News keeps getting Worse! Muskrat Exports?

Below please find an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail article: Should we continue to ignore this?

This “over my dead body” attitude from a former engineer and environmentalist made Natural Resource Minister is emblematic of what former Parti Québécois premier Bouchard refers to as the “new religion” of Quebec. In a province where the gas industry’s first and often tactless developments have divided the population, gas wells – and even hydroelectric dams – have come to symbolize man’s self-destructive appetite for energy, at the expense of land, water and air.

It is a fine debate. Yet for all its sociological, environmental and economic considerations, it is somewhat vain. The valve on Quebec’s gas industry is shut for a foreseeable future that extends well beyond the current ban on gas exploration – which will last until environmental studies are completed, by 2014. Blame it on the shale gas boom in the United States. Blame it on the low gas prices that have ensued.

And the consequences of these depressed prices are felt not only by the province’s nascent gas industry, which had already drilled before the ban some 30 wells in Quebec in the hopes of creating a 5,000- to 19,000-job industry.

They also hurt the venerable Hydro-Québec, the state-owned electricity producer that has seen its export revenues since 2008 melt even as it is pumping more electricity into the northeastern U.S., its main export market. Gas-powered thermal electricity plants are heating up Hydro-Québec’s competition.

The price of natural gas has rebounded in recent months after it cratered in April under $2 (U.S.) per million British thermal units (BTU). As gas prices rise while the mercury falls on the eve of the winter heating season, it now trades close to $3.50 per million BTU in New York. However, Quebec’s gas industry estimated in earlier public hearings that the price of gas needs to trade between $5 and $6 for it to cover its production and delivery costs.

Even if gas-powered plants replace coal plants, even if diesel trucks are converted to gas, it will likely take a decade before the increased demand allows the price of natural gas to rebound significantly – it spiked at close to $9 in 2008. Quebec’s main gas distributor, Gaz Métro, expects prices to hover around $5 for the next 10 years. Jean-Thomas Bernard, guest lecturer at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of economics and an energy expert, thinks the depressed prices could even last 15 years.
This presents a headache for Hydro-Québec, which is already swarming with electricity surpluses as the recession weighs on industrial demand, especially from the pulp and paper mills that are in the midst of a structural downturn. And the problem will only be made worse as the state-owned electricity producer brings new capacity into service.

The complex project Eastmain-1-A-Sarcelle-Rupert, which includes the construction of two plants, four dams and the diversion of the Rupert River in the James Bay region, will add 8.7 terawatt-hours of electricity production. The Romaine hydroelectric complex in the Côte-Nord region will add another eight TWh on average a year.

Hydro-Québec‘s electricity exports have steadily gone up since 2007 to 26.8 TWh from 19.6 TWh. Yet as electricity prices have fallen while the Canadian dollar has shot up, the revenues the state producer collects from these out-of-province sales have gone down – although they slightly rebounded in 2011. The trend has continued in the first quarter of 2012: The year-over-year exports shortfall accounts for Hydro-Québec’s 28 per cent drop in revenue and 18 per cent reduction in profit.
And with any fall in Hydro-Québec’s profits comes a reduction to the dividend it pays the government, as 75 per cent of its profit are funnelled to Quebec.

To paraphrase the title of an acclaimed Louis Bélanger film, Quebec is suffering a severe case of “Gaz Bar Blues.”

So as Western Canadian energy producers are lamenting the surge in U.S. shale gas and oil production, which are threatening their exports south of the border, this time around, they will find a sympathetic ear in Quebec.

Rex Murphy Blows It in the National Post

Rex Murphy - Newfoundland and Labrador's Mano'Words stings critics of the Oil Sands while ignoring the elephant in the room. From there - Rex proceeds to demonstrate why he needs to come home more often and talk to the impacted people, their families, and their communities.

Below is an excerpt from Rex's Column in the National Post. Oil sands are a triumph for the human 'environment'.

In my view, this is the first and deepest justification for Fort Mac and the oil industry. Jobs are essential for the human environment — for a woman’s or a man’s sense of self-reliance and independence. By this, I mean the right to be able to obtain what you need for yourself and your family from what you have honestly earned. Being able, because you are employed, to stay off welfare, to turn aside from handouts — this is good for the environment of human dignity.

It mightn’t have the smug appeal of a panda face, and you will not see it on the vivid posters of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, but having a job and earning a living is a great thing. Those who have been out of work know what a cruel “environment” that is — an emotional and psychological assault of frightful power. So we should celebrate some of the contributions that the oil sands have already made to the fundamental human environments of so many Canadians.

I have thought, and thought again, of my own province of Newfoundland, caught in the great calamity of the fisheries’ close-down in the 1990s, and how providential it was that “out West,” an oil economy was booming at the same time. Many Newfoundlanders (and Maritimers) migrated there in a time of real need.

Great social misery was averted because of the oil boom and Newfoundland’s related offshore developments: Thousands of divorces never happened, thousands of families didn’t break up, thousands of men and women didn’t fall into the trap of depression and worse, which so often attends long-term unemployment — because there was a great oil industry that allowed them the wherewithal to feed their families. It is a great story of modern Confederation: How Alberta, in particular, modified and mitigated the misery of Newfoundland — and other places.
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Let's start this way Rex - jobs at all costs is one of the main reasons your homeland has suffered. It is the reason we delivered raw resources to other provinces in Canada - while no secondary processing occurred.

Next Rex - your idea that human 'environment' consists primarily of the ability to get a job - be self-reliant - and stay off welfare is ignorance at its finest. Bring on the asbestos right Rex? There are concerns of the human 'environment' - Rex - that include our children's right to clean water, air, and a safe food supply. When our parents are gluttonous of resources regardless of how they are extracted, developed, or utilized so we as the children can guarantee that our family has income - does come at a price. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who were 'employed' during the development of the Upper Churchill were happily employed, self-reliant and off welfare - yet left 100 years of misery in its wake. If developed, utilized, and contracted properly - your homies would be enjoying an additional $Billion a year - but hey it was great that we employed a few while it was being built.

Finally Rex - the fisheries example you use on our collective back - is the one that takes your entire argument and destroys it. You say the Oil Sands have been a savior to Newfoundland and Labrador after the shut-down of the fisheries in the 1990's. You use the worst man-made environmental disaster on our planet (the loss of the ground stocks) to show how great it is that we have yet another environment to potentially destroy. Perfect Rex - that is very sound judgement.

On this issue of the Oil Sands preventing thousands of divorces, thousands of family break-ups, thousands of people suffering from depression, and worse outcomes - here you are most ignorant.

There have been too many divorces - thousands of family break-ups, significant cases of depression and worse because they had to move away from Newfoundland and Labrador. Rex - people had to leave their homes - now worthless - as the community essentially died - people left their aging parents to the life of a private or public care home as they were not here to care for them (as is the rural way), children had one parent as many could not afford to move the family, and yes oh yes there was and is depression abound. That's not to mention how many of our people have lost their young lives tragically either on the job or on the great Canadian highway on their way to the job. These children who have left with their parents are lost to us as is their employable futures and the tax base.

As we enter into an aging demographic and retiring Newfoundlanders and Labradorians migrate home to live out their lives - they leave all their productive tax in Alberta.

Maybe it's time to move home Rex - get assimilated - and then rewrite this column.

Now that you have found the oil sands - keep looking to find the tar sands.