Federal Government Approves Kinder Morgan and Line 3

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[QUOTE="Eastmon, post:
It's always a risk/reward ratio.[/QUOTE]
The risk involved with "Raw Bitumen" will never be worth the reward because there is no way to clean up the spill in the water and after the pipe is laid not many jobs either. Refine it at source and we'll have to put up with it. The risk will be lower and as a reward we get the highest value for our finite product.
 
Oil refineries are highly automated continuous-process chemical plants. They're physically large but there aren't that many operator jobs involved. Maintenance and shutdowns are the main uses of labour. The international oil industry mostly ships unrefined crude so there is little access to transport suitable for refined petro products. The "refine it here" concept is a dead end street.
 
sly_karma said:
Yes, huge oil tankers have been plying our waters for 60 years already, and no, there have been no serious incidents yet. But just one single major spill would cause untold havoc on our coast. Most of the heavy fractions would sink to the bottom, releasing hydrocarbons into the environment for decades.
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I don't have any issues with the land portion of this project but the loading terminal and the safety of marine transportation is a very serious concern. It doesn't happen very often but if it only happens once, and only once, that's all that it takes to make our local ecosystem a mess for decades. My liberal MP wrote a letter to the federal minister of natural resources a few weeks ago and stressed the concerns of his constituents. This decision has shown all of us how much they care about the needs and wants of the BC coastal people. I'm going to write a letter to my MP to voice my concerns and provide some high level short term and long term alternatives. talking in isolation on the Internet forums and chat rooms is not going to mitigate the risks.

http://rmckinnon.liberal.ca/wp-cont...Carr-re-Trans-Mountain-Pipeline-Expansion.pdf
 
sly_karma said:
Oil refineries are highly automated continuous-process chemical plants. They're physically large but there aren't that many operator jobs involved. Maintenance and shutdowns are the main uses of labour. The international oil industry mostly ships unrefined crude so there is little access to transport suitable for refined petro products. The "refine it here" concept is a dead end street.
Click to expand...
"The globalization of the oil sector has increased movement of these products in recent years. Refineries are no longer located predominantly in regions where demand is greatest. The United States, for example, has been refining a growing surplus of diesel fuel that it exports to Europe and Asia." Apparently only the Americans can "refine it here" and then ship to Global markets including Europe and Asia. Why a dead end street for us?
 
Opinion
Kinder Morgan Approval Insults Democracy, Science and Economic Logic
It’s an irrational political decision and affront to Canada’s interests.
xAndrew-Nikiforuk-Bio_square_thumb.jpg.pagespeed.ic.EOz_9g2HVS.jpg
By Andrew Nikiforuk Yesterday | TheTyee.ca
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/11/30/Kinder-Morgan-Insults-Logic/
 
terrin said:
"The globalization of the oil sector has increased movement of these products in recent years. Refineries are no longer located predominantly in regions where demand is greatest. The United States, for example, has been refining a growing surplus of diesel fuel that it exports to Europe and Asia." Apparently only the Americans can "refine it here" and then ship to Global markets including Europe and Asia. Why a dead end street for us?
Click to expand...
Sounds like things are changing and the Americans have found transport for diesel, good to know. They too have more refinery capacity than their domestic market needs. Falling oil consumption is the reality for the foreseeable future in OECD countries, although gloabl oil demand is projected to expand due to growth in India and China.
 
sly_karma said:
Adding more VLCCs to that already crowded mix isn't to be taken lightly. Thirdly, Burrard Inlet is a very confined space for VLCCs to operate. The Second Narrows has a navigable channel barely 150 m wide and can generate currents of up to 6 kn.
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Just want to mention there will be no ULCCs or VLCCs entering Vancouver Harbour. Our port is incapable of receiving massive tankers due to the draft, air draft, and channel width constraints of first and second narrows. The largest tankers we will see are just slightly bigger than Panamax ships.
Sorry to geek out on you, just saying.
 
sly_karma said:
Oil refineries are highly automated continuous-process chemical plants. They're physically large but there aren't that many operator jobs involved. Maintenance and shutdowns are the main uses of labour. The international oil industry mostly ships unrefined crude so there is little access to transport suitable for refined petro products. The "refine it here" concept is a dead end street.
Click to expand...
Can't disagree but the same arguments can be made for any raw material. Why mill logs here if the US or the Far East has excess capacity and a better marketing infrastructure system already in place? I guess the way I look at it is that if we follow that thought process we will never develop a manufacturing economy but be condemned to shipping raw materials out of our country and importing the finished product back.

As a country we were lazy and looked for a quick buck! By shipping our unfinished resources out of the country we never had to develop a means to finish the product nor the infrastructure to move it to market.

You are probably right however, as far as oil goes that ship has sailed! Pun intended.
 
ziggy said:
Can't disagree but the same arguments can be made for any raw material. Why mill logs here if the US or the Far East has excess capacity and a better marketing infrastructure system already in place? I guess the way I look at it is that if we follow that thought process we will never develop a manufacturing economy but be condemned to shipping raw materials out of our country and importing the finished product back.

As a country we were lazy and looked for a quick buck! By shipping our unfinished resources out of the country we never had to develop a means to finish the product nor the infrastructure to move it to market.

You are probably right however, as far as oil goes that ship has sailed! Pun intended.
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There's a time for raw log sales and a time to restrict them. In the period after the GFC, raw log sales to Asia kept Canadian loggers working. Milling lumber at normal levels was pointless because the US home construction industry had all but collapsed. Was it wrong to find alternate outlets for those logs? Of course not, it kept the forest workers working. Today we have the opposite situation, lumber prices are high because of strong demand from the north american construction boom, and profit margins are good because of the sales in USD/expenses in CAD leverage. How many logs are going offshore unprocessed? Precious few, because there's better money to be made milling them here. As well, fibre supply is limited due to reductions in the annual allowable cut to offset the "use it or lose it" overcutting permitted during the pine beetle infestation. That's been the cause of several recent sawmill closures - the mill had insufficient log supply attached, and there is excess milling capacity in BC.

The forest industry has quite a few export options available and they exercise them according to market conditions and prices. Export of oil from western Canada reserves has considerably fewer options, that's why I consider the two industries to be a poor example for comparison.
 
problem is that our 'elected' politicians are like puppets in the hands of big corporations. They have 4 years on average to make the most out of their 'power' otherwise they'll have to live like ordinary working class citizens. I like to see how Gordon Campbell and S. Harper are making it these days. Working 8-5, 5 days/week like average citizen and trying to make the ends meet?? I doubt it...
 
BCRingo said:
problem is that our 'elected' politicians are like puppets in the hands of big corporations. They have 4 years on average to make the most out of their 'power' otherwise they'll have to live like ordinary working class citizens. I like to see how Gordon Campbell and S. Harper are making it these days. Working 8-5, 5 days/week like average citizen and trying to make the ends meet?? I doubt it...
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Lawyers, BCR.

Harper is now employed as a lawyer working on trade deals - giving our governance away - besides collecting a pretty nice retirement package ($48,000 a year, starting in 2026, when he turns 67; plus another $121,000 to $148,000 a year from his MP’s pension) from the Parliament that the ordinary average working Joe would never get:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stephen-harper-sets-up-corporation-1.3601177
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/08/26/stephen-harper-to-resign-as-mp-today.html

Campbell? besides collecting his pension - up until this new Federal Liberal government - he was appointed as "high commissioner to the United Kingdom". Prob. was a pretty cushy gig: http://vancouversun.com/news/politics/gordon-campbell-being-replaced-as-u-k-high-commissioner
 
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agentaqua said:
Lawyers, BCR.

Harper is now employed as a lawyer working on trade deals - giving our governance away
Click to expand...

You couldn't say it any better. We pay them through our taxes to define and implement good laws to protect our rights and then when their time is up they sell their "expertise" to big corporations on how to bypass those laws and screw the nation.
And then they all paint a rosy picture for us before each election and we give them our votes and they return the favor by supporting the cycle of corruption. it's just lipstick on a pig.
 
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sly_karma said:
There's a time for raw log sales and a time to restrict them. In the period after the GFC, raw log sales to Asia kept Canadian loggers working. Milling lumber at normal levels was pointless because the US home construction industry had all but collapsed. Was it wrong to find alternate outlets for those logs? Of course not, it kept the forest workers working. Today we have the opposite situation, lumber prices are high because of strong demand from the north american construction boom, and profit margins are good because of the sales in USD/expenses in CAD leverage. How many logs are going offshore unprocessed? Precious few, because there's better money to be made milling them here. As well, fibre supply is limited due to reductions in the annual allowable cut to offset the "use it or lose it" overcutting permitted during the pine beetle infestation. That's been the cause of several recent sawmill closures - the mill had insufficient log supply attached, and there is excess milling capacity in BC.

The forest industry has quite a few export options available and they exercise them according to market conditions and prices. Export of oil from western Canada reserves has considerably fewer options, that's why I consider the two industries to be a poor example for comparison.
Click to expand...

According to the article below millions of cubic metres of raw logs are being exported and the number has been growing since 2000? To say exporting the logs to Asia kept people working is no doubt true, the question is were those people mostly in Asia or Canada? Surely we can mill lumber here as well as they can over there? If the end game was finished lumber, we should have been selling that, not the logs.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/logs+lumber+topic+East+Asian+trade+mission/10271459/story.html
 
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