[PublicAnimalNo9]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

Luckily Alberta bucked that trend. With the UCP at the helm we managed to lose 19,000 jobs! What great news to all you people who voted UCP!

And that has nothing at all to do with the anti-oil national government.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

The Federal Government bought a pipeline, how can they be anti-oil?

*Snicker* C'mon Doc, you can't be that naive.

[BeaverFever]

Conservative economics 101:

IN GOOD ECONOMY:
1) If Liberal government, GOVERNMENT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ECONOMY

2) If Conservative government, CONSERVATIVES FIXED THE ECONOMY

IN BAD ECONOMY
1) If conservative government: GOVERNMENT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ECONOMY

2) If Liberal government: LIBERALS RUINED THE ECONOMY

There are no further lessons in this course.

[Thanos]

I'm guess that catastrophic number of jobs lost in Alberta includes hundreds or thousands of public sector workers who have been culled by the UCP. I'd say so much for Kenney being a job creator but it would mean nothing to his followers because most of them actively want to see more government workers lose their livelihoods. That's the nature of this breed of conservatism, using vengeance on the "undeserving" as a weapon to keep their voter base happy. It's like poor whites look at poor blacks in the US - as long as the enemy gets hurt those who will get absolutely nothing at all out of voting for cruel-hearted conservatives will still get a bit of worthless satisfaction at seeing their eternal enemy get nailed. Pathetic. There's no concept anymore that we're all in this together. That's what makes reckless austerity possible, a lack of any sense of community or common interest altogether that allows the allure of hack-and-slash devastation via cuts look appealing.

The left isn't off the hook either. There's no way that 19K of job losses didn't include lots more workers in small businesses like retail and restaurants being laid off due to their employers shutting down. And those businesses are still shutting down because municipal tax hikes in Calgary and Edmonton are too damn high, and that workers are suffering the consequences for it. The left is lucky that there's been too much rancid activity from the right and the federal government lately. It's taken the focus off of them and their actions inside municipal government that keeps damaging the small business climate in Alberta's big cities.

Perfect storm of assholery in full effect in this doomed province these days. It's no longer "things will get much worse before they get better". It's more now inevitable that things will get much worse and NEVER get better, simply from the actions of the political/economic extremes who keep going out of their way to ensure the collapse becomes a permanent feature of life in Alberta. Goodbye good times, Alberta, and say hello to your membership as the westernmost part of the Rust Belt.

FieryVulpine FieryVulpine:

This is veering off-topic, but thought it would bear mentioning.

Cost of Trans Mountain expansion soars to $12.6B

It will take a long while before the revenues generated from the expansion (and expect civil disobedience from the usual suspect to gum up the works) will pay off the money the Feds spent buying the pipeline AND expanding it. Even if they aren't anti-oil, the Liberals are still comically inept as they didn't even have to buy the pipeline in the first place.

Well, good. It was completely foreseeable too. Maybe it will take something this bad in terms of increased cost and lost revenue for this fucking visionless and leaderless country to finally learn what happens when a government goes out of it's way to sabotage and handcuff one of the major components of the national economy. That it didn't need to happen at all, because Canada's environmental rules and regulations were already tough enough prior to Trudeau's first election win, should make it sting that much more. These new rules were never a necessity. They were brought in only so the Liberals could play the "we kept our campaign promises" card. And it cost the taxpayer an extra $5 billion. Way to go, Canada. Always stay so entertainingly simple.

[herbie]

See? Jesus Christ the pipeline's underway and they're still whining. Obviously don't need any BC Bud if they're having oile sands EXPANSION pipe-dreams.
Trump will fill the National Parks and beaches with oil wells and melt down whales before markets need MORE oilsand production.

[Thanos]

Pipeline merely removes a bottleneck, eventually, if/when it becomes operable. It's doesn't recreate or bring back all that's been lost.

And I was pretty clear that I blame both sides equally for the job losses.

[FieryVulpine]

Thanos Thanos:

-snip-

Bang on the money there. This was all a comedy of errors because Notley was pants-on-head idiot if she ever believed that Trudeau was a reliable partner. Even more damning how she believed that she was entitled to another mandate and that fear-mongering was going to be an effective campaign tactic when that worked out so well for the Democrats in 2016. Now Notley , the NDP, and their followers are undergoing a complete psychotic break with their paranoia consuming that as they fade into irrelevance. Now the province suffers for their hubris.

Well done, Rachel. I'm no fan of Kenny (and voted for the Alberta Party), but you made it clear that you couldn't run on you record when you tried to cast him as the boogeyman. Now wallow in your failure knowing that your arrogance made this happen.

[BeaverFever]

Genuinely curious: How come the existing pipeline network was good enough to produce all the past Alberta oil booms yet Alberta needs additional pipelines just to prevent total economic collapse? That’s the claim, right?

[FieryVulpine]

Perhaps we want to, you know, expand our markets? World demand for oil won't disappear because politicians magically create a green economy overnight, which more people appear to believe these days.

[Thanos]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Genuinely curious: How come the existing pipeline network was good enough to produce all the past Alberta oil booms yet Alberta needs additional pipelines just to prevent total economic collapse? That’s the claim, right?

The economic collapse already happened. More export lines merely alleviate the damage by increasing raw revenue. They're not a fix-all and except for a few cluds here and there with a pro-Kenney plotical agenda I don't recall anyone serious from the industry saying that TMX would make everything perfect.

[BeaverFever]

FieryVulpine FieryVulpine:

Perhaps we want to, you know, expand our markets? World demand for oil won't disappear because politicians magically create a green economy overnight, which more people appear to believe these days.

Why do you need to expand your markets just to keep your heads above water? What happened to the existing markets that produced all the past booms??

[BeaverFever]

Thanos Thanos:

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Genuinely curious: How come the existing pipeline network was good enough to produce all the past Alberta oil booms yet Alberta needs additional pipelines just to prevent total economic collapse? That’s the claim, right?

The economic collapse already happened. More export lines merely alleviate the damage by increasing raw revenue. They're not a fix-all and except for a few cluds here and there with a pro-Kenney plotical agenda I don't recall anyone serious from the industry saying that TMX would make everything perfect.

Fair enough. What caused the collapse?

[Tricks]

FieryVulpine FieryVulpine:

Thanos Thanos:

-snip-

Bang on the money there. This was all a comedy of errors because Notley was pants-on-head idiot if she ever believed that Trudeau was a reliable partner. Even more damning how she believed that she was entitled to another mandate and that fear-mongering was going to be an effective campaign tactic when that worked out so well for the Democrats in 2016. Now Notley , the NDP, and their followers are undergoing a complete psychotic break with their paranoia consuming that as they fade into irrelevance. Now the province suffers for their hubris.

Well done, Rachel. I'm no fan of Kenny (and voted for the Alberta Party), but you made it clear that you couldn't run on you record when you tried to cast him as the boogeyman. Now wallow in your failure knowing that your arrogance made this happen.

Alberta's government for the last 30 years is just as much to blame as the Federal parties are. There is enough blame to go around in completely mis-managing the resources in Alberta.

[Thanos]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Fair enough. What caused the collapse?

1) OPEC sabotaging the world price in 2014 in an effort to make US and Canadian production & export unprofitable
2) US domestic production vastly increasing under the Obama Administration
3) election of Justin Trudeau and his anti-O&G agenda, with his wildly un-necessary new regulatory regime that's had the effect of chasing away most existing foreign investment in the Canadian sector and scaring off new Canadian or America investment that might have replaced that which departed
4) increasingly successful divestment tactics by environmental radicals that are increasingly isolating the Canadian sector while the American and other major developers across the planet escape any negative effects altogether

Don't pretend what Trudeau does isn't a major factor. His actions might not be as apocalyptic for the industry as what the Arabs did in 2014 but it's not plausible that his agenda hasn't had a negative effect on the Canadian sector.

[BeaverFever]

Thanos Thanos:

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Fair enough. What caused the collapse?

1) OPEC sabotaging the world price in 2014 in an effort to make US and Canadian production & export unprofitable
2) US domestic production vastly increasing under the Obama Administration
3) election of Justin Trudeau and his anti-O&G agenda, with his wildly un-necessary new regulatory regime that's had the effect of chasing away most existing foreign investment in the Canadian sector and scaring off new Canadian or America investment that might have replaced that which departed
4) increasingly successful divestment tactics by environmental radicals that are increasingly isolating the Canadian sector while the American and other major developers across the planet escape any negative effects altogether

Don't pretend what Trudeau does isn't a major factor. His actions might not be as apocalyptic for the industry as what the Arabs did in 2014 but it's not plausible that his agenda hasn't had a negative effect on the Canadian sector.

I think many would argue that the divestment alleged in your points 3 and 4 were predominantly caused by the global market events in 1and 2. Oilsands oil is fundamentally more expensive than other sources so it makes sense that it would be the first to be be jettisoned by oil cos and investors when demand decreases or competition increases. Is it possible that Oilsands oil is simply an uncompetitive industry in the current marketplace?

[DrCaleb]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Is it possible that Oilsands oil is simply an uncompetitive industry in the current marketplace?

In the current marketplace, yes. Syncrude Synthetic Blend used to be valued higher than West Texas Intermediate, because it was refined to have less sulphur and was easier to refine into petroleum. But with the massive increase in fracking in the US, and having the US as our only market, the value is lost to over production and the cheaper fracked products.

Opening Asia to our oil will reduce the backlog and raise the price. I just wish it was refined oil that was exported, not the inferior dilbit.