Free Republic

The chair of the powerful U.S. Senate committee on energy and natural resources — and a key swing vote in the Senate — will tour an oilsands mine and thermal oilsands facility with Premier Jason Kenney and Energy Minister Sonya Savage. The visit came about after the three politicians spoke by phone last month and discussed energy security and the need for a continental strategy. “He mentioned he’d like to come up and see the oilsands, see how they do things up here, have a tour, understand the processes and understand the potential,” Savage said in an interview Friday.... Industry...

A $9 billion oil pipeline that became a symbol of the rising political clout of climate change advocates and a flash point in U.S.-Canada relations was officially canceled on Wednesday. Keystone XL, which was proposed in 2008 to bring oil from Canada's Western tar sands to U.S. refiners, was halted by owner TC Energy Corp (TRP.TO) after U.S. President Joe Biden this year revoked a key permit needed for a U.S. stretch of the 1,200-mile project. Opponents of the line fought its construction for years, saying it was unnecessary and would hamper the U.S. transition to cleaner fuels. Its demise...

If President Trump had been colluding with Russia, the first thing he would have done would have been to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and otherwise prevent our achieving energy independence. Russia was once described as being a gas station masquerading as a country. Its only commodities of value are weapons and oil. Building Keystone XL and unleashing fracking was Trump’s way of screwing with Putin’s ambitions, not rewarding them. We would have to wait for Joe Biden to collude with Russia on energy by banning Keystone XL and declaring war on fracking. As Helen Raleigh, writing in The Federalist,...

If President Trump had been colluding with Russia, the first thing he would have done would have been to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and otherwise prevent our achieving energy independence. Russia was once described as being a gas station masquerading as a country. Its only commodities of value are weapons and oil. Building Keystone XL and unleashing fracking was Trump’s way of screwing with Putin’s ambitions, ot rewarding them. We would have to wait for Joe Biden to collude with Russia on energy by banning Keystone XL and declaring war on fracking. As Helen Raleigh, writing in The Federalist,...

June 2005 They come from different backgrounds with the same story. But the countries they are in — Canada and Australia — refuse to believe them or publicly acknowledge what they are saying. Why? Because both administrations have huge and influential money ties with China which has never been closer. The latest diplomatic crises involving Chinese spies overseas is playing out in Australia after a Chinese First Secretary Chen Yonglin applied for asylum in Sydney. Chen has alleged there are 1,000 Chinese spies in Australia and that abductions sponsored by the Chinese Government take place Down Under. He said he...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sparked anger in the oil-rich province of Alberta on Friday for saying Canada needs to phase out the oil sands. Trudeau told a town-hall meeting in Peterborough, Ontario that they can’t shut down the oil sands tomorrow, but they need to phase it out eventually. […] Trudeau’s comments caused outrage on social media and criticism from Alberta politicians. Premier Rachel Notley said the oil sands are not going anywhere any time soon. Alberta opposition leader Brian Jean said the oil and gas industry provides thousands of good-paying jobs and if Trudeau wants to shut it...

This started as a question to myself: "I wonder if there are sand dunes in northern climates?" Googling on "sand dunes" + Canada revealed another heretofore unknown (at least to me) geological location -- Athabasca Sand Dunes in Saskatchewan. I've heard of Athabasca before in association with tar sands, but this is a the first time I'd heard of a provincial Athabasca Sand Dunes Park. The Web site says that is only accessible by air. So I'm guessing not a lot of people have been there or visit there. Since this is very new to me and perhaps others, first...

Norwegian oil giant Statoil said Thursday it was exiting its oil sands projects in Canada, booking a loss, in a move hailed by environmental activists. The group said it had reached an agreement to sell its 100-percent stake in the Kai Kos Dehseh (KKD) oil sands projects in the province of Alberta, to the Athabasca Oil Corporation of Canada for CAD$832 million (5.4 billion kroner, $626 million, €597 million). Following the divestment, Statoil will not operate any oil sands projects, a business area the deepwater oil specialist had moved into to great dismay of analysts. Statoil will take a loss...

Nearly six months after massive wildfires close to Canada’s oil sands forced one of the largest evacuations in the country’s history, affecting production, Leonardo DiCaprio’s new climate-change documentary threatens to bring unwanted, negative attention to the industry. Critics are already referring to the scenes shown in the film, particularly an aerial of the oil sands, as “terrifying”. Fisher Stevens, director of Before The Flood, which has been in the works since 2014, recently told Canadian Press he was "really horrified" by how the landscape looked in north-eastern Alberta.

n possibly one of the biggest marketing blunders of the millennium, a Canadian Oil Sands group has managed to alienate groups from almost every walk of life with their recent Facebook meme that prompted people to choose Canadian oil over Saudi oil—because, as the meme read, “In Canada, lesbians are considered hot! In Saudi Arabia, if you’re a lesbian, you die!” The ad went on to query, “Why are we getting our oil from countries that don’t think lesbians are hot?” You might be thinking that the Coke/New Coke marketing blunder was bad, but the hot-lesbian ad, particularly in today’s...

Supercharged by winds of up to 70 km/h, the Fort McMurray wildfire ballooned to 85,000 hectares overnight and is now raging across a wide front south of the city. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and wildfire officials say the fire is expected to continue to burn out of control today as more than 100 firefighters, 10 helicopters and 16 air tankers work to protect homes and critical infrastructure. One major task on Thursday will be to move up to 25,000 people now sheltering in oilsands work camps north of the city. The province hopes to transport many of those people, who...

It took the market over a day to appreciate the fallout from the devastating Canadian wildfire which has led to a state of emergency in Alberta, the evacuation of over 80,000 people in the oil sands gateway city of Fort McMurray, and the destruction of over 1,600 structures. According to insurance industry reports, losses from the fire are approaching $1 billion, and will likely set records for the country. The average cost of a single-family home in the community was recently around CAD$627,000 ($487,000), Aon said, citing data from the local real estate industry, and cited by CNBC. That would...

Oil futures this week dipped below $30 for both West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, and Brent crude, its more global, North Sea counterpart. That's brutally low and analysts have been lining up to predict further declines, but for some producers, oil in the upper $20s would be welcome relief. The cheapest oil on the planet right now, with the possible exception of some very low-quality crudes, can be found in the Canadian oil sands, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. The grade, known as Western Canada Select, was changing hands Wednesday afternoon...

Where is the cheapest crude oil in the world? And how low can you get that barrel of oil? WTI has declined to $30 per barrel, the lowest level in more than 12 years. But heavy oil producers in Canada would love to have $30 oil. The price for a barrel of bitumen, the tar-like oil sands that comes from Alberta, fell to just over $8 per barrel this week. That is not a typo. Bitumen traded at $8.35 per barrel on Tuesday. In fact, Amazon.com sells oil drums – just the barrel, not the oil – for $78, almost...

The oilsands became a pillar of global oil supply growth during the first 15 years of this century but the oil price collapse has reaffirmed that a long-standing challenge -- perennial cost escalation -- continues to threaten future developments. Factor in a new cap on greenhouse gas emissions, long-term pipeline constraints as well as higher taxes and a report released Wednesday by U.S. energy consultants IHS concluding the vast oilsands resource in northern Alberta that's made Canada one of the world's major crude oil producers is at "a turning point." "The industry is shifting to a new period in which...

When President Obama announced he was killing the Keystone XL pipeline, he said he was agreeing with the State Department’s assessment that the pipeline from Canada “would not serve the national interests of the United States.” The fact is that it would not have benefitted the personal financial interests of friend and economic mentor, Warren Buffett, who can rest assured that oil from Canada and the nearby Bakken formation in North Dakota will continue to be transported by a railroad he owns. As Investor’s Business Daily noted in a 2011 editorial: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of...

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, speaking for companies which account for 90 percent of Canada's oil and natural gas production, has painted what is the bleakest picture of the industry's health in recent and possibly living memory. So bleak, that CAPP has gone for broke, submitting 60 recommendations to the Alberta government's royalty review panel, asking for a three-year delay in implementing any changes to royalty rates and pleading for lower royalties to offset the new administration's imposition of higher income taxes and carbon levies. That's the battered taking its begging bowl to the bruised. Both sides are reeling,...

Royal Dutch Shell says it will stop building a large Canadian oil sands project after low crude prices pushed it out of the company’s shortlist of profitable projects. It’s the second large project Shell has canceled since August, when it ditched a $7 billion effort to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. Shell said Tuesday its Carmon Creek project in Alberta, which was expected to pump 80,000 barrels of crude a day, was sanctioned in late 2013 when oil prices were still hovering around $100 a barrel. Viscous Canadian crude is costly to extract through via...

...What’s unusual about this project is the speed with which it is being built—in a matter of months—and its compact, football field-size. Oil-sands sites typically take years to build and require hundreds or thousands of acres of land. At a time when slumping crude-oil prices have shelved most new oil-sands projects in neighboring Alberta and halted drilling for all but the most productive shale oil wells in the Bakken formation on both sides of the border, pint-size sites are proliferating in Saskatchewan’s oil patch. ...three other similarly size heavy-oil projects are rising on a landscape filled with cattle pastures and...

The Fox News report that the Teamsters have decided not to endorse Hillary Clinton’s candidacy at this time, shortly after her pronouncement of her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, does not surprise and shows the peril of trying to be all things to all constituencies. On the one hand, there is a need to placate environmentalists and climate change true believers who oppose the pipeline from Canada. Among them is billionaire Tom Steyer, an eco-zealot who has pledged his fortune in support of Democratic candidates who want to repeal the Industrial Revolution who want us to rely on solar...