Canada Reaches Peak Oil In 2020

Behind the rosy glasses and good news, tinkling of champagne glasses, report of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, touting the increased growth in the Tar Sands oil production, there lies the ominous Peak Oil prediction. Yep peak oil will begin in Alberta in 2020, about the time that Hubbert predicted. " production from conventional oil wells will decline by half by 2020, to only 550,000 barrels a day, CAPP predicts."

And Alberta is not the only region in Canada facing a decline in conventional gas and oil production. Canada's newest oil supply source, offshore production on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, is forecast to peak at 320,000 barrels per day in 2010 then sink by 50 per cent to 160,000 barrels daily in 2020. Slow exploration, poor drilling luck, forbidding environmental conditions and political disputes over resource ownership and revenues are expected to stall development.

So while CAPP predicts Tar Sands production will replace conventional production, that still does not mean that Peak Oil conditions will be allievated in 2020. Rather they are betting that Tar Sands production will meet world demand, however they fail to consider that their predictions are based on current world demand, not on the inevitable; increasing demand. And again they gloss over the more serious issue, our conventional oil and gas reserves are on decline. Period.



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Technocracy Inc. Predicted Oil Crisis Over 50 years ago

I thought I would re-post this article here, as it is buried deep in my RedBetweenTheLines blog at Modblog. And given how often Modblog fails, which is why I no longer post there, I thought I would republish it here. Just in case it disappeared into the cyberabyss. And it is still relevant since it was published in January 2005. Wow way back then.

Recently a discussion on M.K.Hubbert arose on the marxism discussion list. This in itself was rather surprizing since Hubbert is a technocrat, and Technocracy Inc. is usually dismissed by the left as being some utopian scheme, or some kind of strange sect or cult. They were the original scientists and engineers for social responsibility, and being ahead of their time their theories appear to read like science fiction.

Hubbert is a favorite reference for my uncle, John Gregory, a professional engineer and geologist who worked for the National Research Council of Canada and is a long time member of Technocracy Inc here in Edmonton. As a social democratic technocrat living in the energy capital of Canada, his promotion of Hubberts therom was downright heresy. I grew up with a political understanding of technocracy as a progressive movement thanks to my uncle. Technocrats in Edmonton have always been activists appearing at all the progressive rallies and forums promoting their form of planned industrial/energy economy.

M. K. Hubbert predicated the Oil Crisis of 1972, waaaay back in the Fifties. He predicts that we will face a further oil crisis in the early part of this Century as reserve stocks decline along with increased demand.
Hubbert was dismissed at the time as a technocrat and his work is still villified in some circles today.Hubbert's work however has gained further legitimacy as oil prices have rocketed, and the Imperialist oil wars have drawn attention to this ongoing crisis.

Hubberts solution to this crisis was his theory of steady state economics. What was once thought of as crackpot theories of Technocracy, Hubbert has gained with new respect for his predictive analysis. Especially now that the impact of oil culture on the biosphere has been documented. Hubbert had already predicted that increasing reliance on oil would lead to an evironmental crisis in 1974.

Before dismissing Technocracy, one should review their work on economics needing to be energy based, actual credits based on the total value of physical energy available in an industrialized society. Not wage based, in other words they call for abolishing the wage system! Technocracy opposes capitalisms m-c-m formula (money-capital-money, or as we would call it today the Casino Capitalism of the Stockmarket) they oppose this money economy or price economy as they call it and propose replacing it with an energy economy.

Technocracy is a left wing industrial/social planning model , once banned at the same time as other left wing groups in the US and Canada. They promoted the theories ofthe Icelandic/American socialist Thorstein Veblen, author of the Leisure Class which gave us the term 'conspicious consumption'. Spefically Technocracy was influenced by his work: The Engineers And The Price System, regarding the social responsibilities of Science and Engineering which were direclty linked to the radical workers movement of the 1920's. The opening chapter is about Sabotage in the work place, the workers dissastisfaction with work and their alienation in industrial societies.

Technocracy Inc. from its beginings had friendly relations with the IWW, and was influenced by its unique form of North American syndicalism. Howard Scott was a friend of IWW General Secretary Vincent St. John, who got him to write articles for the union. Like other brain workers Technocrats viewed themsleves as workers, not a professional managment class as scientists and engineers have become today.

Unfortunately like left wing ideas of workers control, or self management which have been recuperated by capitalism and its managment theorists, technocracy and the term technocrat have been used as a prejorative for years. The reality is that technocrats are not just social engineers but socialist engineers, and an open organization to everyone, except politicians. Why thats downright anarchist of them.

Which may explain why politicians use technocrat as prejorative, they don't like being left out of anything.

Modblog stories on Peak Oil

Le Revue Gauch stories:

Thorstein Veblen

Technocracy

Peak Oil



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Another Free Trade Deal

I must have been sleeping through these talks....but note why they take on importance now...more open markets to importing not just goods and capital, but skilled labour into the Tar Sands.

Canada and South Korea are in the midst of negotiating a free trade agreement and have just wrapped up the fifth round of bilateral talks aimed at signing a comprehensive deal by the end of 2006.South Korea is interested in expanding its presence in the Canadian oilpatch and the country's state oil firm, Korea National Oil Corp., will be opening an office in Calgary. The country is also interested in providing skilled labour

Time for Alberta's unions to begin to organize their own globalization campaign by working with unions in Korea, the Phillipines and Venezuala and anywhere else that the capitalists are planning to import temporary labour from.
Also See Waugh


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Hockey is Violence

So ask your self this, why does boxing on ice skates; hockey result in riots on Whyte Avenue. Could there be a connection between this violent sport, one the fans watch for fights, as Don Cherry has made a video career out of, and fans on Whyte getting rowdy and violent? Nah.

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Neil Waugh Moves Left

Yep its true the right wing crumdgeon Neil Waugh,business columnist at the Edmonton Sun, has become the friend of the workingman and gasp building trades unions!

Though he still manages to get his digs in on the AFL and the divide in the house of labour over the issue of CLAC and CNRL brining in temporary workers, and whether the house of labour should salt CNRL or boycott them.

In his latest column he blasts the Alberta government making him sound like he signed up with the NDP. Move over Brian Mason there's a new pinko in Redmonton.

Alberta unemployment rates are at "near record low levels. The demand for manpower exceeds the available supply of skilled workers in many sectors of the economy," the CAPP document noted. (Unless you are an Alberta Building Trades Council tradesman sitting at home while Chinese and Filipino boilermakers, welders and electricians are showing up at two, maybe more, Fort McMurray jobs.) CAPP's "solution" is "training and immigration."

Sooner or later someone must be asking, if Albertans are giving up billions in forgone royalty (oilsands plants only pay 1% until payout), why are we wreaking environmental havoc in the boreal forest with this massive buildup in production? Especially if the "immigration" solution is to import crews from the Third World?

Why aren't energy companies being forced to build their value-added facilities in Alberta, rather than sending the stuff down bullet pipelines to American refineries? This huge ramp-up in oil- sands production maybe CAPP's agenda. But remind me again, what's in it for Albertans?

More on Waugh

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Howard Visits Canada

The Australian media covered the labour union protests outside Parliament opposing John Howards visit, better than the Canadian media which was largely silent on the matter. Except for brief notes in the Globe and Mail

Howard sings U.S. praises in Ottawa
Australian leader's laudatory remarks win Tory applause, NDP, Bloc silence

and Macleans.
Australian prime minister addresses packed Commons, lauds U.S.

Which mentioned the labour protests in passing, while the Australian media gave it more coverage.

The Australian Press:

CANADA PROTEST GREETS HOWARD

Howard visits Canada amid Afghanistan row

PM hailed conservative 'elder statesman'


The real meaning of the visit was given good indepth analysis in the media about the common agenda both Howard and Harper share regardless of the names of their political parties. Howard leads the Australian Liberal Party and Harper of course the Conservatives. But Howards Liberals are like those in B.C. and Quebec provincial politics, conservative.

Howards influence on Harper was noted as;

Political wizardry by the man from Oz

For it is no secret that Howard is one of Stephen Harper's political heroes. The Harper Conservatives studied Howard's first big electoral win in 1996, imported one of his key advisers (Brian Loughnane) to help them with their platform and, many observers say, patterned their most recent election after Howard's. The techniques: Promising easily understood tax cuts and baby bonuses targeted directly at the middle class in particular; getting tough on crime; talking up social conservative values (against gay marriage) that harkened back to simpler times; backing the U.S. wherever possible on the international scene; and promising a made-in-Canada solution to climate change that even has Ottawa now trying to get in to the Canberra-inspired Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, what critics call Kyoto-lite. Consider that Howard, in his earlier day, was the outspoken "boy treasurer" who had to learn to curb his more libertarian views and is still a vigorous opponent of gay marriage, Islamic asylum seekers and elite opinion. Overlay Harper's history and training as a classical free-trade economist and there are many similarities.

Harper looks up to his 'mate' down under

Prime Minister John Howard and Harper met last year at a conservative event in Washington, and Conservative insiders say the two have been mates ever since.

Howard has lent Harper the expertise of political operatives, the same people who helped Howard win four consecutive terms of office. One of Harper's key advisers is a close personal friend of one of Howard's advisers.

Around Ottawa, Conservatives spoke reverently of Howard's masterful grasp of what voters want to hear.

In the last Aussie election, that meant a direct pitch to "mainstream" Australians with middle-class tax cuts, a tough stance on illegal immigration, and a determination to bar same-sex marriage.

"He's provided stable government, low taxes, an unapologetic sense of where Australia is in the world," said Tory MP Scott Reid, who once lived in Australia as a visiting scholar.

"Those things are not dissimilar to the type of things we're talking about doing."

Added another MP: "They've got the smartest communications strategy in the world."

Aussie political commentator Michelle Grattan wrote in the middle of Howard's first mandate that the prime minister regarded the media as "a problem to be handled."

"What we have now, in a nutshell, is an ever-more elaborate media management system, and an increasingly limited amount of direct, regular and in-depth media access to the leader making the decisions," Grattan wrote.

Sound familiar? Just Thursday, Harper indicated he wouldn't participate in the age-old tradition of press gallery dinners. And his first months in power have seen repeated skirmishes with the national media over access to the prime minister.

The real significance of the this meeting was around Kyoto and the environment, in particular in the development and promotion of greater use of nuclear energy as Australia and Canada are the largest sources of uranium in the world.

Talk govt considering nuclear power

What is often overlooked is that Australia and Canada share alot in common, not only as commonwealth countries, but in joint intelligence operations, such as Echelon, etc.

As Jeffery Simpson in the Globe noted;

The Canada-Australia relationship is a quite brilliant and unique one. It flies under the public radar. Leaders seldom visit each other's country. The media here and there largely ignore the other country. And yet, in many walks of life from federalism to law, from social policy to immigration, from intelligence to diplomacy, Australians and Canadians are in contact, sharing experiences and sometimes borrowing from each other in ways that illustrate that Australia, notwithstanding the proximity of the United States, is the country that most resembles Canada.

A cozier relationship with Australia, a Free Trade Agreement with them, and access to the Asian Pacific region which was already underway with our involvement in APEC is a strategy that is win win for these two conservative governments.

Australia would gain access to the US market via Canada and Canada would gain access to Asia via Australia. The fact we are both the largest resource miners in the world, share a common agricultural base, and are syncophantic partners in Empire, whether it was the Brits or Americans, will lead to a new economic and political partnership as was signaled by Howard with his visit here.

Should environmentalists and unions be worried. You bet. We all should be. Australia was the model for the Klein revolution in Alberta. Now that same Calgary gang rules in Ottawa.






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A Lesson For the Workers Movement

Something Buzz and Georgetti, the CAW, the CLC, CUPE and all the other unions in Canada should remember as they lobby to ameloriate the nasty brutishness of capitalism.

The same is true of the workers' movement: it does not come forward like a valiant knight moved by ethical indignation, who seeks to free the human race from the immorality of capitalism; rather it fights capitalism because it must, because for it there is no other way of salvation, because otherwise it will quite simply be pulverized by the enormous weight of capitalism. - Anton Pannekoek

The whole quote is an excellent refutation of the moral indignation of liberals versus the historical materialist outlook of libertarian communists. Check it out at Boredom Won't Get Me Tonight



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Banks Screw You Again

Ellen Roseman reports today; Savings rate lags interest rate on loans

The Bank of Canada has raised its overnight lending rate six times since last September. So, you might expect that high-interest savings rates have gone up as well.Think again. Banks seem to be tightening their spreads — at the expense of savers.

Oh the banks screwing us again. That's news?! Yep as I have said before the Peoples Bank, credit unions, once again beat the banks. As does the Alberta Treasury Branch the other Peoples Bank in Canada.

The best savings rate I found was 3.85 per cent, offered by two online banks owned by credit unions in Manitoba, Achieva Financial and Outlook Financial.

Hey that's a better rate than ING the online bank. But they offer a GIC without a minimum and NO Service Charges unlike Achieva and Outlook.
See GIC Rates


Also see:

Proudhon

Tory Bankers

Bank Charges

Service Charges

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No Need For Sheriff Dodge

Canada April inflation lags
In the U.S., core inflation was 3.6%, whereas the Canadian number was reported at 1.6% . This morning's tame inflation numbers belie the other stats and may result in the Bank of Canada being forced to the sidelines, for if inflation numbers continue a trend that showed today, there will be little need for the Bank to be in the market.

So when will David Dodge retire, there's nothing for him to do. The economy takes care of itself.

``The Canadian dollar is keeping inflation relatively tame,'' Kwan said. That ``may be reflected in the statement.''Canadian Prices, Excluding Gas, Unexpectedly Decline in April

Only the Globe and Mail could turn this good news story on its head.
Canadian inflation edges up


Also See

Loonie

Petro Dollar

Monopoly

Monopolies


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Harpocrite Redux

Meet the New Boss Same as the Old Boss.

Harper says he's not bound by results of Kyoto vote

Paul Martin, Ethics and Democracy

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