Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:
Actually I do. The average difference between "Western Canada Select" (what we produce) and "Brent Crude" (what the Arabs export) is 50 dollars:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/crude-discount-seen-continuing-for-canadian-producers/article6500167/As of the close on Thursday (most recent info I could find), Western Canada Select is $65.94 per barrel
Brent Crude is currently sitting at $116.76 per barrel
http://www.oil-price.net/Currently Brent Crude is $50.62 more expensive than Western Canada select; nearly
double. Note that in the link West Texas Light is sitting at $97.61. While irrelevant to this current discussion, this is the oil blend most commonly referred too when newspapers and news networks refer to when they talk about the price of oil. It is also still $31.67 more than Western Canada Select.
For ease, I'll use New Brunswick as my example. The current regular gasoline prices in NB range from 123.9c to 135.0c per litre, and the vast majority of the fuel comes from Eastern Canadian refineries.
Albertan regular gasoline prices currently range from 92.9c to 115.9c per litre, and the vast majority of fuel comes from refineries who process Western Canada Select.
For the sake of ease, I'm not factoring in supply/demand, shipping costs, etc. But the variance in price within each province is mostly because of those factors. So I will take the average and compare them. Average NB price is 127.5c per litre and average AB price is 104.4c per litre. a 23.1c per litre difference.
In my original statement, I said the price would be somewhere in the middle. Assuming Western Canada Select will sell for more because of higher demand, transportation costs, and Irving skimming some extra dough off the side, I consider halfway a fair assessment. While fuel prices aren't parallel to oil prices, the change in both is close enough to warrant the assumption that fuel prices would follow the same logic. Half of 23.1 is approximately 11.6c per litre.
According to this articlein the Globe and Mail, we use approximately 38 BILLION litres of gasoline annually:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/driving-it-home/canadian-gas-consumption-declines-but-dont-thank-fuel-sipping-auto-makers-just-yet/article4240079/. That's approximately 1 100 litres per person annually. Looking back at NB population of approximately 756 000, it is reasonable to deduce that 831 600 000 litres of fuel is used in the province annually. At 11.6 cents per litre, that comes out to approximately 9 147 600 000 cents, or
$91 476 000 annually that could be saved in the province of New Brunswick
alone.
Now think about the savings realised for the fuel purchased in the other Atlantic provinces, the majority of Quebec, and some of Ontario. I'll admit I pulled the $500 million figure out of my ass before. But frankly I low-balled it. There is potential for a billion dollars or more to be saved annually by the residents of Eastern and Central Canada by building this pipeline. And the best part about it is that not only are we saving that much money to spend elsewhere in the economy, but there is potential for
$30 billion or more to be made by getting the price of Western Canada Select higher. Not only that, but by cutting the oil we import, we're increasing the amount of money in this country, making us as a whole more wealthy and well off.
Are those good enough numbers for you?
Lots of good numbers there. I do have some problems with some of them, the first being this, for gas prices, NB range from 123.9c to 135.0c per litre. Almost exactly the same prices are prevalent in BC. In fact up to 1.41 in these parts. And we don't have bitumen laced oil here. My point is that Edmonton prices are not a set piece. Nor is distance from market a necessary factor in pricing benefit.
So you are right, half the difference between Brent and Western Canada oil would be a fair price. But that difference depends on the factors you have mentioned, transportation, the Irvings, but there are a couple others that will impact on that. The bitumen thick oil from the oil sands are harder to refine. I understand that only a few refinerys around the world are up to the task. Is the refinery capacity of eastern Canada going to make the upgrades when they already claim that refining is a low profit business? And if they do will they pass any savings on to consumers. Not in My experience.
The other factor which I mentioned earlier is that the whole objective of the pipeline pushers is to get world price for their output. How likely are they going to pass on benefits to consumers of such an eastern flow? That is something that I would want to see in writing and even then I think I would be foolish to believe that it would last. Given all these factors I suggest that despite the cool rationale for keeping the west to east flow on the table, I think still that it is wishful thinking, from gasoline prices and secondary economic growth, to jobs.
Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:
I showed you my numbers. Show me yours. How many more jobs will conservation create than more refining jobs. Not only do I want numbers, but I want sources for your numbers just like I gave you sources for my numbers.
If my take on the oil industry shenannigans is correct then it wouldn't take much to out produce the industry job creation. Still this report should be worth looking at,
http://rael.berkeley.edu/sites/default/ ... cy2010.pdf"The studies reviewed here show an average 23%efficiencygain with a nearly 2to1 benefit–cost ratio. From analyzing this set of studies, a 20–30% gain in energy efficiency estimated within the US economy might lead to a net gain of 500,000–
1,500,000 jobs by 2030."
"For the medium-EEcase,half-a-million total jobs are generated from 2009 to 2020 and 1.9 million total job years from 2009 to 2030(Fig. 3), while for the flat energy case, we project 1 million and just under 4 million job years, respectively. "
Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:
I know the reality of "dirty oil." I live 45 minutes northeast of Hardisty, where all the oilsands oil and light sweet crude is mixed to make the Western Canadian Standard before it is shipped off elsewhere. I am in the middle of the oil industry out here in Wainwright, Alberta, and the skies are the clearest and most blue I have ever seen, the farmers fields have full yields, the air is clean, fresh, and the days are bright. There is nothing anymore dirty about the way oil is produced in Alberta than the way it is produced in the Middle East, no dirtier then the pollutants that come out of chemical factories for your household cleaners, your paints, and your electronics, and no dirtier than the way we process our garbage, sewage, and other wastes we toss into the environment. You want to clean up the planet you live on, walk through your local park and pick up all the trash you run into, then hand-deliver it to the dump.
Do you know the same reality experienced by the people and environment alongside the tar sands? Do you know the reality of climate change which has effects that are just getting rolling and won't quit for at least fourty years even if we do cut way back now? My household cleaners aren't doing this kind of impact.
CKA Uber 
