Canadian Energy, Bringing More Joy All Over The Planet


Jason Kenney recently launched the Canadian Energy Centre meant to respond rapidly to perceived "misinformation," gather and analyze data, and produce original content, like promotional videos.” Excellent!

So, I watched the promotional video you can find on this link. To say it’s boring is an understatement. It reminds me of the filmstrips we were forced to watch as in high school. The filmstrip would thread through a projector and the teacher or lucky student would advance the roll one slide with each beep of the cassette recording that explained each of the images. After classroom lights were switched off, our heads 
would nod and eyes would close.

 The video/slide show begins with the “Canadian Energy Centre” logo and I’m wondering how many potential viewers know what the “Canadian Energy Centre” is. So, for those who don’t know or need a reminder, myself included, the “Calgary Herald” tells me that it’s the new name for the energy war room that Jason Kenney created to “tell the truth in response to a campaign of lies — of defamation and disinformation based on torqued, dated and incomplete and out-of-context attacks.” And, it’s going to cost the taxpayers a measly $30 million dollars a year!

Following the Canadian Energy Centre the video proceeds with the message, “Canadian Oil and Gas Makes Our World Better” [pause] “It Just Does.” Then there’s another pause I would suggest to emphasis the profundity of this thought. The narrator then announces that “Our energy lifts people out of poverty” but I wonder who are these people? The people of Alberta? The people of Canada? The people of the world? And what is meant by energy? I presume oil but how does oil lift people out of poverty? Does he mean the sale of oil? The jobs provided by the oil industry? Or just oil? And, if I’m not from Alberta, why would I care? If I’m from another province, do transfer payments really lift me out of poverty? And if I’m from another country, why would I care at all?

He continues with [our energy] "increases life expectancy and creates prosperity that allows human
life to flourish. This means more healthy babies, more healthy mothers, more wisdom, more opportunities, and more joy all over the planet.” Does it? None of the declarations are supported with evidence.

If Jason truly wants to respond to a campaign of lies, then evidence should be provided that indigenous communities that live next to the oil sands truly do have more healthy babies and mothers. Statistically speaking, Alberta has higher infant mortality rates than the Canadian average and they’re increasing in communities surrounding the oil sands. So, what does that mean? It means that information must be provided that will contradict those statistics.

More joy
Alberta energy likely provides more opportunities but what kind? Employment? Business? To pollute the environment? If employment opportunities is what is meant, then one could argue any type of energy provides opportunities both in the oil sector and sources of renewable energy. 

Then there's the claim that Alberta energy provides more wisdom? More joy all over the planet? Without context, this just sounds silly. 

An attempt may be made to explain the wisdom declaration because the narrator goes onto say that “we have invented global leading processes like solvent assisted processes that improve modern sacking facilities that already look like this, [picture of a bunch of pipes] dry tailing processes that
Solvent assisted processes
look like this” [picture of lot of dirt being pulled up a conveyor belt and loaded on another conveyor belt]. Then, the narrator says something about reclamation processes that are supposed to turn an open pit mine into a wilderness paradise.

This might be interesting but there’s no context. Why am I supposed to care about solvent assisted processes? What does that mean? Why should I care? I didn’t even know what modern sacking facilities. I Google “modern sacking facilities” and get nothing. I ask my wife if she can decipher what the narrator might be saying beside “sacking.” She doesn’t know. So, I contact my daughter who’s worked as a geophysicist in the oil industry for a number of years and she tells me that the word isn’t sacking, it’s SAGD which stands for steam assisted gravity drainage.

She says that SAGD is a method extracting heavy oil from a kilometer or more beneath the earth. Steam is pumped down the well to make oil less viscous so it’ll flow up. Solvent assisted is the same idea but natural gas is added to the water pumped down the well. Viscosity is decreased but the end product is not as watered down. Less energy is needed to heat the gas than water so the net gain in energy is higher.

She guesses that it’s becoming cheaper for companies to do it this way because water is harder to obtain and these companies have more natural gas than they can handle. Contamination concerns mostly. It’s a lot harder to keep track of natural gas than water, more of an issue if there’s a leak or spill and more dangerous if that happens.

After some investigation on my own part, I discovered that between 2014 and 2030 greenhouse gas emission from the SAGD method of oil extraction is expected to increase by 300 percent. However, if the solvent assisted process is used, there could be an 83% reduction in emissions and considerable savings in capital and supply costs. The potentially dangerous side of using solvents is that the residual solvent that’s left after drilling may leak into underground or subsurface.1

I could analyze the rest of the video but I won’t. I still wonder about the target audience. As far as Jason is concerned, Albertans are already in favour of Canadian energy, so what would be the point of targeting us? How about Canada? The rest of the world? Environmentalists? If that’s the case, I have an idea. Give the funds to the media studies programs in our technical institutes and high schools and have them come up with Canadian Energy Centre videos. They couldn’t be worse.

And at the end of the day, isn't it just numbers that determine investment? 
Table from the Nov. 2, 2019 edition of "The Economist."




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