A Tip of the hat from The Straight Goods and the Powell River Persuader to the BC Government..
It`s still early in the process and of course Stephen Treason Harper and his trained seal cabinet can still attempt to ram this project through, I and all British Columbian`s would feel beeter if the province also formerally ended the joint equivalency agreement with Ottawa..
We won`t let our guard down, no matters what games these politicians play we still have First Nations vowing to tie Enbridge up in knots in our courts for years, maybe decades..
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“(Enbridge Northern Gateway) has presented little evidence about how it will respond in the event of a spill,” the province wrote in its submission to the Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel.
“Put another way, it is not clear from the evidence that NG (Northern Gateway) will in fact be able to respond effectively to spills either from the pipeline itself, or from tankers transporting diluted Bitumen from the proposed Kitimat terminal.”
The strongly worded submission made clear the B.C. government believes the company has yet to lay out how it would respond to a catastrophic spill – something it said is particularly important here.
“The project before JRP (Joint Review Panel) is not a typical pipeline. For example: the behavior in water of the material to be transported is incompletely understood; the terrain the pipeline would cross is not only remote, it is in many places extremely difficult to access; the impact of spills into pristine river environments would be profound,” the province wrote.
“In these particular and unique circumstances, NG should not be granted a certificate on the basis of a promise to do more study and planning once the certificate is granted. The standard in this particular case must be higher,” it added.
“’Trust me’ is not good enough in this case.”
The rejection is a major hurdle for the multi-billion dollar pipeline project, and especially for its ability to gain approval from the Joint Review Panel.
Environment Minister Terry Lake said the submission is the culmination of series of concerns that have been identified by the government throughout the process.
“What we are saying is that at this time, from what we’ve seen – both at the hearing and in the draft conditions that the National Energy Board produced -- that it simply is insufficient for us to think it should go forward,” he said in an interview Friday.
“When you look at the terrain the pipeline crosses, there are some places that are nearly inaccessible so the company was unable to give us adequate detail about how they would respond to a spill in some of these locations,” he continued.
“When we get on the marine environment there’s a lot of questions about the beahviour of this product in cold marine environments and a recognition that more research needs to be done on whether this material would float or whether it would sink, because obviously that makes a difference in terms of any potential spill and how it would be dealt with.”
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More good news making this project unlikely is the long-term world recession, Europe is reporting out that they have new unemployment highs, American data also shows consumers are not spending, not traveling and China itself is in both an economic slowdown and unemployment nightmare..
Over 4 million graduates in China this year, high-skilled graduates that are being offered the wages of low-skilled factory workers(if their lucky), millions of super-educated Chinese graduates with bleak prospects..
The New York Times did a good piece on this topic..
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"It is a remarkable achievement, yet for a government fixated on stability such figures are also a cause for concern. The economy, despite its robust growth, does not generate enough good professional jobs to absorb the influx of highly educated young adults. And many of them bear the inflated expectations of their parents, who emptied their bank accounts to buy them the good life that a higher education is presumed to guarantee.
“College essentially provided them with nothing,” said Zhang Ming, a political scientist and vocal critic of China’s education system. “For many young graduates, it’s all about survival. If there was ever an economic crisis, they could be a source of instability.”
In a kind of cruel reversal, China’s old migrant class — uneducated villagers who flocked to factory towns to make goods for export — are now in high demand, with spot labor shortages and tighter government oversight driving up blue-collar wages.
But the supply of those trained in accounting, finance and computer programming now seems limitless, and their value has plunged. Between 2003 and 2009, the average starting salary for migrant laborers grew by nearly 80 percent; during the same period, starting pay for college graduates stayed the same, although their wages actually decreased if inflation is taken into account.
Chinese sociologists have come up with a new term for educated young people who move in search of work like Ms. Liu: the ant tribe. It is a reference to their immense numbers — at least 100,000 in Beijing alone — and to the fact that they often settle into crowded neighborhoods, toiling for wages that would give even low-paid factory workers pause.
“Like ants, they gather in colonies, sometimes underground in basements, and work long and hard,” said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Renmin University in Beijing."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/world/asia/12beijing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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And as stated above, Europe is still in recession and it`s getting worse, much worse, an entire generation is on the verge of being lost, reliant upon food stamps and inheritances, this will result in weak travel numbers, falling energy use and a continued worldwide weakness in all sectors..From The Independent
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Young people are bearing the brunt of Europe’s jobs crisis, it was confirmed, as unemployment across the eurozone soared to a record high.
Nearly one in four 16 to 24-year-olds across the 17 nations in the single currency is now out of work, according to monthly figures published by the EU’s data office, Eurostat.
The latest 95,000 rise in April took the overall jobless count to a record 19.38 million people, or 12.2 per cent, and puts unemployment on course to breach the 20 million mark by the end of the year.
The figures come against the backdrop of a eurozone mired in its longest recession since the launch of the single currency in 1999.
They also prompted fresh criticism of the austerity strategy being pursued by struggling southern European states, with one in four people out of work in Spain and Greece as such measures take their toll.
But young people are suffering the most, with 3.62 million out of work across the single currency bloc – 24.4 per cent of under-25s, a figure up 188,000 on a year earlier.
Well over half of those under 25 in Greece and Spain are not in work, compared to more than 40 per cent in Italy. By contrast in Germany – which has managed until recently to maintain growth despite the wider recession across the eurozone – unemployment stands at a much lower 5.4 per cent and just 7.4 per cent among under-25s.
Tom Rogers, senior economic adviser to the Ernst & Young Eurozone Forecast, warned of a “relentless” rise in youth unemployment. “Youth joblessness at these levels risks permanently entrenched unemployment, lowering the rate of sustainable growth in the future,” he said.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eurozone-in-crisis-one-in-four-youths-is-jobless-as-unemployment-across-17-nations-in-the-single-currency-reaches-record-high-8639167.html
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So what we are talking about is 25% unemployment level in Europe, 15% unemployed in the USA and over 10% in Canada...Asia has tens of millions of unemployed as does India, tens and tens of millions of unemployed graduates with degrees in the sciences, engineering, in accounting, mathematics and every other high-thought industry, well, this will, under a Harper Government be a deathblow for Canadian graduates too, it`s called the temporary foreign worker program, all these highly trained young people searching the world for employment, with facist corporate controlled Governments and millions of vulnerable youth desperate for any wage will result in a wave of corporate abuse, driving both American and Canadian wages lower..
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China Data Confirm Slowdown in Factories
"BEIJING — Growth in the mainland Chinese manufacturing sector
unexpectedly slowed in April as new export orders fell, data released
Wednesday showed, raising fresh doubts about the strength of the economy
after a disappointing first quarter.
The official purchasing
managers’ index fell to 50.6 in April from an 11-month high in March of
50.9. A reading above 50 indicates expansion; below indicates
contraction. Analysts had expected the April reading to be 51.
The reading mirrored a similar decline in a preliminary P.M.I. report last week by the British bank HSBC, suggesting that China’s export engine faces obstacles resulting from the euro zone recession and sluggish U.S. growth."
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Ok, so now you are all wondering what the heck this has to do with Enbridge, with oil or energy in general..
Alberta oil is the most expensive to extract, I have heard many reports that the costs to extract are anywhere from 60$ to 80$ dollars per barrel...
With the world in a recession, with wages falling lower and lower for the masses, with taxes up, inflation and buying power diminishing the outlook for energy and commodities is dim, especially with so many countries now flush with new found energies...
Brent Crude versus WTI oil prices, they are very close to merging at the 85$ range, normally there is a big difference in those markets, Brent crude prices being 10 to 20% higher than western Texas Intermediate, but not now, Brent Crude has fallen to below $100 dollars per barrel with WTI(Canadian oil) at 90$...The difference is still 10% but the margin is falling, with such tight margins in the Alberta oil patch, with the Federal Government taking its share, the Alberta Government taking its share, oil companies and shippers taking their share that doesn`t leave any room for British Columbia to get a share of the oil profits, especially when the middle east, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia and others can extract oil for a mere fraction of the cost Alberta producers can...And with the USA demand falling while production is rising open up huge spare capacity from the middle east and Russia, not to mention the dozens of LNG exporters coming online in the next 2 years, and no, none of those LNG exporters coming online are Canadian or British Columbian...B.C. proposed LNG projects, not one of them have even decided to go forward..
This, as pointed out by many is the problem with being a petro-state, a petro state relying on the vagaries of the energy markets, the energy keeps our dollar higher thus hurting our manufacturers, and when energy prices fall we become a stagnant economy...
And more, economic pundits like Michael Campbell and Michael Levy(idiots) have been blathering about the USA having a strong recovery, it`s bullshit, any job recovery they had and or having is not keeping up with population growth(they need 150,000 new jobs per month to keep up with POP growth) and the jobs recovered are for less money than the ones they replaced, the only recovery in the USA is banks and financial institutes gathering up the $trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve printed, pixels on a computer screen, monies based on nothing, hyper inflation is indeed on its way in America..
Energy whores and the new reality, surplus oil, countries awash in gas and market manipulation, an old line uttered by Spock in the Wrath of Khan movie..
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"
So here`s the inside scoop on energy, the market is fluid, cleaner nuclear power coming online in China, 25 nuclear plants online by 2020, another 40 by 2030..Japan restarting its nuclear program, hundreds of years of energy rich ocean hydrates have not only been discovered but extracted, we have almost every country realizing that they have vast domestic reserves of natural gas, we have dozens of LNG exporting terminals coming online and now we have excess oil production around the world...All this happening while the world is in recession, 25% world unemployment, hundreds of millions of highly skilled young people without jobs and technocracy, automation, robotization, driverless trucks, self-serve banking, tellerless checkouts at grocers, computer operated facilities, fewer and fewer employees required, super mills, fellerbunchers, automasted mines and cheap outsourcing and or here in Canada corporate controlled ball-busting wage killing temporary indentured employee insourcing.
In other words...The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, meaning this, pressure is now on to stop the Alberta Crude from coming online, it may well be beneficial for supply to be limited for the protection of the many, more supply means stagnant pricing, in the near to long term it`s more beneficial to keep supplies tighter, in this case price is more important than volume, especially with the high price of extraction of Alberta tar oil..
For if the price of oil falls to $70 dollars Alberta producers literally lose money selling oil, do you sell 2 million barrels per day at a profit or 5 million barrels a day at a loss?
Smart money says make a good profit on a solid domestic market rather than losing your shirt on a wild-west style flood the market with product..Canada, Alberta can`t compete with the middle east or Russia in the cost-per-barrel-extraction game..
For the good of the entire oil industry including the Alberta tar patch it is better to limit supply, not increase it..
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"
WTI oil price todat at the close....$91.61
Brent Crude at the close...............$100.11
Natural Gas at the close................$3.983
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This is what I described as..."The perfect Storm for Asian Energy Buyers"
Anyhow...I am thrilled that the British Columbia Government has rejected Enbridge, I don`t quite trust them but...But what they said about clean-up of bitumen is on the record, on the record and accessible by First Nations and other opponents of Enbridge...Because the fact of the matter, the Straight Goods on cleaning up diluted bitumen in water is...
It can`t be done, as the Fluvial Geomorphologists have said on the record..
"The technology for cleaning up diluted bitumen in cold moving water, salt or fresh doesn`t exist"
http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2012/10/mr-jones-versus-fluvial-goemorphologist.html
The Straight Goods
Cheers Eyes Wide Open
