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Re: ‘Oil’s well in Alberta?’, Jan. 22 Gazette:
Like all matters involving the oilsands, it is difficult to separate flim-flam from science. As an oilsands science and technology educator in the north for 39 years, let me respond to some comments:
• Mr Nikiforuk is not an oilsands researcher but as everybody in Calgary and the energy industry knows is a political activist who has never written any positive comment on Alberta and Canada’s greatest natural resource. His oilsands book was reviewed in 2009 by an energy engineering group at the University of Alberta which found numerous inaccuracies in both fact and opinion.
• He compares Canada and Norway. First of all Norway’s population is 4.9 million. Canada’s is 34 million. When it comes to landmass, Canada is generally known as the world’s second-largest country with almost 10 million square kilometres; Norway is 385,000 sq. km, or one twenty-sixth of Canada. That’s not comparing apples and oranges, that’s comparing apples and pumpkins.
• Let’s look at oil. While Norway produces three million barrels of oil daily, it is extracted from the offshore, a high-risk reservoir with a depleting supply like the Scottish North Sea, now in decline. Its oil quality is valued much less than synthetic crude oil from the oilsands which is priced higher than west Texas. In addition, the oilsands is able to produce 13 different products from its upgraders to meet market demands from industry. Norway’s government-controlled StatOil is investing elsewhere in the world as it knows that offshore oil is very limited. Canada’s production will be five million/day and growing by 2015. We have more than 100 years of supply based on core sampling data. Norway does however have vast deposits of coal.
• Let’s look at jobs. Latest figures show that the oilsands produces jobs for eight of Canada’s provinces. Total jobs directly and indirectly related to the oilsands is currently 255,000, the vast majority permanent, well-paying skilled jobs with long-term benefits. When I first visited Fort Chipewyan in 1967, the aboriginal unemployment rate was 76 per cent; now it is close to 15 per cent and this year I have the privilege of co-hosting the 25th anniversary of the Northern Alberta Aboriginal Business Association that has obtained the remarkable $1 billion of business from the oilsands industry, a real success story. (If this was in Ontario it would appear on The National every night). Norway’s comparable stats according to StatOil are 29,000 jobs.
• In summary, quoting Michael Ignatieff, “ … Alberta’s oilsands are the engine of growth of Canada,” and in addition, based on 2009-10 figures have sent Ottawa $21 billion more to equalization than Alberta has received back. Norway has no equalization obligation.
• The oilsands is now in its 44th year of production. On July 1, 2004, people of 89 nations raised their flags on Canada Day in Fort McMurray, a Canadian success story. Most who write about the oilsands, sadly, have never been there. That’s like a hockey commentator who has never been on the ice.
• And, more than 3,000 of St. Albert citizens have retired (or are working) in or for the oilsands.
Bert MacKay, retired manager, Oilsands Safety and Technology, St. Albert
