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The UCP Alberta Government - Threatens to Turn off Oil Taps


DonLever

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2 hours ago, Ryan Strome said:

I'm also not a fan of Kenney but I do support some of his ideas.

 

-Lowering the corporate tax rate to 8%

-Wage cuts to all mla's

-Scrapping the carbon tax and taking Jt to court on the dictatorial carbon tax

-At least having a plan to retun to a balanced buget.

 

I'm guessing since you support scrapping the carbon tax, you would be in favour of Fordian politics in Toronto, who is doing the same thing.

 

What does scrapping the carbon tax and taking JT to court over the tax do anything?

 

Climate is still getting &^@#ed - and I do believe this squabble does nothing to solve the root issue - climate change. We need to come up with a better strategy of reducing carbon emissions.

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History is going to repeat itself. Just like all the old dinosaur fossils in Alberta. Alberta will be an oilsands byproduct wasteland, and no one will want to clean it up. 

But hey as long there's a profit to be made in the short term who cares right? 

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UCP will get elected.

By the time their term is up oil might be a strong industry again (but it will have little to do with government)

UCP will take full credit for oil turn around and get re-elected.

 

I don't align with most NDP ideologies but I like Notley. For NDP to survive in AB they have to act a bit more like PCs. I can live with that.

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4 hours ago, Ryan Strome said:

And a carbon tax does nothing to solve that.

Far too long in Alberta companies have been able to develop with little onus or emphasis on taking them to court or penalizing them for simply walking away when the wells weren't profitable.

 

Economists, experts and long term data from provinces and nations with a carbon tax disagree with you.  But....what do they know 

 

Simply google carbon taxes work and you'll get a mountain of data.  You can also google carbon taxes don't work.  And you'll get a mountain of opinion.  But in my experience I prefer to believe in experts, data and long term reports over opinion.  Like believing in my own eyes instead of rhetoric.  Or not putting my faith in sky fairies when something good or bad happens

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11 hours ago, Ghostsof1915 said:

History is going to repeat itself. Just like all the old dinosaur fossils in Alberta. Alberta will be an oilsands byproduct wasteland, and no one will want to clean it up. 

But hey as long there's a profit to be made in the short term who cares right? 

Isn't BC mining industry polluting areas and not cleaning it up just leaving it?

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On 3/20/2019 at 10:45 AM, Warhippy said:

Far too long in Alberta companies have been able to develop with little onus or emphasis on taking them to court or penalizing them for simply walking away when the wells weren't profitable.

 

Economists, experts and long term data from provinces and nations with a carbon tax disagree with you.  But....what do they know 

 

Simply google carbon taxes work and you'll get a mountain of data.  You can also google carbon taxes don't work.  And you'll get a mountain of opinion.  But in my experience I prefer to believe in experts, data and long term reports over opinion.  Like believing in my own eyes instead of rhetoric.  Or not putting my faith in sky fairies when something good or bad happens

 

On 3/20/2019 at 11:47 AM, Tortorella's Rant said:

Carbon tax isn't even allocated towards green projects. The government taking your money and stuffing it in their coffers. It's general tax revenue nothing more. Any other claim is blatant dishonesty and partisan hackery, or ignorance. 

If the NDP wanted to really flip the cons they could take that money and use it to pay for (some) orphan well site reclamation. It takes a lot of work and different groups of people to reclaim a well site and it could be a great source of quality jobs if there was the money to pay for it. There are a lot of farmers and ranchers that would love to have their land back.

 

https://www.producer.com/2018/03/orphan-wells-albertas-47-billion-problem/

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56 minutes ago, otherwise said:

 

If the NDP wanted to really flip the cons they could take that money and use it to pay for (some) orphan well site reclamation. It takes a lot of work and different groups of people to reclaim a well site and it could be a great source of quality jobs if there was the money to pay for it. There are a lot of farmers and ranchers that would love to have their land back.

 

https://www.producer.com/2018/03/orphan-wells-albertas-47-billion-problem/

I don't argue that at all.  But the fundamental issue with that proposition is the taxpayers are still paying for the polluters.

 

That's socialism of the highest and most hypocritical order.  Taxpayers paying for corporate failings and....oh wait

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1 hour ago, otherwise said:

 

If the NDP wanted to really flip the cons they could take that money and use it to pay for (some) orphan well site reclamation. It takes a lot of work and different groups of people to reclaim a well site and it could be a great source of quality jobs if there was the money to pay for it. There are a lot of farmers and ranchers that would love to have their land back.

 

https://www.producer.com/2018/03/orphan-wells-albertas-47-billion-problem/

There are quite a few companies that do reclamation.

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3 hours ago, Warhippy said:

I don't argue that at all.  But the fundamental issue with that proposition is the taxpayers are still paying for the polluters.

 

That's socialism of the highest and most hypocritical order.  Taxpayers paying for corporate failings and....oh wait

Well reclamation is an issue for who? Whiny farmers who are worried about getting 999,999 bushels instead of 1,000,000. Give me a break. Lets spend a 100 billion dollars to solve a non problem to make Putin and US oil happy. How about spending 1 billion to clean up effluent going into the Salish sea to save the salmon and the whales? Oh. i forgot. That must the Tar Sands agian.

image.png.6024f9433d66f26591eac58a42accb60.png

 

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10 hours ago, The Goose said:

Well reclamation is an issue for who? Whiny farmers who are worried about getting 999,999 bushels instead of 1,000,000. Give me a break. Lets spend a 100 billion dollars to solve a non problem to make Putin and US oil happy. How about spending 1 billion to clean up effluent going into the Salish sea to save the salmon and the whales? Oh. i forgot. That must the Tar Sands agian.

image.png.6024f9433d66f26591eac58a42accb60.png

 

Well...someone hit the sauce a shade early.  You know what the device in that field is?  do you know what a real abandoned reclamation site looks like?  Are you aware that there's been money earmarked for a sewage treatment centre for the Greater Victoria area now for a long while but municipalities keep screwing the province over on where it should go?

 

Until you know what you're actually talking about.  Shhhhhh

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1 minute ago, Warhippy said:

Well...someone hit the sauce a shade early.  You know what the device in that field is?  do you know what a real abandoned reclamation site looks like?  Are you aware that there's been money earmarked for a sewage treatment centre for the Greater Victoria area now for a long while but municipalities keep screwing the province over on where it should go?

 

Until you know what you're actually talking about.  Shhhhhh

lol.  true.

 

That was the picture the Narwhale used in their article, so i thought it would suffice. The effluent problems killing the coast are likely from the lower mainland. Plenty to fix there.

 

 

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1 hour ago, The Goose said:

lol.  true.

 

That was the picture the Narwhale used in their article, so i thought it would suffice. The effluent problems killing the coast are likely from the lower mainland. Plenty to fix there.

 

 

lol that's fair, I woke up ugly hungover myself.  Kinda feel sorry for my wife dealing with me.

 

The issue I have with the effluent argument in BC is that there is no less than 30+ communities in Canada that are very guilty of just that including a few in Alberta.  But the orphaned wells issues are wholly the problems of Saskatchewan and Alberta right now and as it stands the people are on the hook for them after decades of looking the other way and that aint right.

 

Plus, the scope of the orphaned wells and abandoned reclamation sites is enormous.  People think they're just well heads or capped valves but in some cases it's entire acres of land just left alone.  Degrading caps holding back scary amounts of H2s.  I think no matter who is leading Alberta in the future this will be an issue that needs serious addressing

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Regarding orphaned wells/mines in western Canada.  Here's a statement from Cannings.  The MP from my area.  Guys a gem

 

 

COLUMN 

The BC Oil and Gas Commission recently revealed some concerning figures about abandoned oil and gas wells in British Columbia.  In one example, Ranch Energy recently declared bankruptcy, leaving up to 500 abandoned wells in care of the Commission.  Much of the cost to clean up those sites will likely fall on the shoulders of the BC taxpayer, and could be as much as $90 million for Ranch Energy’s wells alone.

However, the problem is much bigger than that. There are over 122,000 inactive wells across western Canada, and most have absolutely no prospect of ever operating again.  In BC, the provincial government is moving to a system of levies on active wells, designed to raise about $10 million per year to cover clean-up costs of the orphaned wells.  This may fall well short of what is needed.
At the end of January, a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Redwater case provided some good news on this front.  Lower courts in Alberta had ruled that the assets of a bankrupt resource company must be disbursed to banks and other creditors before being used for obligatory reclamation work on abandoned wells.  But the Supreme Court found otherwise. As Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Wagner wrote in the decision, “Bankruptcy is not a licence to ignore rules.” 

This issue goes beyond abandoned oil and gas wells to mines and other resource extraction operations. 

It has been estimated that there are over 1,800 abandoned mines in BC that have little possibility of clean-up by the companies that created them. This is the legacy of a time when there were few laws requiring financial securities to guarantee mine clean-up costs. BC was one of the first to bring in such laws, but prior to 1969 there were no reclamation securities required. 

In Canada's northern territories the federal government has had to cover these clean-up costs, meaning our taxes are often used to deal with someone else's mess. 

The Faro Mine in Yukon was abandoned 20 years ago. It is a 25-square-km moonscape of toxic waste, once the largest open pit lead-zinc mine in the world. Canadians have already spent about $300 million maintaining the site since it was abandoned, and the clean-up has barely begun. It is estimated Canadians will have to pay a billion dollars to completely remediate this mess.

At Giant Mine outside Yellowknife there are massive sealed storage chambers containing a total of 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide. The site’s 950-hectare footprint is also highly contaminated with arsenic and other toxins. The clean-up has already cost close to a billion dollars and each year costs an additional $2 million. Clean-up involves freezing the arsenic for eternity.

And eternity, as Woody Allen said, "is a long time, especially toward the end." 

Natural resources are the backbone of the Canadian economy, and most resource companies act responsibly, providing good jobs for Canadians and cleaning up their operations afterwards. 

Future generations of Canadians must not be burdened by the environmental damage caused by a few corporations who reap tremendous profits from the extraction of our shared resources, then walk away from the mess. We need to have regulatory systems at both the provincial and federal levels that uphold the polluter-pay principle, so that we all benefit from the sale of our natural resources.

Richard Cannings, MP
South Okanagan-West Kootenay

 

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