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…
There are many who claim that in the last decade of Conservative rule in under Federal Prime Minister Harper and Alberta Premiers Stelmach, Redford and Prentice precious little was done for Alberta’s pipelines. On the other hand, earlier this year UCP Leader Jason Kenney said that it was completely wrong to say that pipelines had not been built under that Conservative leadership. (Note that we cannot locate the exact quote so if you can find it, please send it to us so we can correctly detail the verbiage used). The…
Much has been said about the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline and while the Trudeau Government has made it clear they do not want to own it for very long, there are rumblings that they will use this as a management tool to develop or support the much needed Energy East Pipeline. In the last few months the debate over such an advanced economy as Canada exporting raw materials and importing finished goods based on those raw materials has become…
Let’s be clear that General Motors and all automobile manufactures do NOT want government regulation to mandate a Zero Emissions, Zero Crashes and Zero Congestion world, but they do want laws that: approach those achievable goals are shared in many jurisdictions apply to everyone In the video below GM President Dan Amonn explains GM’s GOALS of Zero Emissions, Zero Crashes and Zero Congestion and that their investments are very long cycle that need to be based on consistent regulations to avoid…
Last year Chrysler announced the end of nearly all their cars, leaving the Chrysler 300 as the sole survivor. This week Ford announced they same thing by formally heralding the death of the Taurus, Fusion, CMax, and Fiesta leaving only the Mustang and Focus in development. General Motors will follow suit in the coming weeks. Are the “big 3” giving up on the North American car market? No; what they are doing is responding to consumers purchasing only SUV’s and…
What is Induced Seismicity? Induced Seismicity is just another way to say ‘man made earthquakes’ and are sometimes referred to “induced earthquakes”. Induced Seismicity can be caused by many things humans do including: damming rivers for hydro power build a vast water weight behind the dam which was not their previously having old mine shafts collapse draining of underground water reservoirs tunneling / boring for transit systems but the focus of this article is Induced Seismicity caused by oil and…
The oil tankers to be used near the Port of Vancouver to transport oil from the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, are definitely large. However, some groups are claiming that are massive super tankers the we need to be terrified of. Aframax tankers is what will be used and they are the second smallest tankers on the grid. Make no mistake, these are big but they are not the super tankers you see on TV.These Aframax oil tankers will be subject…
You can draw your own conclusions from the charts below but it is not debatable that Oil Tankers used to get into a lot of serious accidents and spill a huge amount of oil. That is just not the case today. As you can see in the chart below, the oil tanker business has become dramatically safer in the last 35 years since tanker traffic became popular in the early 1970’s: The 2017 the tanker oil spill numbers look very…
Alberta is used to energy shocks and can quickly adjust to the environment, especially an oversupply. BC gets 80% of its gasoline from Alberta which cannot possibly be replaced with tanker trucks from the US… because BC does not have any pipelines their either. Also, yesterday the Premier of Saskatchewan has said his province will also cut off BC if Alberta does. Put simply, BC is completely beholden to Alberta for Energy and Alberta is beholden to BC for very…