News   Apr 17, 2024
Sustainability Month: The Combined Power of Bike + Subway + RER
 1.3K     0 
News   Apr 17, 2024
Daniels' OMG2 Offers EV Charging at Brampton Condo Homes
 331     0 
News   Apr 17, 2024
Canada Lands Company Advances Downsview Lands Transformation
 2K     1 

How to get Canada's oil to export markets?

Johnny Au said:
Very interesting.

Some diesel engines accept used deep-fried grease and they provide greater mileage than many electric vehicles, depending on the grease used.

That would be an interesting green alternative to electric vehicles.
Click to expand...
Yes, but to make the grease also requires extensive energy, and of course animal farming. And using agriculture to power our vehicles leads us the ethanol, which is a huge waste of farm resources, water, etc.

If you want to reduce car based pollution the solution isn't the power source, it's the elimination of the need for the car. I live in Cabbagetown and work at the QEW and Hurontario. Getting myself to work needs a car. Sure I sometimes take Bikeshare and the GoTrain and MiWay via Port Credit Stn, but that can add 30 mins or more to my commute and it's expensive, over $3,000 a year. I own an old car and spend perhaps the same on fuel, insurance and maintenance. I don't want to do both. So, eliminate the car for me by making getting to work easier, for example, let me take my own bicycle onto the train at Union Station at 7am.

But Canada is a resource economy. We need to get our resources to market, be it wheat, oil, aluminum, etc. Right now we've hindered our own success by setting up a system wherein we can only sell to one customer. And right now that customer is being a dick.
 
Admiral Beez said:
I'm not so sure.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/the-dirt-on-clean-electric-cars
The Dirt on Clean Electric Cars
New research shows some drivers might spew out less CO2 with a diesel engine.
Click to expand...

This is based on the generation mix of the grid though. And Germany has lots of coal power left still. Over 20%. In Canada, on the other hand, an EV would be quite low-emitting with such a percentage of power coming from hydro and nuclear. And simply switching from coal to natural gas in Germany would change that math completely. An electric car is literally the only car that produces less emissions every year (as the grid decarbonizes). Also, centralized power generation makes it far easier to use scrubbers and carbon capture.

Ultimately though, this isn't really about the environment. EVs are coming. Because technology is heading that way. Simple as that.
 
Last edited:
Admiral Beez said:
If you want to reduce car based pollution the solution isn't the power source, it's the elimination of the need for the car.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Forget pollution. The quality of life is substantially better in transit and pedestrian friendly cities. But that change is probably going to take several generations in North America.

My point in bringing up the discussion on the rapid evolution of EVs here is to point out how much we are ignoring a major economic threat to our heavily resource dependent economy. Canada may be the last country to adopt EVs. But the rest of the world where 200-300km of range is just fine, where fuel prices are double what they are here, where fuel consumption is higher (due to heavy urbanization) and where climate is less of a concern, EVs have the potential to take off really quickly. If that adoption curve in places like Europe and developed parts of Asia goes exponential, our oil will start losing value pretty damn quick. We should be planning for that. We aren't.
 
There will be an oil shortage in the 2020s, Goldman Sachs says

See link.

An oil shortage is coming says Goldman Sachs, because firms cannot fully invest in future production.

Global oil majors are increasingly looking to invest in lower-carbon areas of the energy sector, as they react to pressure for cleaner energy, both from government policy and investors.

"In the 2020's we are going to have a clear physical shortage of oil because nobody is allowed to fully invest in future oil production," Michele Della Vigna, Head of EMEA Natural Resources Research at Goldman Sachs told CNBC Friday.

"The low carbon transition will come through higher, not lower oil prices," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe."

Della Vigna said "Big Oils" are starting to understand that if they want to be widely owned by investors, they need to show that they are serious about minimizing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

The Goldman analyst said oil firms only had to look at the steep derating of coal companies over the last 5 years to understand the shift in investor sentiment.

Della Vigna said until a transition to full renewables is made, the interim battle will be to own a greater market share of gas-based power. The analyst said with a huge capital cost of gas infrastructure, big state-backed companies looked best placed.

"We talk about the new seven sisters emerging, dominating the global oil and gas market because nobody else can finance these mega-projects," he said.

The "new Seven Sisters" of oil are considered the most influential firms from countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

They have been identified as Saudi Aramco, Russia's Gazprom, NIOC of Iran, China National Petroleum Corp, Brazil's Petrobras, Venezuela's PDVSA, and Petronas of Malaysia. The original "Seven Sisters" were firms in the 1950s who would later consolidate to become BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

Della Vigna said European oil companies such as U.K. firm Shell and French company Total are also ahead of U.S. rivals in making the transition from "big oil" to become "big energy".

Oil markets have been weak in recent days as oversupply concerns and fears of an economic slowdown have pressured prices. Both Brent and WTI contracts entered bear markets this week as prices fell around 20 percent from their most recent highs in October.
Click to expand...
 
Why did Trudeau buy the Trans Mountain pipeline without any viable plans to twin it? Perhaps this is why:

Did Canada buy an oil pipeline in fear of being sued by China?
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-morgan-pipeline-china-did-he-fear-being-sued

With good-paying manufacturing jobs exiting Ontario, we need to get Alberta's economic engine firing. And that means cutting the strangle hold the USA has on the price of Alberta's oil.
 
Last edited:
Admiral Beez said:
Through Moosonee might work.
Click to expand...

Way too shallow as is most of southern James Bay. The town is about 20km from the mouth of the river and surrounded by flat, boggy terrain - Hudson's Bay Lowlands. The river at the townsite is narrow and full of constantly shifting sandbars. Tides run about 7'.
 
lenaitch said:
Way too shallow as is most of southern James Bay. The town is about 20km from the mouth of the river and surrounded by flat, boggy terrain - Hudson's Bay Lowlands. The river at the townsite is narrow and full of constantly shifting sandbars. Tides run about 7'.
Click to expand...
Hmm..... well I suppose if Manitoba was willing to pipe oil from Alberta to Ontario they might as well send it to Churchill and ship it from there, but the locals have already said they're not interested.

I have to wonder what Alberta's solution is, beyond just leaving it in the ground.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Hmm..... well I suppose if Manitoba was willing to pipe oil from Alberta to Ontario they might as well send it to Churchill and ship it from there, but the locals have already said they're not interested.

I have to wonder what Alberta's solution is, beyond just leaving it in the ground.
Click to expand...

I touted the right answer some time ago in this thread. Jeff Rubin a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and the former chief economist and chief strategist at CIBC World Markets agrees with me. (whether he knows it or not) and makes the case well in this column.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opi...had-better-options-for-canadas-energy-sector/

The answer is not more production or transportation, both of which COST this country as much or more that what we get out of it.

The answer is refining and other value-added in Canada, which creates much higher earnings, profits, royalties, employment, lower pipeline/spill risks (refined gas floats, bitumen sinks), and it also creates more pipeline capacity out of thin air as you can pump more dramatically more cubic metres of refined gas in the same pipe than you can bitumen.

See another column, in another paper, that agrees.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/sta...in-canada-is-trudeaus-pipelines-solution.html

I don't mean to sound annoyed, but this is all evidence-based, supported policy. Moreover, I've been on the record on this for quite awhile.
 
Totally agree that, ideally, our petroleum exports should be value-added; much like I disagree with exporting raw logs. There hasn't been a refinery built since the mid-1980s and we have about half the total we used have. Beyond the difficulty of finding a willing host community, I suppose there are a myriad of reasons why industry doesn't want to invest a couple of billion, and one of them might be the long-term financial viability. That level of investment takes decades to pay back. Although we might not be transporting raw crude, we'd still be transporting refined petroleum product which aren't without their own issues.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top