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Canada: Petrostate or not?

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Andrew Nikiforuk’s piece in the July/August issue of Foreign Policy claims that Canada has become a rogue petrostate. You can read my reply, and Mr. Nikiforuk’s response to it, here.

On my Enbridge Professorship

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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?

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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.

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Energy East, again.

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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

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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

Signing back on!

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Hello again!  After a wonderful year spent on secondment to Environment Canada, I will be re-activating my FrogBlog. I’ve missed the conversations generated by this blog greatly, and so I am looking forward to re-engaging with many of you over the coming months. Before I get back to writing more regularly, I do want to … Read more

Signing off

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Dear Readers, This afternoon, I am pleased and excited to inform all of you that I have accepted a secondment to Environment Canada during my sabbatical year from July 2012 through June 2013. I will be a visiting scholar at Environment Canada, and hope to be involved in many aspects of their work over the … Read more

More on upgrading and refining in Alberta

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This week, the question of whether or not and, if so, how, the Government of Alberta should encourage upgrading and/or refining of bitumen in the province is back on the front page.  Much of this coverage is due to backlash over the Government’s decision to not proceed with the Alberta First Nations Energy Center (AFNEC) under the Bitumen Royalty in Kind (BRIK) program.  There are as many myths as ever bouncing around this, and so I’ve spent the last little while trying to untangle them for myself.  Here are some thoughts and, as always, your comments and clarifications are welcome.

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Northern Gateway and Gas Prices

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“Northern Gateway represents an inflationary price shock which will have a negative and prolonged impact on the Canadian economy by reducing output, employment, labour income and government revenues.”

This quote appears in the second paragraph of a report prepared by Robyn Allan, apparently for the Alberta Federation of Labour, as it is included as part of their filings with the Joint Review Panel examining the Northern Gateway Pipeline.  I had the opportunity to debate Robyn Allan twice today, and you can listen in on one of them on CBC Edmonton here. I probably will have to write more than one post on this, but here’s a start.

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