In February 2013, Kinder Morgan Canada president, Ian Anderson told the National Energy Board that, “One of the greatest challenges I believe in providing British Columbians with the confidence and trust will be confidence and trust that the tanker traffic industry itself can be operated safely through that port.” (paragraph 1176)