If the Canadians Can Do It, Why Can't We?
By Vladimir Posted in Canada | Energy — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Baby seal clubbing aside, Canadians in general put American liberals to shame. They embrace socialized medicine and dollar coins, for example.
By and large, Canada is like a big, giant Vermont. (Well, Alberta may be like Wyoming, but still.)
But Canadians seem to get that their lifestyles and their general prosperity have something to do with the judicious development of their mineral resources.
Case in point: This downloadable .pdf file, Canada's Evolving Oil and Gas Industry
What do they know that we don't? In the U.S., 85% of our Outer Continental Shelf is off limits for oil and gas exploration, much less for development and production, and we have a significantly less hostile environment (that is, except for the political environment).
...more...
Canada's offshore oil is mostly offshore Newfoundland, but they have drilled their Arctic shelf and are considering drilling offshore British Columbia. Now, by comparison to Newfoundland, our Gulf of Mexico is a bathtub. The Canadians designed the massive Hibernia oil platform off Newfoundland to withstand the impact of a 6 million ton iceberg, a once-in-10,000-years event.
If I did my metric conversions correctly, the offshore oil and gas fields off Canada's east coast have ultimate reserve recoveries of 2.1 billion barrels of oil and natural gas liquids, plus 4.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That's just in the currently-producing fields.
Hibernia has been producing for over 10 years, and is designed to withstand "an extremely inhospitable environment consisting of rogue waves, fog, icebergs and sea ice, hurricanes, and nor'easter winter storms," a much more hostile environment than any in the Lower 48. Much of the Canadian production moves to shore in shuttle tankers, a transportation method with significantly more risk of spills than pipelines.
American firms pioneered offshore technology right here in our own back yard. Is the prospect of American companies earning a profit so distasteful that we will keep 85% of our OCS permanently under lock and key? What exactly is the source of our self-loathing?
Following is an excerpt from the Canadian offshore pdf. Every single word of it applies to American offshore operations, except that we typically move production in pipelines, not boats.
How is the environment protected during offshore exploration and production?
• No offshore activity can occur without an environmental assessment and regulatory approval.
• Geophysical vessels gradually increase sound levels at the beginning of seismic surveys so fish and mammals can move away from the immediate area.
• The industry uses specialized equipment to reduce the possibility of spills during drilling.
• Offshore facilities are designed for the particular environment where they will be located.
• Low-toxicity drilling fluids are used, and rock cuttings are separated from the fluid before they are disposed at sea.
• Double-hulled and double-bottomed tankers are used to transport crude oil from production facilities.
• Company and government officials continually monitor environmental impacts.
• Restrictions are in place to protect sensitive marine environments.
• Companies work with the Coast Guard, spill-response organizations and other government agencies to prevent spills and prepare for fast and effective response if they occur.
• Sophisticated risk-management methods are used to identify appropriate protective measures.
Actually, several luxuries, but they all stem from the root cause: my guess is that the median IQ among the Canadian population is about one standard deviation higher than that in the United States Congress.
Sheesh, every time I talk with someone in business in Canada, I'm floored by their grasp of what I'm talking about and their articulateness. I've spent a few hundred extra dollars in long distance telephone calls just because I enjoy talking to Canadians on the phone.
They're rigorous about educating their population and they're also rigorous about maintaining their energy independence and they're also rigorous about virtually everything else they do, including granting citizenship to foreign-born citizens.
In my travels and RV meetings with the winter Canadians who come south for about 6 months each year, they are rigorous about having a good time. Drinking and smoking are appreciated vices as well as a good deal of social enjoyment. Tea time is known as wine time to them.
BTW this goes for the French Canadians I have met as well.
but some from BC as well, used to come here to ski at our local ski slope until Air North stopped serving Juneau. They were a hard partying lot! We had a flotilla of Canadian corvettes do a port call a few years ago which left a trail of broken up bars, broken up marriages, and not a few births in its trail.
And they even still manage a bit of Imperial elan; we had a beef with them over fishing or something back in the Knowles Administration and being a Democrat, Knowles wanted to "talk it over" with the BC Prime Minister (or Premier, whichever it is for a Province). The PM agreed, but made his appearance in the Juneau Harbor in an armed Canadian Navy cruiser. Lots of style points that!
In Vino Veritas
draws mostly from the mid section of Canada, not as rough as the Yukoners I suppose, but there was a circle of chairs at their trailers every night and more people walking over. It was a lot of fun.
Now maybe if we could drill for some of our oil and natural gas it would rub off?
... is that it has only one border, and that's with a peaceful and prosperous neighbor. 90 percent of the Canadian population is located within 100 miles of the US border.
In population size, Canada is similar to Poland. Poland has multiple neighbors (seven borders). Some of them are nasty players.
So we need to hand it to the Canadians for being north of the US. No one does it better.
Ain't no such thing as "baby seal clubbing" n/t
generally a northern extension of Ecotopia, develops its natural resources with an enthusiam that offends Greenie sensibilities. If you fly out of SEA on the inland routes northward (usually you go out over Puget Sound), you can tell the moment you cross the WA - BC border. On the WA side, all you see is mountains and trees, there is almost no sign anymore of the once extensive logging operations. Immediately upon crossing into BC, the ground is laced with logging roads, camps, and cut sites. Likewise, there is extensive and prosperous mining development in BC. In fact, development of the Tulsequah Mine in BC up the Taku River from here (Juneau) as aroused the ire of the Greenies here who are convinced that running boats and barges up the Taku will be the end of life as we know it, if not the end of life altogether. Much of the mining here in Alaska is, likewise, done by Canadian rather than American companies; the American companies just won't tolerate the grief and go elsewhere. That isn't new, however, the White Pass and Yukon Railroad (Skagway, AK to Whitehorse, YT) which opened up the Yukon and Alaska to industrial scale gold development was built with Canadian/British capital and expertise, not American.
In Vino Veritas