Good Sunday Morning!
I am not mentioning the leadership much this morning. Please join before Wednesday to vote! If you have joined the BC NDP (temporarily!), please vote in the Canadian Green leadership race. You can do both.
We are in mid-October with summer-like conditions continuing in British Columbia. We are at level 5 drought. Our normally rainy fall on the Island and the coast has been replaced with a long dry spell. Las Vegas has had more rain.
The drought conditions extend across the US with rivers running low. Just as BC salmon have too little water to swim upstream, so too has shipping slowed on the Mississippi. This gets CBC’s attention. Without a trace of irony, CBC reports that Canadian oilsands dilbit is not getting a good price. The perennial nonsense about how we would get a better price for oilsands dilbit if we could only get it to tidewater is repeated. Last week Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland made the absurd claim to defend completing TMX – “to de-risk the pipeline” and “get our product to market.” She was replying to Mike Morrice’s excellent question, citing the West Coast Environmental Law report by BC economist Robyn Allen that Canada is preparing to write off $17 billion in TMX debt. http://www.wcel.org/media-release/new-report-projects-federal-government-will-forgive-17-billion-trans-mountains-debt
CBC inaccurately reports “It’s generally seen to be of lower quality because of its high sulphur content…” Only partially true. It is of lower quality because it is mostly a solid, tarry bitumen, mixed with other petrochemical by-products (diluent) to make it flow in a pipeline. At its destination, the diluent is removed, the bitumen is then upgraded to synthetic crude, and only then it can be refined. Bitumen is, while expensive to produce, of inherently low value. Now CBC reports it is getting even a lower price because several refineries are offline, and because Western Canada Select is mostly low value dilbit. (Western Canadian Select Explained | Oil Sands Magazine)
CBC also notes another supply chain problem – low water levels. Ignoring any mention of the climate changed-caused thousand year drought, CBC reports:
“…..barges on the Mississippi have been grounded in the past week … causing shipping delays and concerns that more could get stuck. One of the results…is that refineries that rely on the river to bring in crude and ship out product are temporarily losing their appetite for Canadian oil.”
CBC dolefully reports that demand for oil sands bitumen is waning. We have more than enough pipelines, but still, our bitumen is commending less than $60/barrel. Oh! How we wring our hands at declining demand for some of the most carbon intensive oil on the planet.
Fortunately, CBC The Fifth Estate has done a great job exposing the climate fraud of the BC government, permitting logging for wood pellets. https://tveveryday.com/the-fifth-estate-the-big-burn-october-6-2022-series-48-episode-2-on-cbc/
Canada’s mainstream media and most politicians are disconnected from the reality of climate chaos. Help Jonathan and me take the helm of the Green Party to effectively confront climate madness.
In hope,
Elizabeth
