Canadians Have Degrees
Interviewer: You’ve got a lot of work experience, but what are your degrees in? Interviewee: We’ll I’m from Canada so my degrees are in Celsius
Interviewer: You’ve got a lot of work experience, but what are your degrees in? Interviewee: We’ll I’m from Canada so my degrees are in Celsius
Induced Seismicity is just another way to say ‘man made earthquakes’ and are sometimes referred to “induced earthquakes”. Induced Seismicity can be caused by many things humans do including:
but the focus of this article is Induced Seismicity caused by oil and gas exploration and production. There are some unexpected results in the latest research that governments and citizens should be aware of.
The picture to the right is the standard graphic used by industry to explain that when we search for or produce oil and gas near existing fault lines, the added (or reduced!) pressures can cause the faults to activate resulting in earthquakes. Nowhere has this been more pronounced than in Oklahoma over the previous decade and their citizens and governments are taking it very seriously.
The two major causes of oil and gas related Induced Seismicity are:
Hydraulic Fracturing or “fracking” is simply the process of injecting materials (often including water, sand, chemicals, CO2…) into a well under very high pressure. The idea is to crack the rock and release the oil and gas contained.
The video below shows Derek Fildebrandt at the Strathmore on Monday April 23rd, claiming that UCP leader Jason Kenney told him he could not run against a female UCP member:
…What Jason (Kenney) said to me. It’s not about me challenging other incumbents. It was only about me challenging female incumbents… And he said I could run against any other men… I don’t think it serves women well to have effectively affirmative action in politics…
It should be noted that Mr. Fildebrandt is accused of many politically unsettling problems including:
It is well established that even well intentioned government intervention in industry very often ends up causing more problems than it solves. Today one of the issues facing the United States is a loss of jobs in the steel industry and so President Trump claimed this is a National Security Issue and so used his unilateral power to impose a 25% tariff on imports of steel into the United States.
On its face, this seems like a good idea. Simplistically, if decrease the ability of other countries to export their steel to the US will result in the creation of more US steel jobs. However, the world is not a simple place and what actually happened was:
The five points above are well documented oft discussed in the media. The video below however, points out two fascinating unintended consequences that we had not thought of:
The oil tankers to be used near the Port of Vancouver to transport oil from the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, are definitely large. However, some groups are claiming that are massive super tankers the we need to be terrified of. Aframax tankers is what will be used and they Read more…
You can draw your own conclusions from the charts below but it is not debatable that Oil Tankers used to get into a lot of serious accidents and spill a huge amount of oil. That is just not the case today.
As you can see in the chart below, the oil tanker business has become dramatically safer in the last 35 years since tanker traffic became popular in the early 1970’s:
The 2017 the tanker oil spill numbers look very similar to the 2010/11 numbers with:
If you do the math, this calculates to oil tanker accidents have been reduced 92% while there has been a 55% increase in their use. That means late 2010’s oil tanker traffic is about 20 times less likely to have a spill than they were in the early 1970’s.
Alberta is used to energy shocks and can quickly adjust to the environment, especially an oversupply. BC gets 80% of its gasoline from Alberta which cannot possibly be replaced with tanker trucks from the US… because BC does not have any pipelines their either. Also, yesterday the Premier of Saskatchewan Read more…
In a word, yes.
As explained in the video below, ALL oil and gas products in Alberta used to be COMPLETELY controlled by the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission (APMC) which still exists today. There has been no legal impediments to that process put in place since the APMC was formed in 1973, so yes the Province of Alberta can legally block petroleum shipments to BC.
The current Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline debacle agonizingly demonstrates that even medium scale infrastructure projects are easily stalemated in Canada. This has scared away vast sums of foreign direct investment as investors look for easier, more reliable places to put their money. This is a crisis and it appears Read more…
UPDATE: Sept 14 2018 – We just added new TMX articles you will find interesting: How Big Is The Pipe In The Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion? How Big Are the Oil Tankers Heading to BC To Take Oil From Trans Mountain Pipeline? Are Oil Tanker Spills Getting Worse? Spill Statistics Read more…
Many people, and politicians (which are also people 🙂 ) have suggested that Alberta cut off the oil supply to British Colombia in an effort to punish the BC Premier, John Horgan. While that is one possibility, there are other things that can be done.
Some options are reasonable, some are draconian and some of them are just not possible.
Here are most of the options available to Alberta:
China’s State Forestry Administration announced that they will add 66000 square kilometers of of trees in 2018 in an effort to reduce pollution. That is nearly the size of Ireland. This massive investment is part of their Paris Accord commitment to forest the area about three times the size of the entire United Kingdom by 2030.
To make this happen, China will use state employees and tens of thousands of soldiers.
Part of this unparalleled tree planting effort will take place in what China calls Forest Cities in 6 key regions of the country:
Should the Province of Alberta buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline from Kinder-Morgan if they want to walk away from the project? That question was posed to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley today and she responded with an emphatic ‘Yes!’.
It has become abundantly clear, whether you are for or opposed to this particular pipeline or not, that having the relatively simple twinning of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline fail to be built would signify the end of even medium scale infrastructure projects in Canada.
There will always be interest groups and affected people that have some legitimate claim against a large project. The standard for projects should not be keeping everyone happy. The standard for infrastructure projects MUST be if they are in the national interest. That national interest contains a giant list important factors including:
In the last decade the Dutch have reduced prison inmate populations by 50% and those sentences average to about 90 days in jail. Many people expected this drastic reduction of inmates to lead to a notable increase in crime because:
Contrary to this expectation the fact is that Dutch system has also reduced crime by nearly 40%.
As you can see in the image to the right, the Dutch now use their old prisons as temporary housing for some refugees.
How can that be? In simple terms, it turns out that after thousands of years of trying different forms of incarceration and punishment that Europeans have figured out: