According to the original source the majority of Albertans do not see it that way (only 44% think she’s a traitor), which are realistically the voices who matter the most in getting her out of power.
Things are weird out here. People by and large don’t really like what Smith is doing, but they elected her to fight Trudeau, not help Alberta.
For some reason, they can’t see that we can’t just keep going to the oilsands for infinite money. I thought things were finally getting better when we elected the NDP that one time, but it turns out that unless you can fix Alberta’s substantial problems overnight, convincing the Conservative voter base that you aren’t the second coming of Stalin is impossible.
With Trump’s new port fees on LNG,oil, coal and container ships, along with The Saudis and OPEC+ absolutely demolishing oil prices it would be extremely stupid to waste money on developing the oilsands right now. There’s no money to be made.
I think that the scale of investment involved in oil sands development necessitates MUCH longer range planning than relatively short political cycles.
There’s may be something to be said maximizing CAPEX when the commodity pricing sucks. Spending pullback from the more boom/bust centric conventional/frac operators reduces competition for trades and key manufacturers.
I think the differentiator at the moment is the lack of predictability. Normally your financial models only have to factor in modest price uncertainty. Right now the tariffs change so quickly that who knows what things will cost. I don’t have a clue how you price a project in this environment. I pitty project managers.
Steel plate and pipe is easy to source domestically - especially when the US buyers aren’t tying up Evraz capacity. Big inch valves would start to get tricky I think - but it’s been over a decade since I was working in that space. Coatings are Dupont and 3M for buried assets - so lots of risk exposure there.
Personally, if I operated any major facilities (fractionation/refineries) I’d be looking at what turnaround/maintenance work I could be pulling forward right now. When oil’s booming, you don’t want to shut down your money machine to do repairs.
Now might be the best time to build our own refineries.
This is what I don’t get about Alberta. They’ve always been talking about the oil sands and exploiting their resources, yet why are they always satisfied with simply pumping and piping? Why has there never been a voice for making local refineries so that they can jack up the prices of their tar sands? Why have they been satisfied being used like a third world country when they’re always being compared to Texas, that has most of the US’s refineries. Why are they happy feeding Texan refineries instead of selling refined products to the entire world at several times the current prices?
Hell, not only raising export prices, but adding a massive number of local jobs as well, instead of giving away such easy jobs to a foreign country? It’s not like you need an army of university graduates to operate a a refinery. Most of the jobs there only require a slightly higher level of education as for the tar sands.
I kinda like pet-chem if we’re going to do more upgrading - and sure enough we’re seeing activity in the space.
Refineries produce gasoline (for old cars), diesel (for old trucks), and oils (there’s alternatives). Refineries are for antiquated tech that were trying to phase out IMO.
Upgrading light ends (methane, ethane, propane, etc) are what I’d be investing in if I was looking at fossil fuels investment. We have LOTS of gas plants sweetening and fractionating that stuff so the product streams are there and the emissions intensity of that end is WAY better than liquids.
Dow is building a huge ethane cracker to produce polyethylene. IPL has the Heartland petrochemical complex that’s going to be soaking up immense amounts of propane to produce polypropylene pellets. I haven’t checked what Nova is up to lately, but I can promise you they’re looking to grow in the space.
I don’t love polymers, but we COULD recycle it if we were smart and unlike combustion where everything ends up in the atmosphere, a landfill full of plastic is actually carbon sequestration when you think about it.
Methane (natural gas) is worth approximately nothing at the moment, but coastal LNG exports will help China et al. ween off coal while they continue to build out renewables and Europe needs LNG for similar reasons and timescales.
Source - random internet person
I fully agree that less oil in general is a good thing, and shifting from heavy oils to lighter oils is also a good thing. But if we’re going to be extracting and using something anyway, I think processing it ourselves is an improvement as well, and it will somewhat help keep the money AB & SK spend on oil in Canada and reduce our dependence on long pipelines and foreign industry.
Reducing our dependence on oil in the first place would definitely be better, but if we only take the best steps we won’t get anywhere.
While the substance in the sands is neither tar nor oil, I still insist on calling it the Athabasca tar sands, because oil companies want so badly for me to stop calling it the tar sands.
44% is way more that i would have thought for Alberta more around 10%
44 is about the percentage of the people who voted NDP last election. It shouldn’t be that surprising.
Well that stat is also surprising to me.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Alberta_general_election
Yeah, literally 44.05 percent of people went for the NDP.
I live and work downtown Calgary in an O&G related field (emissions reduction analysis - it’s a frustrating job). I listen to a LOT of anti-Smith diatribes. The UCP mostly gets elected by rural ridings. They have about half of Calgary, and I don’t know why they even bother running candidates in Edmonton.
There’s a lot similarities to BC actually - BC votes conservative (whatever they call themselves) most places outside of Vancouver and Victoria.
There’s even recall campaign talk in Calgary at the moment because people are hoping to force an early election to try and force the UCP out. (abresistance.ca for any Calgary homies who are interested in getting involved)
TBF all the numbers seem low. Alberta’s isn’t even the lowest.
Hicks are generally unintelligent
It’s been my personal experience that dumbasses are just more notable in the country than cities. The overall population per square mile is so much less that you see far fewer people overall, but unless you know where the smart cookies are, you’ll miss their homes/workshops entirely - it only seems like there are more of them because the brainiacs run solo or congregate in smaller groups. IMO there aren’t just more idiots in cities per se, just that they congregate more noticeably to the point where it sort of throws off the perception of average capacity… does that make sense?
When smart people move out to the boonies, it’s to get away from all people. When dumb people move out to the boonies, it’s to get away from smart people and their annoying rules. They still want to hang out with other people and do dumb people stuff with them. So you don’t really see smart people out in the boonies, but they are there, just inside.
Yes, that tracks. Check the outbuilding at the back of the property for some guy with a pencil tucked behind his ear while rebuilding a fried 50,000W amplifier for the nearest sports area.
Intelligence can be measured in many ways.
And city-iots are self idolizing assholes.
Sure but they’re still right. Access to education or even basic resources for people in rural communities is a serious problem in pretty much every country, even to the extent that “uneducated hicks” have essentially been weaponized in the US. The rural/urban divide is almost entirely manufactured, but one group sure seems to spend a great deal of their time trying to fix the fundemental systemic inequalities forced onto the other group… and the other group overwhelmingly hates them for it.
The rural/urban divide is almost entirely manufactured
Looking at the downvotes one side certainty is “winning”
but one group sure seems to spend a great deal of their time trying to fix the fundemental systemic inequalities forced onto the other group.
There’s the self idolizing part. If rural areas get thought of at all by urbanites it’s usually only to to think what land they can buy. The “fundamental systemic inequalities” that would help us poor unintelligent rubes are things like hospitals and public transit.
The “fundamental systemic inequalities” that would help us poor unintelligent rubes are things like hospitals and public transit.
Uh, yeah, I know. Everyone knows, in fact. Thats why healthcare reform and expansions to public transit are two of the absolute cornerstones of liberal policy. You’re really all about this victim mindset but it’s clear you’ve just been convinced that’s the rational conclusion, you haven’t arrived at that conclusion by weighing up the evidence or anything.
I’d argue that education funding and expansion of social services are two more super critical things that have been yanked out from under rural communities, but it’s not like it’s literally my job to answer questions like “how can we improve food security for underserved communities” or “how specifically is rural healthcare access inadequate” or anything.
But lucky for you, nothing you’re saying here really matters! We’re going to keep trying to address the systemic problems you’ve been saddled with no matter how bitter and blind to your own behavior you are! Rejoice, rural person! Venerate urbanism! Celebrate the boons we give you!
Pretty funny you could write all that thinking it somehow proves that you are not a self idolizing asshole.
(Well done, you got the joke!)
Fair point, but the ones who make good and come home to start their careers & businesses aren’t exactly thin on the ground either. I’d argue that smart people in the country are more easily over-mustered by the volume of morons with the lower overall crowd counts way out in the country. You’re certainly not going to see assemblies of brainiacs, even small ones of 1 doz. very often in towns/hamlets/villages of fewer than 1000 people. The smart ones are there, but maybe keeping themselves occupied out from underfoot of the rowdies?
Did you come up with that all on your own?!
glad to see you saw the troll. it probably would have taken a few more comments for me.
She reeks of treason.
this is a whole new crime.
Removed by mod
okay, gramps. don’t give yourself skin failure.
dani smith is a traitorous cunt!
She is a Treason weasel… along with PeePee.
