First, remember:
The cost of the federal government’s uneconomic, boondoggle, the Transmountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX), is now upwards of $21 billion and rising. TMX didn’t make sense to the private sector for good reason. The Trudeau government ignored the evidence and played the sucker. Canadians now own a money-losing pipeline. TMX is designed to move more oil sands production to be refined abroad, where the emissions consequent to its consumption are not formally acknowledged as Canada’s responsibility.
Canada is also spending billions of dollars (nearly $9 billion by 2030) to subsidize investment in the industry’s wet dream of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a largely non-viable answer to the scale of emissions reduction required to meet our country’s international obligations.
The federal CCS subsidy merely lends credence to the greenwashing “net-zero” goals of the major oil sands producers. The producers’ promise of “net zero” by 2050 only applies to emissions from their operations, not from consumption of their product – a fact largely ignored by colonized reporting on the oil and gas industry.
In fact, the industry talks of increasing production, while simply reducing the intensity of emissions per barrel from operations. That this conflicts with Canada’s international commitments is conveniently ignored in industry publications and in literature from its influential, largely foreign-funded, lobby group, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).
At the provincial level, ill-advised tax cuts by the Kenney government have added upwards of $5 billion a year to the top five oil sands producers’ bottom lines.
All this corporate welfare might suggest an industry struggling to stay afloat. Far from it.
Oil sands profits hit a record $12.5 billion in the second quarter (Q2) of 2022. This, on top of first quarter profits of more than $9 billion – so, more than $21 billion in profits for the first six months of 2022.
What has the industry done with those profits. Invest more in pollution reduction? Carbon capture and storage? Site clean-up and reclamation? Preparing for the transition to a renewable energy future? Dream on.
Since 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie, oil sands producers have spent almost $47 billion repaying debt, increasing dividends and buying back shares. In Q2, 2022, oil sands producers paid out almost $2 billion in dividends and more than $8 billion to buy back shares.
Despite this, Tim McKay, the President of Canadian Natural Resources, Canada’s biggest petroleum producer had the audacity to complain about the federal government’s Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP). That plan calls on the oil and gas sector to reduce its emissions from operations (not production) by 31% from 2005 levels by 2030. McKay’s complaint was that the industry hasn’t been given enough time to comply. As if it couldn’t see this coming, let alone afford to do something about addressing the damage consequent to its production!
This whining from a coddled industry profiting from a publicly-owned resource, handed over to it with minimal strings attached, has always grated. In the midst of a climate emergency, for which the industry is largely responsible, it speaks of a leadership completely out of touch with the enormity of the immediate challenge we face.
Nor can we forgive the federal government for subsidizing such a profitable industry when those public dollars would achieve so much more if applied to encouraging investment in the transition to renewable energy and conservation.
Nor can we forgive the federal government for subsidizing such a profitable industry when those public dollars would achieve so much more if applied to encouraging investment in the transition to renewable energy and conservation.
