Canadian Beakin'

A hostile federal government and a poorly informed public, translates to visceral animosity towards the energy industry in Canada. Aided by frequently lazy and untrustworthy media, its become fashionable to ?disparage ?a sector that would be a crown jewel in any other country. The 4th?largest oil producer in the world and a source of enormous wealth creation for 10 Provinces and 3 Territories has become the Rodney Dangerfield of Canada.

The media’s contribution to this situation can’t be overstated. The majority of Canadians don’t follow the sector closely and thus are reliant on media to inform their judgments. Accurate and balanced reporting is essential...and almost impossible to find. Mainstream media is now inclined to make news into entertainment, cultivating outrage to gain readership so it can compete with social media, an information wild west with no rules and no fact checking. The result is, as Jonathon Swift said, “Falsehood flies and truth comes stumbling after”.

Witness a January 13, 2023, experiment in manipulation visited upon readers of the Globe and Mail by Gary Mason. Curating information to encourage you to his point of view, Mason opines Alberta is not at the forefront of climate policy, omitting to note the oil and gas industry spends more on environmental protection than any other sector. He references good incomes in the oil patch without noting the industry supports 500,000 jobs and scores of industries across the entire country. He observes emissions in Alberta increased 55 percent from 1990 levels, not bothering to point out production increased 170% in the same period. He doesn’t mention ?transportation produces far more emissions than the oil and gas sector.

Canada produces 5.6 million barrels per day (BPD), 20% of all the oil produced by NATO countries according to the Arc Energy Institute, tremendously significant given the situation with Russia. Canada consumes 2.2 million BPD and ?exports 3.7 million mostly to the United States. Because there is insufficient infrastructure to ship domestically, Canada imports several hundred thousand BPD, mostly from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. In 2021 this cost Canada $14.7 Billion.

All the numbers are large because energy use is embroidered into every facet of our lives.

The prize for shutting down the oil and gas industry in Canada, as argued for by the delusional and poorly read, ?is reducing global Greenhouse gas emissions by .3%. The costs include the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and Billions in lost government taxes with predictable consequences for social spending and capability. To replace domestic requirements with imports would require spending almost $1 Trillion per year to pay for oil from other countries. The risk Canada can’t be supplied with 100% reliability, the lack of physical assets to distribute imports, the geopolitical impact on energy security around the world expose the foolishness of those who want the industry shuttered.

And for all the blame shoveled at producing provinces, hypocrisy is afoot. Oil consumption has risen every year since 1998 except for 3 years, two of which are explained by Covid. Critics of energy producers seem eager to pin blame on the industry and ?assign responsibility to others. But if we want to reduce energy produced, we have to reduce consumption and that must start, dear reader, with you. Not some other country, not some other province, not your neighbor…you. No more next day delivery from Amazon, get rid of the SUVs and take public transport, don’t buy food that wasn’t produced in the town you live in, no more air travel, no more clothes from Italy or wine from France. Put on a sweater and turn down the heat.

Until arm waving turns into real action at the consumer level, the world will need oil;?the only decision is where you will buy it. But we start a trend to lower consumption if we get past finger pointing and turn hope into action. Hope is waiting for someone else to do something.?