As you can see below oil sands cover an extremely large part of Alberta and that resource is going to be extracted. The question is how? The two most common ways of separate the oil from the sand in the Alberta Oil / Tar Sands is to boil it or put it under pressure while still in the ground. Oil that is on or near the surface is scrapped up by massive loaders and transported to ‘upgrader’ facilities that separate…
The old DOT-111 rail cars carry about 700 barrels of oil but because of safety concerns they are being phased out for newer, safer DOT-117 oil rail cars which can carry about 675 barrels of oil As you can see below there are different capacities of DOT-117 rail cars: Canada ships about 150,000 barrels of oil PER DAY on rail, mostly from the Alberta Oil Sands, because there is no more pipeline capacity remaining in the system:
Take a look at the Canadian oil production forecasts below notice that the predictions from 2010 have been UNDER-estimated. As you can see even with the 2014 oil price collapse oil sands production just kept chugging along. Some have speculated that the tar/oil sands are like any other extractive industry and they will naturally produce less over time because the ‘easy’ oil is taken up first, leaving the more difficult and expensive oil to later years. Oil Sands production has…
We have two versions (full and highlights) of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s speech to the Alberta Teachers Association conference in Edmonton in which she explains that the Trans Mountain Pipeline will not cause increased carbon emissions because: The demand for oil will increase through 2045 and that demand will be met by the environmentally disastrous Russia’s, Nigerian’s or Venezuelan’s if Canada does not produce it Unlike nearly every other oil producing jurisdiction on the globe, Alberta has set carbon emissions limits…
It is conventional wisdom that large vehicle sales (like pickup trucks, large SUV’s and full size sedans) crash when the price of gasoline spikes. This is an “proof” offered by some on the left that carbon taxes reduce consumption. We wanted to find out if this is true and what is affecting the trends. Take a look at these two tables. They show average vehicle fuel economy of VEHICLES ACTUALLY ON THE ROAD in several different categories along with the…
Pictures say a thousand words and that has never been more true than with the images used to explain the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX) project. News sources typically use massive stacks of pipe or gigantic multi-tier above ground pipelines as their backdrop for reporting on TMX. Humans ingest and trust what they see much more than what they hear. The reality is that the Trans Mountain Pipeline EXPANSION is just 61cm (24″ inches) in diameter that is buried underground…
The recent Federal Court decision holding up the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project makes for great political debate and emotional exaggeration but is not nearly as onerous as many people are make out. Put simply the decision said just two things: Consultation that has already been COMPLETED needs to respond to concerns, not just acknowledge them There needs to be a short study of the impacts of Tanker traffic in the Vancouver area Neither of these are hugely difficult or…
What Happens To Transformational Technologies Like Fusion When Even Governments Say It Will Take Too Long To Develop? The short video below explains how technology that can fundamentally change the world through things like limitless energy is something that few investors or even governments want to fund. In this world of short-termism in which elected officials can only see to the next election and CEO’s are only concerned about the next three quarters, there are some who are willing to…
The recent Trans Mountain court case has groups on both sides fired up and stretching the implications. This video from BNN Bloomberg calmly explains that Federal Court ruled against the Trans Mountain pipeline on just two grounds: 1: TRANS MOUNTAIN CONSULTATION: The consultation with a small number of indigenous communities was not sufficiently responded to. There was not change in plan based on the previous consultation and the court found that that was not enough. It is worth noting, as we…
PartisanIssues.com strives to avoid opinion and stick to facts, but we thought you would be interested in a recent debate with one of our readers who called Solar “Shitty Power” because it provides inconsistent output. I gave this some considerable thought and came up with the following rebuttal. To be transparent I should tell you that I have lived in Alberta for 25 years, own solar panels and drive an electric car (both of which did not receive a penny…
Without any question Quebec generates the most electricity from renewables because of their massive and expanding hydro infrastructure. You might also be surprised to find some cities have completely given up coal. Calgary which gets 84% of its electricity from Natural Gas and 16% from Wind power. Below are the sources of electricity for each Canadian Province.
We recently completed research on an article evaluating how Alberta, Edmonton and Calgary generate their electricity and that got us to thinking about how Canada compares to the United States. In a word, Canada, largely because Quebec produces an outrageous (and growing) amount of Hydro. Obviously this is a percentage calculation, given that the United States has 10 times the population of Canada. Canadian Electricity Generation Source 2016: SOURCE United States Electricity Generation Source 2016: Of the 866…
In the 1990’s I worked at TransAlta supporting their Sundance, Keephills and Wabamun coal plants that powered Alberta’s electricity needs. Back then there was talk of changing to Natural Gas for base power but not much action. In 1995 I started working for an oil and gas exploration firm and on my first day the CEO told me that Natural Gas had been in the sub $3 range so long it just had to go up in the next couple…
Over the years many knowledgeable people have downplayed the contributions that Solar and Wind can play in the future. On the other side we keep hearing about massive increases in Solar and Wind electricity production due to costs dropping precipitously. So we wanted to know how often the so called experts are correct and how often their predictions are wrong. For the purposes of this article we will focus on predictions from the IEA (International Energy Association) because it is…
In the late 1990’s the term PEAK OIL was coined as a short form for the time when we reach the maximum amount of oil we can produce in a year. It was often misconstrued as the end of oil but was simply when production levels start to decline. By the mid 2000’s Peak Oil had become a hot topic around the globe with both oil producers and environmentalists both promoting the idea. Oil producers wanted peak oil because it…
There has been so much talk in the media about how Alberta Premier Rachel Notely and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are saying that they are pro-pipeline but working behind the scenes to kill them. Well, the proof is in the pudding oil. During an Alberta Provincial cabinet meeting on Monday, Premier Rachel Notely said “Shipments of pipe are arriving pretty much as we speak in Alberta, located at stockpile yards in Acheson and Edson”. On the same day the Calgary…