Month: August 2013

On my Enbridge Professorship

by

Update: As of March, 2015, I no longer hold the Enbridge Professorship. There are 4 major milestones in a professor’s career – you get your first job as Assistant Professor, you get tenure, then (or possibly jointly) get promoted to Associate Professor, and finally to (full) Professor. Outside of that formal structure, there are separate … Read more

The National Energy Program – A missed boom for the oil sands?

by

After my post last night got me reading Budget 1980 and the National Energy Program, I stumbled upon something completely fascinating: the hated National Energy Program proposed an indexed price for synthetic crude from oil sands projects which, had it been followed until today, would have been above the Canadian dollar price of WTI in every year but 1980, 1981, and 2008.

Read more

Reading the National Energy Program

by

As a non-native-Albertan academic (in particular one from back east), I have learned that there are two golden rules to follow when in Alberta – don’t mention the National Energy Program, and don’t mention the National Energy Program.  This post, and my next one, are going to break both of those rules.

Read more

Energy security and Energy East

by

During his visit to the Irving Refinery on August 8th, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that the Energy East pipeline was not just about moving Alberta’s energy to markets, but that (the government) would, “(make) sure that Canadians themselves benefit from these projects and from that gain in energy security.” That got me to thinking about energy security, what it means, and how we might benefit (or lose) from what it implies. In what follows, I argue that there are some potential benefits, but there are also some false-economies and pitfalls in terms of delivering energy security with Energy East.

Read more

Energy East, again.

by

This post previously published at Maclean’s and Canadian Business Magazine It’s been a week since TransCanada announced that it had secured sufficient commercial commitments and would be proceeding with the Energy East project. Their announcement included a few surprises – a larger-than-expected capacity of 1.1 million barrels per day, and a $300 million marine terminal in Saint John. What … Read more

Value-added, externalities and eggs

by

Today, what I initially thought was a mildly controversial statement about upstream vs. downstream profitability and value-added led to me finding myself with a little bit of egg on my face and also completely baffled about the way we use the term value-added. Let me start off by saying that, as a economist, I tend … Read more