The horse-trading over oil pipelines seems to be moving to a different level with Bc Premier Christy Clark searching for a $1 billion federal handout to upgrade B.C. Hydro lines so it can bolster electricity exports to Alberta.
Kevin Libin: B.C. has little ammo to take shots at Alberta
The throne speech excoriated Alberta for losing control of spending and thinking the great times would last forever, but B.C.’s Liberals shouldn’t talk. Net debt has ballooned under Clark as well as their LNG hopes have so far been stymied. Continue reading.
The pitch comes on the heels from the $1 billion federal bailout of Bombardier Inc. sought by the some of the best pipeline-bashing province, Quebec.
After squandering whatever goodwill she’d together with her next-door neighbour, Clark’s power line proposal is getting the Alberta brush-off it deserves.
Alberta energy minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd made it clear Friday Alberta won’t be buying power from B.C. if it can’t get its oil towards the coast.
“We’ll do notebook computer for Albertans and Alberta’s economy,” McCuaig-Boyd said in an emailed statement. “We will not be buying more power if we can’t get our resources to market.”
Clark has been peddling the concept for some time and repeated it at federal provincial meetings in Vancouver this week to craft a national plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
“Alberta has promised to obtain off coal, finally,” Clark said recently, talking about the climate change policy implemented by Rachel Notley’s NDP government that includes the early phase out of coal-fired electricity. “We might help all of them with energy to allow them to try to shut those coal plants.”
“For us it’s great,” Clark added. “That’s profit for BC Hydro, meaning it’s good for ratepayers. It’s also great for Canada because it means we are supplying Alberta with our clean energy to allow them to get off their coal habit.”
It’s a marvel Clark doesn’t see why her scheme won’t fly – regardless of how advantageous it might be for the environment or her political ambitions ahead of next year’s provincial election.
For something, Alberta has abundant clean power causes of its very own C wind power, solar and economical gas. They are largely produced in a deregulated market by private operators.
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Under Clark, relations forwards and backwards provinces are so strained Albertans are not within the mood to support her latest pet project, which comes after her massive effort to begin a liquefied natural gas industry remains in limbo.
Clark’s Liberal government has used every opportunity to poison the well, whether with Alberta’s former Tories or today’s NDP. It’s opposed both Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline and Kinder Morgan Inc.’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion projects, while starting the popularity of installing conditions to alter its position, including getting its share of advantages.
Her government has mocked Alberta in the depth of the harshest oil price collapse inside a generation, mentioning in its throne speech recently that “Alberta lost its focus – They expected their resource boom never to end, failed to diversify their economy and lost control of government spending.”
Clark’s government is even blaming Albertans for driving up home values by moving to B.C., or worsening B.C.’s homeless population.
The most important turnoff is that Clark hasn’t demonstrated that spending $1 billion of federal taxpayer dollars so the provincially owned BC Hydro can upgrade the grid forwards and backwards provinces makes economic sense.
B.C. finds itself with lots of power available for export from the Site C dam, a $9-billion hydroelectric project within the province’s northeast. Like pipelines, it’s controversial and is opposed by many people aboriginal communities.
There has already been a line between the two provinces and it is underutilized, said Scott Thon, president and CEO of AltaLink LP, Alberta’s largest electricity transmission provider and also the line’s owner.
“We should fix what we curently have first before we believe more broadly,” he said.
In addition, Thon, who’s even the chairman of the Canadian Electricity Association, said Clark’s proposal doesn’t explain the benefits of her scheme to Alberta consumers.
“We got the horse prior to the cart, and what we need first is to define the benefit, and then we can talk about what we have to capture the benefits, versus saying, let’s go and build something, and then hope there are benefits,” he said.
Under normal circumstances, it would make sense for Alberta to import more clean power, from B.C. and elsewhere, to lessen its reliance on high carbon sources.
But pipeline politics got in the way, and it is finally cutting for both.
Financial Post
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