HOME PAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS, Print Editions, Newsletter PRODUCTS READ THE PETROLEUM NEWS ARCHIVE! ADVERTISING INFORMATION EVENTS PAY HERE

Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
August 2019

Vol. 24, No.32 Week of August 11, 2019

Election time seizes Canada

Industry leaders make case in open letter; Green Party could end up powerbroker

Gary Park

for Petroleum News

Battle lines are being drawn in Canada ahead of a national election on Oct. 21 which could do untold damage to the fossil fuel industry.

The two dominant parties, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives, have been deadlocked in polling over the last three months, indicating that neither may gain an outright victory by capturing 170 of the 338 electoral districts in the House of Commons.

Observers increasingly suggest the balance of power could rest with the Green Party, which has only two elected members of Parliament entering the campaign but has made astonishing gains this year from 6% to 11.1% in the polls, enough to make it the possible powerbroker.

Leader Elizabeth May, whose opposition to oil and natural gas development and has seen her arrested during a Trans Mountain pipeline protest, is seizing the opportunity to make the Greens more than fringe players.

She is bolstered by adding a second Green MP in a recent by-election and posting gains in provincial elections in British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Duly emboldened, May startled her own supporters by declaring she would be ready to turn either Trudeau or Scheer into the next prime minister if they agreed to act on some of her key policy platforms such as a climate action plan in return for enough elected legislators to keep them in power.

May goal to ban imported oil

She insists Canada can only play a role in climate change if it bans imports of foreign oil by 2050, currently about 1 million barrels a day, of which Quebec accounts for almost half as feedstock for its refineries yet refuses to take more crude from Western Canada.

“As long as we are using fossil fuels we should be using our own,” May said.

Her objective is to limit Canada’s use of oil sands bitumen over the next 30 years to the petrochemical industry, while upgrading bitumen on the Atlantic Coast to synthetic crude.

In addition, the Green Party’s climate plan calls for Canada to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 60% from 2005 levels, twice the current goal of a 30% reduction by 2030, then achieve zero output by 2050. It also wants to end the sale of combustion engines in 2030 and replace all of those vehicles by 2040.

Underlying these objectives is the knowledge that May has been well-placed in the polls entering previous federal campaigns and fizzled on voting day.

Industry makes case

The petroleum industry carefully avoided getting drawn into May’s web, taking its own initiative on Aug. 1 when the leaders of Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy and MEG Energy - all big-league oil sands producers - ran open full-page letters in 30 newspapers across Canada, making a well-worn case for the importance of resource revenues in funding health care, education and social programs.

They estimated that advances in technology have seen the industry reduce GHGs in the oil sands by 30% over the past 20 years, while a number of operations have a smaller GHG impact that the global average.

Cenovus Chief Executive Officer Alex Pourbaix said the focus of the open letter was a feeling among the writers that “we have not done a good enough job of communicating to Canadians all elements of our business.”

May confirms anti-oil stance

May reacted in a way that probably confirmed her anti-oil stance, accusing the industry leaders of promoting “a campaign of self-interest and deception on this scale in an election year is beyond despicable.”

She might have taken the chance to ask why such oil sands powers as Suncor Energy, Imperial Oil and Husky Energy did not participate in the letter-writing.

May had previously lashed out at several industry executives who were among scores of others to participate in a series of fundraising events for the federal Conservative Party on June 4 and took the chance to meet in private with Scheer.

Trudeau’s Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said the strategy sessions exposed Scheer for “scheming behind closed doors with wealthy executives to gut environmental protection laws, silence critics and make pollution free again.”

That was at odds with the public stances taken by many petroleum leaders who have endorsed carbon taxation and agreed to a hard cap on oil sands emissions.

The only guarantee is that the next 10 weeks will play a pivotal role in charting a course for the industry, which is already burdened by Trudeau government legislation banning oil tankers from northern British Columbia waters and adding new layers to the regulatory process.






Petroleum News - Phone: 1-907 522-9469
[email protected] --- https://www.petroleumnews.com ---
S U B S C R I B E

Copyright Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA)Š1999-2019 All rights reserved. The content of this article and website may not be copied, replaced, distributed, published, displayed or transferred in any form or by any means except with the prior written permission of Petroleum Newspapers of Alaska, LLC (Petroleum News)(PNA). Copyright infringement is a violation of federal law.