Do we really want the pipelines blocked?
Nearly 160 years ago, in 1853, what was probably the longest pipeline in the world at the time was built to carry natural gas about 25 kilometres into Trois Rivières to light street lamps. A decade later, one of the world's first crude oil pipelines was built right here in Canada, connecting the Petrolia oilfield in southwestern Ontario with the emerging refining hub at Sarnia.
Over the next 80 years or so, however, pipeline construction slowed in Canada, and by 1947, when Alberta emerged on the world oil stage with the Leduc No. 1 discovery, only three Canadian oil pipelines were active: one moved oil from Turner Valley to Calgary; another brought imported crude from Maine to Montreal; a third supplied the Sarnia refining hub with oil produced in the United States mid-continent region. Gas pipelines were even more scarce: Canadian Western Natural Gas built its Bow Island pipeline to Calgary in 1912, and 10 years later, a line was laid from fields around Viking in northern Alberta to Edmonton.
But the discovery of oil at Leduc by Imperial Oil--and a host of other finds around central Alberta in the following years--brought new demands for infrastructure to move all this Black Gold to market. In 1950, Interprovincial Pipeline Limited (which many of you now know as Enbridge Inc.) got the oil moving with its first line from Edmonton to Superior, Wisconsin. Three years later, the Trans Mountain Pipeline (it's now owned and operated by Kinder Morgan) began delivering Alberta crude to Vancouver, where it fed a small refinery market in the Lower Mainland and across the border in the Puget Sound area of Washington state. The same year, IPL extended its line from Superior to Sarnia.
In the 60 years since, various projects have come along, to bolster what was already there or to provide access to new supply basins, like the Norman Wells field in the Northwest Territories. Today, about 825,000 kilometres of pipelines criss-cross Canada, moving three million barrels a day of crude oil and liquids and 15 billion cubic feet of natural gas every day.
And you know what? Until recently, we never even thought about pipelines. They've always been there, they will always be there, and they remain the safest and most efficient way of moving oil and gas to market. High-profile exceptions (Enbridge's Michigan leak two summers ago, for example) not withstanding, pipelines hardly ever leak (two litres were spilled for every million litres transported through pipes between 2002 and 2009, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association says) and so we hardly ever talk about them. Until now.
With Barack Obama's (temporary) trashing of Keystone XL earlier this year, the storm of controversy that has erupted over Enbridge's Northern Gateway project and even the stirring of discontent that is emerging in the wake of Kinder Morgan's announcement this week that it had more than enough shipper support to justify doubling the capacity of the Trans Mountain line from Edmonton to Vancouver, pipelines are suddenly the topic du jour on social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, where environmentalists, economists, political junkies and erstwhile social commentators are all adding their two cents to a debate that seems to go on 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The goal of most who are tweeting or facebooking about pipelines is to get the pipelines shut down--they think that if they do that, the coastal waterways will remain pristine, the inland rainforests of British Columbia will remain untouched, and, oh yes, the massively ugly and evil oilsands will finally have to shut down. After all, with no way to get the dirty oil to market, there will be no incentive to continue developing the oilsands.
But here's the rub: there's a better chance that a snowball will survive five minutes in hell than the oilsands will shut down if Northern Gateway, or Trans Mountain or Keystone XL are blocked. In the meantime, rail companies are quickly ramping up their capacity to carry crude oil--whether from Alberta's oilsands or Idaho's Bakken--to thirsty refiners from Chicago to the Gulf Coast.
These plans seem to be flying completely under the radar of the Greens, whose main complaint about pipelines is the environmental damage that might result from a leaky pipeline. But I shudder to think of the mess that will be left behind the first time one of these 100-car crude unit trains runs off the tracks. And to borrow an oft-used phrase from the Green Grinches: it's not a question of if, it's a question of when.
-- Dale Lunan, Editor
Patch in Pictures, Season 2
What do Afsaneh Akmali, Jeffrey Borchert, Rob Watt, Brittany Smolders and Gerald Ford all have in common? They were all selected as featured photographers in Oilweek's 2011 Patch in Pictures contest, and had their photographic work featured in an issue of Oilweek last year.
Now, next question. What does Jamie Angus have in common with Don Gunn, Trevor Rubak, Peter Davis and Matthew Goffinet? Well, they too were also selected as feature photographers in Patch in Pictures 2011.
And question three? What sets Jamie apart from all those others I mentioned? Well, Jamie was the only photographer to be featured three separate times as a monthly Patch in Pictures winner, nailing the trifecta in May, November and December. And his November shot of lightning arcing over a Savanna rig drilling for Crescent Point near Dollard, Sask. earned Jamie bragging rights as Oilweek's inaugural Patch in Pictures contest winner - and a brand new iPad!
And the point of all this? Patch in Pictures, Season 2 is now underway, with another chance for photo bugs - amateur, semi-pro or pro - to get their work featured in the pages of Oilweek and earn a chance to win an iPad at the end of the year. Harlen Mackey of Viking and Gordon Shand of the Edmonton area have already caught the bug and been rewarded: their work was featured in the January and February editions, respectively, of Oilweek. Now we're looking for submissions for our March edition, and for every edition coming up this year.
For more information, and for a link to our submissions page, visit our Patch in Pictures page at Oilweek.com. Or if you want to skip all the rules and regs, you can jump straight to our submission page. Just remember, maximum file size is four megabytes, and the deadline for the March edition is coming up fast: Jan. 20 is when we've set the deadline, but we'll take submissions right up until Jan. 27.
So get snapping, and get your best efforts in to Patch in Pictures, Season 2!
-- Dale Lunan, Editor
A new low in environmental fund-raising
I've never been a big fan - or even a little fan - of David Suzuki, even though many consider him an icon of the Canadian environmental movement. Like many others in my generation, I watched the Nature of Things on CBC growing up, but mostly because it always had really neat animals in their natural habitat. I stopped watching it quite a while ago, when Suzuki started slagging the oil and gas industry using stale or, even worse, inaccurate "scientific" data. In recent years, The Nature of Things has become little more than a vehicle for Suzuki to raise funds for his foundation - it's no longer about science, or the environment, it's about money.
Suzuki's fund-raising activities have always been a little suspicious to me. Over the years, he's attracted around $10 million from various special interest groups south of the border - some of them legitimate environmental organizations anxious to use Suzuki's cachet here to target the oilsands, others are commercial entities with a vested interest in having a legitimate "front man" attack their competitors over perceived environmental wrongdoing.
But this Christmas season, Suzuki has reached a new low - even for him. His latest "Where Will Santa Live" campaign - you can check it out here http://bit.ly/uOmV4M - wraps the warrm fuzziness of the Christmas season in the cold scarf of climate change and insinuates that, without help, Santa's workshop will melt away, presumably coming to rest on the Lamonsonov Ridge, 1,000 metres deep in the Arctic Ocean. For donations ranging from about 20 bucks to 50 bucks, supporters can get one (1) e-card to send to their friend or a family member. Given that many of us send out upwards of 100 Christmas cards each year, this can get pretty expensive - even with a 100% tax receipt - but also very very lucrative for Mr. Suzuki and his band of enviro-elves.
This whole campaign smacks of opportunism at its worst - co-opting our warm feelings of Christmas and our kids' desire to ensure the preservation of Santa and his workshop and using them instead in shameless hucksterism, the proceeds of which will do virtually nothing to save Santa's workshop but will most certainly help Suzuki's enviro-elves spread even more of their environmental effluent, most of it based on half truths and, in some instances, outright lies.
In Oilweek's inaugural Green Grinch issue last March, Suzuki caught from me a Grinch rating of 4 out of 5. I held back a little mostly because of his iconic status in Canada. The second Green Grinch edition is in preparation now, and I can tell you this much: Suzuki's rating will rise to the 5-Grinch maximum, and we'll be taking a closer look at exactly where his foundation's funding comes from - and how it's spent.
-- Dale Lunan, Editor
Where have all the PCs gone?
Not too long ago, I offered the opinion that the fortunes of the 
Progressive Conservative party in Alberta in the post-Ed Stelmach era were on the upswing, given that oil and gas money, from producers and from the service and supply sector, was again flowing into the leadership election coffers of several of the PC leadership candidates, including Alison Redford, who eventually assumed the mantle in a pair of votes last fall. Of course, many of those same contributors were covering bases, not only within the PC leadership context but in the broader provincial political contect, by sending contributions to Redford's leadership opponents and to Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance. This is just common sense: you want to be able to say you supported the next premier - whoever she/he might be - when it comes time to start building bridges with the next administration.
I know the phrase "Progressive Conservative" hasn't been real popular with oil and gas producers or oilfield service and supply providers lately, but I thought maybe Redford's ascension to the throne might have caused some closet PCs to come out into the light. That, it seems, hasn't happened, at least according to votes that have come into the latest Oilweek online poll asking our readers who they thought would be the next premier of the province if an election were to be held tomorrow. So far, the sentiment is running strongly towards Danielle Smith, charismatic leader of the Wildrose Alliance Party of Alberta: fully 90% of the votes cast have been in her favour, and the rest have gone to Dr. Raj Sherman, who's the new leader of the virtually invisible Liberal Party of Alberta. As of this writing (late morning, Dec. 5) not a single vote has been cast in favour of Redford, and that surprises me a little, because I personally know several people who work in the patch that are supportive of Redford, not only in a physical, get-my-hands-dirty-stuffing-envelopes sense and a put-cash-in-the-war-chest sense. So I know they're out there - for whatever reason, they just don't want the rest of us to know who they are or what they're up to.
I know that Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance have caught the fancy of those who are just slightly left of Attila the Hun on the political spectrum, but it doesn't make sense that the PCs have dropped off the map altogether. After all, Ted Morton, who's Redford's energy minister, is fairly well-respected in the industry.
So come on, all you closet PCs! Surf to Oilweek.com, click on the Latest Poll button on the right hand side of the page, and prove to me that the Progressive Conservatives in Alberta aren't destined for oblivion after the next election!!
-- Dale Lunan
Oilweek takes another step on the cyber evolution scale
Welcome to the new Oilweek.com!
Many months, years even, in the making, I’m certain you, our readers, will find the new Oilweek.com much more useful and intuitive than our old site ever was.
More content here will be available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike, and we’ll be tapping into the vast network of information published by JuneWarren-Nickle’s Energy Group to bring you an even broader perspective on oil and gas issues locally, nationally and globally.
Access will be faster, searching will be easier, and over the next few weeks we’ll be adding new and rich content: videos, photos from our print features, and content not found in the magazine, from extra audio from our interviews to data supporting our print features.
We hope you enjoy the new site, and don’t forget – if you have any questions or comments; bouquets or beefs, don’t hesitate to pass them along to me at using our new contact form here.
Hope you enjoy your new Oilweek.com experience!!
Dale Lunan
Editor
