Petro-Canada VP Neil Camarta holds a conference call to make official what has been obvious for weeks.
The Sturgeon County upgrader portion of the Fort Hills project has been 'put on hold".
I will refrain from gleeful cackling, but....
A blue-eyed sheik in Calgary somewhere is gonna be hawking their gold plated beer mugs!
Because an economic collapse is a kind of natural carbon tax.
Sorry, I cackled.
I doubt it will be long before the right whingers start blaming the left for this.
ReplyDeleteI can just hear it: Stelmach is a Liberal and its the fault of the new Royalty regime.
ReplyDeleteLet *us* just get if over with and say: "It's all our fault. We didn't know what we were doing...whatever it is we did or didn't do or what you think we did and didn't do. From the bottom of our hearts, we're sorry!"
ReplyDeleteAll this means is the gold rush has pulled back a bit to a sane level. Smaller start-up companies are stopped from joining in, labour won't be fought over tooth and nail and the already settled players can take a slower breath because they're not racing to get ahead of the pack and stake ground and corner materials. Stelmach and company wouldn't heed the big companies asking it to slow things down when prices were hot and everyone wanted in the pie at the same time. Now the market is doing it for them.
ReplyDeleteUnless someone discovers a commercial alternate to global oil consumption for power during this slow down, that price is going up again. It's a finite supply and the technology is always aimed at wringing more out of less. And it's a bit tougher for Somali pirates to hijack a Canadian pipeline.
Alberta will do fine. Oil was $55 a barrel in January 2007, which is what it is now, and the economy did fine. A slowdown for awhile is a good thing.
ReplyDeleteThey already think that Stelmach is a Liberal. The diehards wanted Ted Morton, and even he was seen as too progressive by some.
ReplyDeleteI live in Alberta, but I hear you BCL. I will laugh my ass off when this province starts accepting transfer payments. Again.
Alberta will do fine. Oil was $55 a barrel in January 2007, which is what it is now, and the economy did fine. A slowdown for awhile is a good thing.
ReplyDeleteThat's just so brilliant. Someone take Paul Krugman's Nobel away from him give it to little Paul-yanna here.
"That's just so brilliant." -ti
ReplyDeleteI'm too modest to accept such a label but I did predict back in July that oil would be south of $100 a barrel by the end of September.
but I did predict back in July that oil would be south of $100 a barrel by the end of September.
ReplyDeleteIn The New York Times? Or while you were cooing to your four cats as you changed the litter?
Some people think there are Gods that watch over us, whisper wisdom to politicians, and will prevent the entire citizenry from blowing their resources for some short term instant gratification. Well, Alberta, that's wrong.
ReplyDeleteYou've used almost all the stuff that's easy to dig out of the ground in less than one generation, and have now geared your entire economy around an endeavour to dig out the hard stuff. Nobody prevented you from doing this stupid thing. And so it happened.