[BartSimpson]

This is a fine time for Canada to reduce its carbon footprint by prohibiting the export of coal, oil, and natural gas to Europe.

[Jabberwalker]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Reversing the flow is a smart thing. It should have been done long ago, but there's so much oil and natural gas out west now even politicians can be convinced to see the superior sense to it.

I don't know where the "Greenpeace" jab thing came from. I didn't say that it was a bad idea. It's just why is it is suddenly, magically such good economics to do so, now? The more than 2/3s of Canadians that live east of Manitoba have never been offered Alberta oil before. The explanation over the last sixty years is that it is too expensive to pump it over "the hump" and now, presto, it is suddenly cheaper to do so. We must be really stupid, then that we haven't figured that out sometime since WWII ended. We needed Fiddle Dog to tell us the REAL truth, I guess.

[N_Fiddledog]

The price of oil is higher, and there's more of it.

I'm snarky about Greenpeace when I hear Enbridge bashes, because Greenpeace and other foreign backed professional protesters are where they begin. The western oil bashing info one gets online is no exception.

[rickc]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

Where did you hear that Jabberwalker? Greenpeace.


What are you babbling about, now? Alberta oil costs less until you pump it uphill.

Well if thats the case then why is Irving oil shipping over 90,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta and Bakken oil fields to their refinery in St. John?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-2 ... -rail.html

They are paying freight cost and still making a profit ,and then some. The fact is that Alberta oil averaged U.S.$ 24.41 less a barrel than Mexican oil did in 2013.

https://osi.alberta.ca/osi-content/Page ... x?ipid=941

The profits would increase if the oil was shipped by pipeline.

[N_Fiddledog]

They want to build a whole new pipeline to the west, not just reverse the flow on an existing one. Here's the route Northern Gateway wants to take.



I know that route. There's some impressive uphill flows.

Think about it.

[Jabberwalker]

That wasn't an Enbridge "bash" it was an observation that Keystone might not get built and Alberta needs another export route. How you connected those dots and got "Greenpeace" is quite beyond me. As I said, what else has magically changed? Most of Canada has never had access to Canadian petroleum. Has this been some sort of colossal oversight?

[N_Fiddledog]

This...

$1:

It is cheaper for us to bring tankers full of oil from the Middle East (mostly it comes from the Gulf of Mexico) than to pump it "over the hump" of the Upper Lakes from Western Canada. That is why there has never been an oil pipeline built to the East.

sounds like something Saudi Arabia might hire Greenpeace to say. And BTW that's not a Keystone line. It's Enbridge.

[Jabberwalker]

It is still true, I believe. This is why no one has bothered to complete a pipeline from Leduc to Montreal over the last sixty-five (65) years. Somehow, the magic fairies made it the cheaper option to do so ... just this year, in fact. I personally believe that a secondary export route to the U.S. is a good idea because Leduc has to sell to the U.S. to earn a living. What bugs me is that it is being spun as a patriotic thing to supply the East because it is "cheaper" suddenly to do so. That is so much nonsense ... or ... we have been seriously ripped off all these years while the same government looked the other way. I wonder why Vancouverites pay more for Canadian gasoline than we do for Venezuelan gas in Ontario. The only reason that Quebec doesn't pay less for the same Gulf gas is that they top load another dime or so tax on top. It will be interesting to see if our gas prices suddenly surge when Alberta crude starts flowing into those Eastern refineries.

[Jabberwalker]

rickc rickc:

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

Where did you hear that Jabberwalker? Greenpeace.


What are you babbling about, now? Alberta oil costs less until you pump it uphill.

Well if thats the case then why is Irving oil shipping over 90,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta and Bakken oil fields to their refinery in St. John?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-2 ... -rail.html

They are paying freight cost and still making a profit ,and then some. The fact is that Alberta oil averaged U.S.$ 24.41 less a barrel than Mexican oil did in 2013.

https://osi.alberta.ca/osi-content/Page ... x?ipid=941

The profits would increase if the oil was shipped by pipeline.

Why is this suddenly happening now? Why haven't we been getting this cheaper Alberta oil for the last three generations? Who has been ripping us off? Why isn't our petroleum industry looking out for our national interests? Who is behind this?

[rickc]

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

rickc rickc:

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

Where did you hear that Jabberwalker? Greenpeace.


What are you babbling about, now? Alberta oil costs less until you pump it uphill.

Well if thats the case then why is Irving oil shipping over 90,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta and Bakken oil fields to their refinery in St. John?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-2 ... -rail.html

They are paying freight cost and still making a profit ,and then some. The fact is that Alberta oil averaged U.S.$ 24.41 less a barrel than Mexican oil did in 2013.

https://osi.alberta.ca/osi-content/Page ... x?ipid=941

The profits would increase if the oil was shipped by pipeline.

Why is this suddenly happening now? Why haven't we been getting this cheaper Alberta oil for the last three generations? Who has been ripping us off? Why isn't our petroleum industry looking out for our national interests? Who is behind this?

I do not think that anyone has been ripping you off, or lying to you. The fact is that the lower prices for Western Canadian Select crude oil are a fairly recent event. Many factors came into play. In the early years there was not enough production in Alberta to justify spending on infrastructure to deliver the product. The oil glut of the 1980s crippled the North American energy markets. In 1986 the price of oil OPEC oil fell from $23.29 a barrel to $9.85 a barrel. Alternative energy projects were cancelled. Oil fields, and rigs in North America were shut down. It was cheaper to import from OPEC. Instability and political unrest in OPEC countries have driven the cost of OPEC crude oil up dramatically in recent years. Implementation of technologies like steam assisted gravity drainage have helped increase production, and lower the cost of mining bitumen. Suncor's use of the largest shovels and dump trucks on the planet, have helped lower the cost of surface mining. The use of bitumen upgraders have allowed the bitumen to be transported by pipeline. Its all coming together now. Now is the time to invest in pipelines to transport the bitumen.

[Winnipegger]

Line 9 was built by the Trudeau administration, part of the National Energy Program. Mulroney shut it down as soon as he was elected. A pipeline already existed from Edmonton to the outskirts of Chicago, so Line 9 connected Chicago to southern Ontario and Quebec. A spur goes straight north up Michigan and under the river to Sault Sainte Marie, so it supplies all oil to Ontario. After it was shut down, Enbridge built a port in Portland Maine, and a pipeline to connect to the end of Line 9 at Montreal. They reversed the flow to deliver Middle East oil to America's Midwest. Ontario and Quebec use little compared to the US, what oil they have comes off that line.

During the 2006 federal election, I ran a blog for the local candidate. One idea I came up with was to reverse Line 9. I said no price controls, just let the free market go, but get Enbridge to reverse the flow back to deliver Alberta oil to Ontario and Quebec. Alberta oil is now less expensive than Middle East oil, so it would drop the price of gas at the pump in those provinces. It would also sell more Alberta oil, so good for Alberta. And perhaps more importantly, it would cut off Middle East oil from the Midwest, ensuring they buy nothing but Alberta oil. The US Midwest market is much larger than Ontario and Quebec.

The Liberal Party ignored me. They don't want to touch anything that could even potentially remind anyone of NEP. However, I got notice from the Conservatives. I see they did it. But they got one detail wrong. I said to use an upgrader in Alberta to convert bitumen to synthetic crude. The pipeline was designed to deliver light sweet crude; Alberta light sweet crude. Synthetic crude is essentially the same thing, same viscosity. Besides, oil refineries in Ontario and Quebec are built to process crude, not bitumen. So those refineries would not require any equipment change. And all work (and profit) for upgrading goes to Alberta. But they aren't doing that, they intend to pump bitumen.

Pumping up hill? Not at all. Line 9 goes around the south side of the Great Lakes.

[andyt]

Probably was cheaper to import oil. But not for the country, sending all that money and jobs to wherever we import from. That's why we need a national energy strategy. This is where straight private enterprise falls down, it just considers profit to itself, not what's best for the country as a whole. Norway wouldn't be so stupid.

Are we paying world price for that oil? Because we're sure not getting world price when we sell to the US, Does it make sense to send cheap oil south while we buy expensive oil for Canada?