Canadian Politics Today

The final cost to Albertans for the Keystone XL pipeline will be about $1.3 billion as the provincial government and TC Energy announced the official termination of the project Wednesday.

"We invested in Keystone XL because of the long-term economic benefits it would have provided Albertans and Canadians," said Energy Minister Sonya Savage in a news release.

The Alberta government agreed last year to invest about $1.5 billion as equity in the project, plus billions more in loan guarantees in order to get the pipeline moving.

As a result, the Canadian leg of the project had been under construction for several months with around 1,000 workers in southeast Alberta.

If completed, the 1,897-kilometre pipeline, first announced in 2005, would have carried 830,000 barrels of crude a day from the oilsands in Hardisty, Alta., to Nebraska. It would then connect with the original Keystone that runs to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Construction activities to advance the Project were suspended following the revocation of its Presidential Permit on January 20, 2021. The Company will continue to coordinate with regulators, stakeholders and Indigenous groups to meet its environmental and regulatory commitments and ensure a safe termination of and exit from the Project.
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Looking forward, there is tremendous opportunity for TC Energy in the energy transition with its irreplaceable asset footprint, financial strength and organizational capabilities positioning it to capture further significant and compelling growth. The Company will continue to build on its 70-year history of success and leverage its diverse businesses in natural gas and liquids transportation along with storage and power generation to continue to meet the growing and evolving demand for energy across the continent.

This 'Bitumen Boondoggle' is costing Alberta taxpayers billions --- the province's backing of the Sturgeon Refinery has saddled Albertans with a $26.4-billion liability.

Quote from: Andrew Leach - energy and environmental economist at the University of Alberta.

So, what's the end result of all this? The Alberta government is expecting to pay $26.4 billion over 30 years to refine bitumen into diesel, gas, oil and small volumes of other products; an average refining toll of over $73 per barrel of bitumen processed.

With the increase to $73 per barrel tolls, the refinery will only be profitable in periods when pipelines are substantially constrained, as they were in 2017 and 2018. With new pipelines under construction, and slow-to-non-existent oilsands production growth, that seems unlikely to be the case for many years. It's much more likely that we'll be losing money on every barrel.

So, in a sense, the Sturgeon Refinery contract is a multibillion-dollar bet against pipelines getting built. It's worth noting that by investing in the Keystone XL pipeline, the Alberta government also has a multibillion-dollar direct bet on that pipeline getting built, so we're now guaranteed to lose billions on at least one major government industrial policy bet. Fantastic.

We can't predict the future of the oil market, and pipelines like KXL are no sure thing, so it's possible that the refinery will still end up in-the-money if we see a combination of high oil product prices and low bitumen values in the future.

But even if that proves to be the case, Albertans should remember that we're paying more than $7 billion more than we should have for this refinery, and that those dollars are going to fund a return to a private entity that failed to live up to its side of a bargain with Albertans.

Legal and economic experts say there's virtually no chance Alberta's planned referendum on equalization will result in changes to Canada's Constitution.

Instead, they say Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party government is using equalization as a pinata for broader economic grievances with the federal government.

"It is about mobilizing an angry political base motivated by an idea that the government of Alberta thinks is in its interest, which is that Ottawa has been unfair to Albertans, and that there is somebody to blame for economic downturn, and there is someone to blame for the movement away from the carbon-based energy industry," said Eric Adams, a constitutional law expert and University of Alberta professor.

On Monday, Premier Jason Kenney said he will put a proposed referendum question on equalization before the Alberta legislature, while aiming to run the referendum in concert with October municipal elections.

so the pandemic delayed the report delivery a tad; but, of course, there was never any doubt what the panel would ultimately deliver. Notwithstanding actual recent polls of Albertans countering many of the recommendations of the so-called "Fair Deal Panel", the charade undertaking delivered the report, delivered what justVisitingJason/UCP wanted:

and right off the mark after the release of the report, Kenney has rushed to the forefront to continue to stoke the so-called, "rhetorical seeds of Alberta discontent... the separatist fires with the/a key driver Wexiteer's play on" - equalization... with Kenney promising a... uhhh... referendum for Albertans to vote on supporting the removal of Section 36 from the Constitution. Somehow, Kenney has failed to advise Albertans that it was Harper Conservatives who were responsible for the current equalization rules... that he, justVisitingJason, was a part of the Harper Cabinet that brought in today's current equalization rules - go figure!

as a part of the official Alberta UCP government response to the report, the related reference to the intended referendum:



again, a couple of doses of reality for Kenney and Albertans predisposed to the Kenney/UCP bullshyte:

=> Why Jason Kenney's proposed referendum is so puzzling --- Holding a constitutional referendum to end equalization wouldn't actually benefit Alberta. Here's how equalization actually works:

=> Why equalization is not unfair to Alberta

We’ve mocked — for years! — in this province people in downtown Calgary or downtown Edmonton who have $70,000 trucks and don’t actually use them for anything except driving,” says Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Calgary’s Mount Royal University.

“This is not an attack on construction workers or hunters or people who drive around with hockey gear in their trucks,” he says. “It’s those that have an empty cargo, all the time.”

“It just took someone from Toronto to point that out to really offend the province.”

Kenney, a former federal minister, has worked hard to present himself as an advocate for rural Alberta and traditional industries such as oil and gas. And he’s often adopted the stereotypical Albertan attire: He’s usually seen at events in jeans, checked shirts and the odd cowboy hat — and driving a truck.

Part of his public indignation could be rooted in Kenney’s commitment to the blue truck.

Like it or not, pickup trucks are incredibly useful vehicles. The newer ones have the room and comfort for five of a nice sedan and can haul and tow most things a suburb dweller will ever need.