Money Talks
Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver lays out the Conservative Eco-Oppression Plan for Canada.
Last year on Earth Day, I read a post by a popular garden blogger in which she asserted that she was tired of hearing about climate change and we shouldn’t be making such a fuss about it because it is just a theory.
So sorry, garden blogger, but climate change is not ‘just a theory’. The greenhouse effect has been well understood for over a century. The only news is that change is happening much more rapidly than scientists anticipated. It is not ‘just a theory’ that summers are getting hotter. It is not ‘just a theory’ that weather is becoming more extreme. It is not ‘just a theory’ that the oceans are becoming more acidic. The only ‘doubt’ about climate change has been promulgated by Big Oil and other self-interested parties who have invested millions of dollars in denial.
Climate change is not a theory. It is an inconvenient truth. Get your little head around it, garden blogger, and start becoming part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. Join 350.org and start connecting the dots.
The latest census data shows nearly one in two Americans, or 150 million people, have fallen into poverty — or could be classified as low income. Mitt Romney has openly declared he is not concerned about the very poor. In this interview from Democracy Now, Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley discuss their efforts to spark a national dialogue on the poverty crisis. They are the authors of the new book The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto. For more on this and other issues, visit the Democracy Now website linked here.
When they pull into a gas station, most Canadians take it for granted that there will be all the gas they want available at the pumps. But do you know where that gas came from? The answer is more complex than you might expect, and it all depends on where you are.
If you live west of Ontario, you are using Alberta oil. Almost all of Alberta’s proven oil reserves are found in Alberta’s bitumen sands. Of Alberta’s total oil reserves, 169.3 billion barrels or about 99% come from the bitumen sands and the remaining 1.5 billion barrels come from conventional crude oil. Canada produces about, in round figures, 3 million barrels of oil per day, and uses about 2 million barrels. In 2010, Alberta exported about 1.4 million barrels per day (bbl/d) of crude oil to the United States. If you’re quick at math, you’ll see those numbers don’t add up. Canada is an exporter of oil, but it is also an importer.
Atlantic Canada’s oil is refined at the Imperial refinery in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and the Irving refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. The Irving Oil refinery is the largest in Canada, and processes crude from the Middle East, Africa and South America. The Irvings have their own fleet of tankers to bring the oil to Saint John.
Newfoundland/ Labrador has its own refinery at Come By Chance, which processes Newfoundland deepwater oil for the province. However, sale of Newfoundland oil to the rest of Canada is prohibited and 90% of Newfoundland oil is shipped to the U.S. The strangest part of this story? The Come By Chance refinery is owned by …wait for it… Korean National Oil Corporation, owned by the South Korean government!
Quebec also uses imported oil, which is refined in Montreal. It arrives from Portland, Maine via the aptly-named Portland-Montreal Pipe Line and comes from places like Libya, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela and Mexico.
That brings us to Ontario. Some of the oil from Montreal’s refinery is shipped into Eastern Ontario. The rest of Ontario’s supply comes from Alberta via a pipeline running through the American north to Sarnia, where it is refined.
Oil refined from foreign crude at Montreal is still cheaper than oil refined in Ontario from Alberta crude. That’s why gas is usually cheaper at the pump in Eastern Ontario than in the Greater Toronto Area.
This is a brief and simplified overview of where the gasoline that drivers fill their tanks with comes from. Journalist Al Parker offers an excellent in-depth look at the whole complex system at How Oil Makes Canada Four (or Five) Different Countries linked here. Below is a map illustrating North American pipelines. For more information on pipelines, visit the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association website linked here.
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