What happens to oil pipelines in a post oil world? Many people think the massive expenditures in pipelines result in a permanent oil infrastructure. The fact is that pipelines originally constructed to move oil are both reversed and repurposed all the time. The graphic to the right is from 2014 and shows that oil pipeline reversals and repurposing are not new. Here are some real world examples about what happens to old oil/gas pipelines. PIPELINE REVERSALS: Enbridge ‘Line 9’ reversed the…
It has been noted that during the gold rush most miners did not get rich, but the people who sold them their pick axes and dynamite certainty did. In the same vein Google has said it is not those with the most powerful computers that will win in the future, it is those with the most data. Perhaps electric cars are the same. Tesla just released amazing new version 3 electric charging stations in Regina Saskatchewan Canada: “…The new stations…
Proton Technologies of Calgary has taken existing technologies and combined them into a method or ‘process patent’ that gives them exclusive rights to produce hydrogen in the ground. This means that all of the CO2 and other greenhouse gases remain locked in the ground where they have been for millions of years. It also massively reduces the complexity and cost allowing Hydrogen to be produced 80% to 95% cheaper than the current process. At that rate, hydrogen will be several…
The nuclear energy industry has a bad rap. Accidents at Fukushima Japan and Chernobyl Russia, using 1950’s technology, scared citizens and politicians into thinking that nuclear energy is both dangerous and dead. Even with these massive events, the fact is that nuclear was always RELATIVELY safe. We say relatively because all systems have flaws and failures but nuclear is far superior to coal or even natural gas and wind power. However, in the 1970’s and 1980’s much research was done…
We have never had so much easy access to highly reliable scientific information but intentionally misleading fake news, politicians and interest groups promoting their pet agendas and outright crackpots have left the public scared and confused on so many issues. Nuclear power is one of those issues where the conventional wisdom is just plain wrong. ‘Everyone knows’ that nuclear power: isn’t safe and never will be has killed hundreds of thousands of people has permanently contaminated millions of square kilometers…
A few weeks ago, a small privately held Calgary startup named Proton Technologies announced they were successfully generating cheap hydrogen from old oil fields. Today we interviewed their CEO, Grant Strem, and learned that the company already had net positive cash flow with big plans for the near future. Producing Hydrogen with ZERO Emissions at 20% of the Cost? Keeping the process in the ground means there is no expensive carbon capture requirements. The process, shown to the right, produces…
A Canadian company named Proton Technology has developed the worlds first large scale, cheap method of producing ultra-clean hydrogen from oil. “This technique can draw up huge quantities of hydrogen while leaving the carbon in the ground. When working at production level, we anticipate we will be able to use the existing infrastructure and distribution chains to produce H2 for between 10 and 50 cents per kilo. This means it potentially costs a fraction of gasoline for equivalent output” said…
The numbers of oil tanker rail cars being shipped in 2019 and projected for 2020 and beyond are truly staggering. That got us to thinking about how long a train would they make and the results were quite interesting. If all the rail cars carrying crude oil just in 2019, largely from Western Canada, were connected in a single train they would be over 1400 kilometers. That is 50% longer than the distance from Calgary to Vancouver: a crude oil…
With all the hype surrounding Telsa, Cadillac and Uber‘s autonomous driving technology you can be forgiven for thinking that the auto industry is developing dozens of unconnected standards. In fact most of the major players are not only sharing patents, they are actively partnering with each other. The cost to develop self driving technologies would make in-house development consume a prohibitively long time in the globally competitive world of transportation. Below is a list and description of some of the…
It will come as no surprise to anyone in the oil sector, or involved in the stock market that Canada exports nearly all of its oil to the United States. What may be surprising is some of the secondary markets. For instance, you can see in the graphic below that The Netherlands and France are Canada’s second and third largest export markets for refined oil (i.e. gasoline, diesel…) Click to expand graphic 2017 Exports From Canada Click to expand…
The City of Toronto has the largest transit system in Canada that includes 2200 buses and they are now testing 10 fully electric units from each of New Flyer (Canada), BYD (China), and Proterra (US) Here are the numbers: 25% more reliable 30% few parts less items to inventory and manage saves money 25% lower maintenance costs 60% quieter which is a big deal for drivers and communities 75% reduction in energy costs $32,000 /bus /year energy savings $70 million…
It is oft said by those who disapprove of carbon taxes that: Carbon taxes are ineffective Carbon taxes target the wrong people The Canadian Federal Government does not have right to impose a carbon tax All three of these statements are demonstrably incorrect. University of Ottawa Professor of Law and Economics, Stewart Elgie, explains that the dissenting judges in the Saskatchewan and Ontario carbon tax cases are not disagreeing with the principle that the Federal Government has the right to…
Every year since 2000, notable pundits and real companies have claimed that next year is the Hydrogen’s year. It certainly looks good on television. Real car companies like Honda, Toyota and GM produce a few thousand hydrogen test vehicles (so called FCV’s or Fuel Cell Vehicles) and make slick commercials with pure water dripping out of tail pipes in front of endless green fields: The promise of hydrogen is indeed intoxicating. It is very easy to overlook its massive problems…
UPDATED: July 21 2019 Since the start of the 2019, there have been many important events in the Trans Mountain Pipeline saga and it is easy to get lost. To clarify the issues we have appended the following entries to our master list “Complete Trans Mountain Pipeline and Expansion Timeline from 1947 to 2022” 2019 Jan 15 100 First Nations groups meet in Calgary to discuss purchase of Trans Mountain 2019 Jan 21 Trans Mountain submits report to NEB proposing…
If you live in Alberta, BC, Ontario… ok… Canada, or the US or UK or Australia… ok… if you live on planet earth, you have heard about Carbon Taxes. Those that are for them claim they will cure all environmental ills and those against claim they are just another government tax grab. We dug into the facts and came up with 5 Myths about Carbon Taxes we thought you would find interesting: MYTH 1 – Carbon Taxes Don’t Change Behaviour…
In this short video we took a 10 minute discussion about the Canadian economy an focused on the discussion about how Quebec’s SNC Lavalin is treated so differently from Western Canada’s Oil and Gas industry. If you have the time, the full discussion is quite interesting and you can watch it here on the BNN Bloomberg site: PART 1 and PART 2
The “Oil Curse” or “Curse of Oil” or “Resource Curse” is the net negative outcome that is seen with any single industry that takes over a geographic area. The central idea is that when oil is discovered in an undeveloped land, like rural Africa, the initial promise of great wealth results in rapid development and that leads to what economists call ‘externalities’. Externalities are charges that should be calculated as part of the cost of development but instead are pushed…
There is a lot of conversation around various sources of pollution but many of them have no context so you really can’t get a mental grip on how serious the problem really is. Below is a chart we built with data collected by the University of Calgary. We hope it will help you put things in perspective. This data is specific to Canada in 2015 and while the numbers are shown in the outermost ring and in the table below,…