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Energy

Did the Environment Minister announce the end of Alberta’s Oil and Gas Industry at COP 27?

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Steven Guilbeault (center) arrested after climbing the CN Tower for a Greenpeace protest on July 16, 2001.

PHOTO BY AARON HARRIS/THE CANADIAN PRESS

News Release From the Alberta Institute

Stop The Federal Cap On Oil And Gas

This week, Environment and Climate Change Minister, Steven Guilbeault, effectively announced the end of Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

In Egypt, at COP27, he announced that his government will cap oil and gas sector emissions from the end of next year, and work to reduce them after that.

Remember, even Justin Trudeau said that no country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.

But that, of course, was before he was Prime Minister.

Radical environmental activist Steven Guilbeault does believe we should leave 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground.

Now, yes, technically, he said he would cap and reduce emissions, not oil and gas production, and some energy companies are confident they can find efficiencies to allow them to continue producing some oil and gas without increasing emissions.

But anyone who’s been in the game long enough has seen the goalposts moved often enough to recognize another goalpost shifting when they see it, and that’s exactly what happened today.

How so?

Well, you would think Minister Guilbeault’s friends in the eco-activist industry – the same people who just a few years ago were calling for this cap on emissions – would be happy about this week’s announcement, wouldn’t you?

But no, these same people who were calling for exactly this policy just a few years ago actually attacked his announcement.

They think that this week’s announcement – the policy they were calling for until recently – is woefully inadequate.

They now want, you guessed it, a cap on production.

They don’t actually care about the level of carbon emissions, they don’t actually care whether emissions go down, they want the amount of oil and gas producedto go down.

This, fellow Albertans, is what Alberta is up against.

The radical eco-activist environmental movement doesn’t want Alberta’s oil and gas industry to be more environmentally friendly, they want Alberta’s oil and gas industry to die.

Meanwhile, having shifted the goalposts a dozen times already – the federal government’s environmental policies are as close to a complete ban on oil and gas as you can get, without actually banning it.

One more goalpost shift, and it will be an outright ban.

The environmental groups are pushing for that last final goalpost shift.

And Albertans are just supposed to trust the federal government that, despite all the previous times they shifted the goalposts, this time they definitely won’t.

The time to stand up for Alberta, and stand up for Albertans is now.

If we don’t do so right now, it might be too late.

In the 1980s, Alberta Premier, Peter Lougheed, fought for – and won – an amendment to the Canadian Constitution – Section 92A – that gave Alberta (and the other Provinces) the exclusive right to explore, develop, conserve, and manage their natural resources.

This amendment made clear that these resources belonged to the Provinces, not the federal government, and Alberta would not have signed on to the Constitution had that clause not been included.

Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault do not believe in that clause in the Canadian Constitution.

They have already ignored it many times, and intend to continue to ignore it.

Justin Trudeau’s view is that Alberta can do whatever we want with our resources… as long as whatever we want to do is exactly what the federal government wants us to do.

And the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change’s view is that we should leave them in the ground – all of them.

Enough is enough.

Now is the time for every Albertan – and the Alberta government – to stand up to the federal government.

If you agree, please join our campaign to stop the federal cap on oil and gas:

Please also consider forwarding this email to your friends, family, colleagues, and every Canadian.

Regards,

The Alberta Institute Team

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Daily Caller

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Resets The Energy Policy Playing Field

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Make no mistake about it, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) signed into law on Friday by President Donald Trump falls neatly in line with the Trump energy and climate agenda. Despite complaints by critics of the deal that Majority Leader John Thune struck with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to soften the bill’s effort to end wind and solar subsidies from the Orwellian 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the OBBBA continues – indeed, accelerates – the Trumpian energy revolution.

Leaders in the oil and gas industry, hamstrung at every opportunity by the Biden presidency, hailed the bill as a chance to move back into some semblance of boom times. Tim Stewart, President of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told his members in a memo that, “For the oil and gas industry, the bill…signals a transformative opportunity to enhance domestic production.”

API CEO Mike Sommers also praised the OBBBA as a positive step for his members: “This historic legislation will help usher in a new era of energy dominance by unlocking opportunities for investment, opening lease sales and expanding access to oil and natural gas development.

While leaders of organizations like those must curb their enthusiasm to some extent in their public statements, they and their peers must be somewhat amazed at how much real substantive change the thin GOP majorities shepherded by Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to stuff into this bill. This industry, historically an easily demonized bogeyman for Democrats and too often ignored by previous Republican presidents, does not experience days as encouraging as July 3 was in the nation’s capital.

Even so, many Republicans, especially in the House, remained unsatisfied by amendments the Senate made to the bill related to IRA subsidy rollbacks. To help Speaker Johnson hold the party’s narrow House majority together, President Trump committed the executive branch to strict enforcement of the new limitations, and promised the White House will work with congressional allies to move a major deregulation package ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

But the OBBBA as passed is chock full of energy and environment-related provisions. FTI Consulting, a business consultancy with a major presence in Washington, DC, published a quick analysis Thursday that projects natural gas and nuclear as the biggest winners as the OBBBA’s impacts begin to take hold across the United States. Interestingly, the analysis also projects battery storage to expand more rapidly over the next five years even as wind and solar suffer from the phasing-out of their IRA subsidies.

The side deal struck by Thune and Murkowski is likely to result in significant new investment into wind and solar facilities as developers strive to get as many projects on the books as possible to meet the “commenced construction” requirement by the July 4, 2026 deadline. The bill’s previous language would have required projects to be placed into service by that time. But even that softer requirement will almost certainly cause a flow of capital investment out of wind and solar once that deadline passes, given the reality that many of their projects are not sustainable without constant flows of government subsidies.

What it all means is that the OBBBA, combined with all the administration’s prior moves to radically shift the direction of federal energy and climate policy away from intermittent energy and electric vehicles back to traditional forms of power generation and internal combustion cars, effectively reset the policy playing field back to 2019, prior to the COVID pandemic. That was a time when America had become as energy independent as it had been in well over half a century and was approaching the “Energy Dominance” position so dear to President Trump’s heart.

Trump’s signing of the OBBBA gives the oil and gas, nuclear, and even the coal industry a chance at a do over. It is an opportunity that comes with great pressure, both from government and the public, to perform. That means rapid expansion in gas power generation unseen in 20 years, rapid development of next generation nuclear, and even a probable chance to permit and build new coal capacity in the near future.

Second chances like this do not come around often. If these great industries fail to grab this brass ring and run with it, it may never come around again. Let’s go, folks.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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Carbon Tax

Canada’s Carbon Tax Is A Disaster For Our Economy And Oil Industry

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Lee Harding exposes the truth behind Canada’s sky-high carbon tax—one that’s hurting our oil industry and driving businesses away. With foreign oil paying next to nothing, Harding argues this policy is putting Canada at a major economic disadvantage. It’s time to rethink this costly approach.

Our sky-high carbon tax places Canadian businesses at a huge disadvantage and is pushing investment overseas

No carbon tax will ever satisfy global-warming advocates, but by most measures, Canada’s carbon tax is already too high.

This unfortunate reality was brought to light by Resource Works, a B.C.-based non-profit research and advocacy organization. In March, one of their papers outlined the disproportionate and damaging effects of Canada’s carbon taxes.

The study found that the average carbon tax among the top 20 oil-exporting nations, excluding Canada, was $0.70 per tonne of carbon emissions in fiscal 2023. With Canada included, that average jumps to $6.77 per tonne.

At least Canada demands the same standards for foreign producers as it does for domestic ones, right? Wrong.

Most of Canada’s oil imports come from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, none of which impose a carbon tax. Only 2.8 per cent of Canada’s oil imports come from the modestly carbon-taxing countries of the U.K. and Colombia.

Canada’s federal consumer carbon tax was $80 per tonne, set to reach $170 by 2030, until Prime Minister Mark Carney reduced it to zero on March 14. However, parallel carbon taxes on industry remain in place and continue to rise.

Resource Works estimates Canada’s effective carbon tax at $58.94 per tonne for fiscal 2023, while foreign oil entering Canada had an effective tax of just $0.30 per tonne.

“This results in a 196-fold disparity, effectively functioning as a domestic tariff against Canadian oil production,” the research memo notes. Forget Donald Trump—Ottawa undermines our country more effectively than anyone else.

Canada is responsible for 1.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions, but the study estimates that Canada paid one-third of all carbon taxes in 2023. Mexico, with nearly the same emissions, paid just $3 billion in carbon taxes for 2023-24, far less than Canada’s $44 billion.

Resource Works also calculated that Canada alone raised the global per-tonne carbon tax average from $1.63 to $2.44. To be Canadian is to be heavily taxed.

Historically, the Canadian dollar and oil and gas investment in Canada tracked the global price of oil, but not anymore. A disconnect began in 2016 when the Trudeau government cancelled the Northern Gateway pipeline and banned tanker traffic on B.C.’s north coast.

The carbon tax was introduced in 2019 at $15 per tonne, a rate that increased annually until this year. The study argues this “economic burden,” not shared by the rest of the world, has placed Canada at “a competitive disadvantage by accelerating capital flight and reinforcing economic headwinds.”

This “erosion of energy-sector investment” has broader economic consequences, including trade balance pressures and increased exchange rate volatility.

According to NASA, Canadian forest fires released 640 million metric tonnes of carbon in 2023, four times the amount from fossil fuel emissions. We should focus on fighting fires, not penalizing our fossil fuel industry.

Carney praised Canada’s carbon tax approach in his 2021 book Value(s), raising questions about how long his reprieve will last. He has suggested raising carbon taxes on industry, which would worsen Canada’s competitive disadvantage.

In contrast, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre argued that extracting and exporting Canadian oil and gas could displace higher-carbon-emitting energy sources elsewhere, helping to reduce global emissions.

This approach makes more sense than imposing disproportionately high tax burdens on Canadians. Taxes won’t save the world.

Lee Harding is a research fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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