00:04:49.620Beta Nord Oil Project hits key milestone as Newfoundland, Labrador, Equinor signed benefits agreement.
00:04:55.760And there's one line in this story that says it all.
00:04:59.160A proposed deepwater oil project off the Canadian East Coast reached a key milestone Tuesday as the Newfoundland and Labrador government signed an agreement with Equinor on how to divvy up the development's anticipated rewards.
00:05:13.120Premier Tony Wakeham received several standing ovations as he unveiled the benefits agreement for the Beta Nord project at a St. John's Newfoundland hotel, flanked by executives from Equinor and project partner BP.
00:05:27.340Wacom was quick to thank Prime Minister Mark Carney for championing Canadian energy
00:05:33.840and scrapping plans for proposed limits on oil and gas emissions.
00:05:43.060Alberta has to sign an MOU and agree to all these emissions fees
00:05:49.920and building this giant carbon-sucking machine, but Carney, let me read that again,
00:05:54.880Wacom was quick to thank Prime Minister Mark Carney for championing Canadian energy and
00:06:00.980scrapping plans for proposed limits on oil and gas emissions. Let's go back to the Western
00:06:08.260Standard story. While Alberta is having to jump through all kinds of hoops to get its natural
00:06:13.540resources out of the ground and had to sign that deal with the devil, there are these things as
00:06:18.220well. You'll remember this story from last week. This really pissed people off. Meanwhile, the LNG
00:06:23.540tanker Moran Gas Hector, having sailed roughly 25,750 kilometers from Gladstone, Australia,
00:06:31.140has delivered the first recorded shipment of Australian LNG to Canada into the port of St.
00:06:35.940John, New Brunswick. If only Canada had some liquefied natural gas, we wouldn't have to do
00:06:41.280this. Then there's this. Do you know about this one? Concurrently, the Suez Max tanker SFL Albany,
00:06:48.020loaded with approximately a million barrels of Saudi crude, is reported to have departed the
00:06:53.780Persian Gulf port of Rastanura. Having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the tanker is bound for
00:06:59.080Canaport, St. John, New Brunswick, with an arrival date for late March 2026. If only Canada had some
00:07:06.040oil, we wouldn't have to do this. What do these seemingly unrelated energy events have in common?
00:07:12.840First, none of the announcements involve Alberta, and second, at no point have the terms decarbonization or carbon capture and storage been invoked for these developments.
00:07:24.460Now, this paragraph goes on to tell you how the federal government is subsidizing the East Coast project to the tune of a billion dollars over the project's lifespan.
00:07:33.400Meanwhile, Alberta is, by contrast, being held to a far higher regulatory and economic standard under the MOU.
00:07:40.660These arbitrary, inconsistent policies may be politically expedient, but they risk a deepening economic alienation in Western Canada, as if it could be any deeper than it is right now.
00:07:53.000These inconsistent policies threaten the competitiveness of Western Canadian oil exports at a time when Canada is fast becoming an international outlier in the global oil export market by pretending that there is a demand for decarbonized oil.
00:08:09.080Is this something that Alberta should willingly agree to?
00:08:13.860That's a good question for Premier Danielle Smith.
00:08:22.760But you might say, John, we have a memorandum of understanding.
00:08:26.440If Danielle Smith can get a private investor, if we raise the industrial carbon taxes and
00:08:32.480we build the giant carbon-sucking machine, we'll get our oil pipeline.
00:08:37.180To that I say, I don't think so because of these people.
00:08:42.600To make very clear that there's absolutely no support for pipelines to the northwest coast or oil tankers in the waters around Haida Gwaii.
00:08:53.360Because if they object, this isn't going to happen.
00:08:56.140Remember, Carney has always said we have to have a consensus.
00:08:59.920We need consensus behind these projects and we need the participation of Indigenous peoples.
00:09:04.720We will only do that in the case where we have the support of First Nations.
00:09:09.560I really want to know why this isn't being discussed all that much.
00:09:13.640And good work to the Western standard.
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