CAGC

Published: Oilweek By: Gordon Jaremko POLICY CARBON STEW Dining habits cook up greenhouse gas storm O n the air-pollution scale, consumers have a counterpart to the oilsands, only bigger—much bigger. Call it the skeleton in the kitchen. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) exposes the startling results of rich eating and drinking habits in a report titled The Role of Fossil Fuels in the U.S. Food System and the American Diet.      “Use of fossil fuels to produce the foods and beverages consumed by Americans in 2007 accounted for 13.6 per cent of economy-wide CO2 emissions from fossil fuels,” says the 90-page document.      “Domestic fossil fuel use linked to U.S. food consumption produced 817 million of the nearly six billion metric tons of CO2 emissions economy-wide,” it says.       The role of everyday American grub in the exhaust blamed for global climate change is 12 times the current annual o...

Published: Oilweek By: David Yager I t was early 1987 when Jim Dinning, Alberta’s then–minister of community and occupational health, blew a gasket and started phoning oil company chief executive officers, telling them if the oilpatch didn’t clean up its appalling safety record on its own, the government would do it for them.      In addition to bringing about a devastating oil price collapse, 1986 had been a brutal year for accidents and fatalities. There was a terrible condensate explosion on a completion operation near Edson, Alta., leaving several workers with severe burns. When the province introduced drilling incentives that expired on December 31, a bunch of rigs with green crews went back to work in a hurry over the Christmas holidays, resulting in multiple fatalities.       Nowadays every rig that can shut down at this time of year does.      In 1986, the lost-time-accident claim rate was 3.9 per 100 ma...

By: Paul Wells Published: Daily Oil Bulletin With British Columbians set to go to the polls Tuesday, the Bulletin continues its look at election issues of relevance to the oil and gas industry as they relate to the platforms of the two front-running parties — the B.C. Liberals and the NDP. Gary Leach , president of the Producers and Explorers Association of Canada (EPAC), said the Liberals would be the oil and gas industry’s party of choice, noting the party’s promise to introduce a deep oil well drilling credit targeted at B.C.’s emerging Montney light oil resource that they say “will be competitive” with Alberta. “This is something EPAC has been advocating for several years now so we were pleased to see that in their campaign pledges. The Liberals say that 50 per cent of the oil revenue they receive from the Montney would be put into a ‘Prosperity Fund’ for future generations,” he said. “The B.C. Liberals also say they will freeze the carbon tax in the province until 2021 w...

Published: Daily Oil Bulletin By: Paul Wells The May 9 British Columbia election is fast approaching and the western Canadian oil and gas sector is casting a watchful eye on the proceedings as the two frontrunners -- Christy Clark's B.C. Liberal party and the John Horgan - led NDP - battle to the finish. And the stakes could be high for the western Canadian oilpatch, as the parties and the two leaders have vastly different views on many oil and gas - related issues such as the future of the province's neophyte liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, development of the vast northeastern B.C. natural gas resource, the future of pipeline infrastructure development and climate change strategies. In an April 28 note, TD Securities Inc. noted that recent polls suggest that the NDP has an eight percent lead over the Liberal party. According to CBC polling analytics, as of late April there was an 83 percent likelihood that the NDP would form a majority government. Gary Leach, p...