Booming U.S. oil and gas elbowing out Alberta�s crude

Reason #20 on why we need a more diverse customer base.

Myself, I want cheap gas myself before we start sending most of it overseas (if that's what you're talking about).

If they can't give me the one, why should I support them on the other.

Roundabout, yes. I think we should refine it here, and ship materials like petrochemicals and refined gas to the East and Asia. We shouldn't be exporting raw product to be refined elsewhere, only to re-import finished products made from that oil or bitumen.

I know Lemmy would tell me why I'm wrong, but I think that the loss of manufacturing in general is reducing our quality of life. Cheap crap from China isn't worth kids getting out of school and being unemployed unless they get a McJob.

Forgive me, I was just laughing at the thought of anyone building an oil refinery anywhere in Canada!

There'd be twenty years of environmental reviews and lawsuits followed by protests over the routing of pipelines and rail routes followed by endless acts of extortion by your own government and the First Nations. Any company trying to do this would be bankrupted before they ever got approval to turn a shovel full of dirt.

In short, there will never be a new Canadian refinery.

Yeah, well remember Lemmy was telling us last summer how there'd never be any ice on the great lakes again for him to fish through, so he's off my reference list.

Build it in Alberta in an already industrial zoned area and there shouldn't be a problem at all. Both the feds and province would rubber stamp it in a heartbeat. The Natives and enviro-dicks wouldn't be able to do anything to stop it. The problem is the oil companies. They don't want to build a new one because of the cost Of construction and because they want Alberta to be a supplier of raw product while already existing facilities in the US get to finish it off. Unless of course the governments built it because to the companies the good ol' corporate game of socialized taxpayer losses in exchange for low-tax high-profit private gain is still A-OK with the masters of the universe.

No, the oil companies have simply found it easier to get permits to refit existing refineries than to build new ones.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/on- ... -has-grown

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/23 ... 39701.html

Actually, corporations had planned to build a couple new ones here in Alberta in the Industrial Heartland before oil dropped from $147/barrel to about $70/barrel five years ago.

At least one is still in the works - the North West Redwater Partnership, a 150,000 barrel/day bitumen upgrader and diesel refinery that broke ground in 2013.

http://www.industrialheartland.com/inde ... Itemid=160

The point being that the interests of the companies and the national interest to expand a customer base for the product are not necessarily coincidental. We"ve been in an age, probably for well over thirty years now, where corporate interests are severed from long term national interests. The companies will do it if someone else (i.e. the taxpayer) pays the bill for them.

No, the oil companies have simply found it cheaper to get permits to refit existing refineries than to build new ones.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/on- ... -has-grown

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/23 ... 39701.html

Fixed it for you...

That's one of the biggest reasons they want Keystone XL so badly - they've refitted several Gulf Coast refineries to process bitumen and without it, that investment is wasted.

Being in the industry, you probably already know this, but for everyone else: Part of the last royalty deal that Premier Stelmach brought in was that for not increasing the royalty rate to 'fair market' value, companies would instead hold bitumen for Alberta to refine for itself. The Redwater Partnership is the facility where the 'royalty bitumen' will be processed. All profits will be Government Revenue.

Dr C.,

You wouldn't happen to know if Redwater will be restricted to 150,000 bbl/day, do you?

Would be pretty awesome if Canada invested in it and turned it into something along the lines of Garryville...500,000+ bbl/day...damn near cover 1/4 of Canada's domestic need while filling Canadian coffers.

I haven't seen any regulatory notices changing that parameter.

https://www.nwrpartnership.com/sites/de ... 202012.pdf

Doesn't mean there won't be changes, but I think they'd have to have a completely new environmental assessment before that happened.

But, yea, it would be cool! Perhaps the pump price of gas would come down, finally!