Western Standard - June 26, 2023


Who do you trust on oil predictions, the Liberal government or OPEC？


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

146.23705

Word count

1,298

Sentence count

95

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Western Standard's energy editor Sean Pulser joins us this week to talk about the Alberta Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson's plan to reduce the province's energy production to net zero by 2050, and the implications for the rest of the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, Western Standard viewers. I'm Nigel Hannaford, opinion editor for the Western Standard.
00:00:05.760 I have with me today Sean Pulser, our energy editor who is occupying an increasingly important
00:00:12.420 role in our news coverage. There is so much happening in his department. Sean, last week
00:00:17.920 Enercan Minister Jonathan Wilkinson met with Premier Smith and announced the first piece
00:00:23.540 of legislation in what appears to be the just transition, that massive and planned reduction
00:00:29.660 of Alberta's energy industry and the replacement of high-paying jobs for energy workers with
00:00:35.520 lower-paying jobs for, well, truck drivers and janitors with what was in the briefing notes
00:00:40.780 given to the minister. You know, Wilkinson said in that visit that worldwide oil demand was
00:00:50.960 going to be down to 25 million barrels a day by 2050. Right now it's about, you know better
00:01:00.600 than I, but I believe it's about 100, 101, 102 million barrels a day. So he's talking about
00:01:06.180 a 75% reduction. And then yesterday in your story in the Western Standard, the people from
00:01:13.000 OPEC and Aramco were saying something very different, like four times as much, 110 million
00:01:19.460 barrels a day. How can they be so far apart on this? What's going on?
00:01:24.820 That's a really good question, Nigel. Well, the Canadian government is using the International
00:01:29.380 Energy Agency numbers. And I think at the time I called it the Unicourt scenario. And what's
00:01:35.740 happening in Malaysia is Petronas is holding a global oil conference with the OPEC fellows. So
00:01:45.540 Secretary General of OPEC, Hathen Gase, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly, but yeah,
00:01:52.120 the long-term OPEC forecast out to, this one is to 2045, is 110 million barrels a day, which they would
00:01:59.900 amounts to about a 15% increase. And I think that was the number that I used last
00:02:05.640 week after Robinson met with Smith. Aramco Chairman Amin Nasser gave a speech and basically said that
00:02:14.760 net zero is a fanciful, quote unquote, quote unquote, fanciful concept. Even the Prime Minister
00:02:22.620 of Malaysia, and Malaysia is a major liquefied natural gas exporter, they also have 20% of the
00:02:30.360 LNG Canada project in Kitimat, basically said that it would be foolish to sacrifice economic growth
00:02:39.480 for net zero goals. So where does that 25 million, which is clearly so at odds come with, you referred
00:02:48.320 to a scenario, but I mean, is this by guessing by golly? Are there other scenarios? Well, the IEA put out
00:02:58.160 three scenarios. So the 24... The IEA is the International Energy Agency. Based in Paris. Based in Paris.
00:03:06.080 That's not the American... The American is the Energy Information Agency, the EIA. Okay, so we're
00:03:13.860 talking about the Paris boys. Yes. So they put out three scenarios. The first, the 24 million barrels,
00:03:22.480 actually, where that comes from is if the world were to reach net zero by 2050. That's with everybody
00:03:29.840 wanting to and doing everything that they could. That they would need to, to get to that point. So
00:03:35.920 how likely is that? Slim to none. Okay. How likely do you think the Aramco estimate is 110 million barrels
00:03:45.920 a day? Is that realistic? Yeah. Well, you know, basically when OPEC speaks, it basically is Saudi,
00:03:53.920 the kingdom of Saudi speaking, because OPEC basically is Saudi. As we all know, they are extremely
00:04:00.160 shrewd businessmen and they are not very often wrong. So I would say that 110 is probably realistic.
00:04:07.520 The EIA, the American administration, they've predicted about 110 as well. So those numbers are
00:04:19.360 quite in the ballpark. They're quite aligned. So not to be unpatriotic or anything, but there's something
00:04:25.520 very clearly wrong with the Canadian estimates. Or alternatively, they are planning an energy,
00:04:34.400 a reduction in Canada's energy industry quite unlike anything that we have seen before and
00:04:40.000 completely at odds with what the rest of the world is doing. Is that a fair way to assess it? Yes.
00:04:44.800 Okay. What they're assuming is massive uptake in EVs. And, you know, here again, we've got the chairman of
00:04:52.800 Toyota. We've got the auto manufacturers themselves saying that the biggest barrier to the take-up
00:04:59.840 in electric vehicles that they are envisioning is basically the lack of charging infrastructure.
00:05:06.160 Yeah. And the lack of heavy duty lines to take the current from wherever it's produced to wherever
00:05:12.640 it's needed and to be distributed through the neighbourhoods. Absolutely. Yes. Look, Minister
00:05:18.400 Wilkinson is apparently back this week making another round of announcements. What can you tell us about
00:05:23.600 that? Well, today they're handing out 1.5 million to a forest product manufacturer in Ottawa,
00:05:33.200 presumably to clean up their operations. Tomorrow he's in… Clean up in the sense of what? Electrify them?
00:05:39.600 They're coming up with different processes for pulp and paper that craft pulp mills. And they've been
00:05:47.440 making some announcements in the interior of BC and through. So it's just kind of part of that whole
00:05:52.640 thing. Tomorrow he's in BC announcing regional roundtables. Sounds like with First Nations leaders,
00:06:01.600 Aboriginal representation. So is this to do with that Canadian 0.98
00:06:05.280 sustainable jobs strategy that he announced here last week? I believe it is. Yeah. So this is the first
00:06:10.880 stage in that. Yeah. I think they're going to spell out what the Aboriginal representation is going to
00:06:17.520 be on these committees, I guess, as a first step. And then on Wednesday, he's in Regina making
00:06:24.480 announcements about the Saskatchewan power grid. And that's where Premier Moe has basically said,
00:06:31.360 you know, take it or leave it. We're not going off coal, no matter what. Come and get me.
00:06:36.000 Come and get me. Arrest me. What a great campaign slogan. Look, I can't help, you know, when I read
00:06:41.920 your stuff, Sean, and I talk to the people that I know, I can't get away from the feeling that there's
00:06:49.120 a hammer being forged that's getting ready to drop on Alberta. Can you give me some sense of how
00:07:00.400 inevitable this is? I mean, is there no negotiation available here? Well, that's exactly what I think is
00:07:05.280 going to happen. And I think that's what it is, is that they're laying out a bargaining position.
00:07:11.040 I think it's going to come down to negotiations with the province. They've already had that initial
00:07:16.240 meeting with Premier Smith and Energy Minister Brian Jean. Apparently, they were talking about
00:07:23.680 issues like emissions caps, which Premier Smith has said is a de facto production cut.
00:07:28.400 But also exports of LNG to Asia to offset our own emissions. And, you know, just some of those
00:07:38.080 kind of issues that are around the just transition that Premier Smith says are her own lines in the
00:07:43.600 sand. So I think basically, it's a lot of posturing ahead of some fairly serious,
00:07:50.160 whatever you want to call them, bilateral negotiations, I think Premier Smith called them.
00:07:53.920 I thought the term was kind of interesting, bilateral negotiations.
00:07:58.560 Alberta is a sovereign province. It has certain powers and under the constitution and the federal
00:08:05.200 government isn't entitled to just usurp those powers. Thank you for this, Sean. Obviously,
00:08:11.520 this is not a done deal. There is some hope. Certainly, we hope there is hope.
00:08:15.200 We hope to coin a phrase. Thanks very much for this. I'm sure we'll be back in the next couple of days
00:08:21.920 after the minister has spoken. Thank you very much, Nigel.
00:08:24.800 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.
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