‘Hanging in’: David Suzuki shares insights as he retires from ‘The Nature of Things’
By Bob Weber After 44 years as the face of Canada's premier science TV show, you might expect David Suzuki to feel a little sadness and a little nostalgia as he steps down as host of "The Nature of Things." Not so. "Happy as hell," he laughs over Zoom from his...
Estevan OTS Bonspiel 2023 winners, and a video with sights and sounds of the event
The winners of the Estevan Oilfield Technical Society Bonspiel on March 25 are listed below. Photos and results courtesy Estevan OTS.
Be sure to come out for the Top Gun Trap Shoot on May 12 at the Estevan Wildlife Federation, at Boundary Dam park, part of Woodlawn Regional Park. Registration opens May 1, 2023. For more details, click here.
Suncor finds Alberta’s oldest plesiosaur fossil at Mildred Lake
Suncor found an ancient marine reptile, a plesiosaur, will mining oil sands at Mildred Lake. Suncor posted a video the find on their site on April 6. The fossil was found on March 12. https://youtu.be/TMLUOvWliSU [fwduvp preset_id="brian"...
Weekend Watch: Sucker Rods the Amoco Way
It may be in Spanish, but the visuals are quite interesting. This is a training film (note, not video, as video wasn’t a thing then) from the 1960s. So we’re looking at almost 60 years old, yet a lot of the hardware is unchanged, from the sucker rod wrenches (with a snipe!) to the elevators.There’s even power tongs. And yet some things have changed. Bonus points for catching them using a gin pole truck to unload the rods from the flat deck. This is from https://www.youtube.com/@PeriscopeFilm channel.
States and companies compete for billions to make hydrogen
By Jennifer Mcdermott And John Flesher As fossil fuel emissions continue warming Earth’s atmosphere, the Biden administration is turning to hydrogen as an energy source for vehicles, manufacturing and generating electricity. It's offering $8 billion to entice...
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RBC chief executive defends climate plan as shareholders criticize record
RBC chief executive Dave McKay defended the bank’s climate plan at its annual shareholder meeting Wednesday as numerous attendees criticized it for not doing enough.
Speaking at the event held this year in Saskatoon, McKay emphasized the importance of an orderly net-zero transition since instability in food, energy or security will throw off efforts to rein in climate change.
CAOEC releases Embarking on the Energy Evolution video
The Canadian Association of Energy Contractors released a short video on March 31 entitled “CAEOC: Embarking on the Energy Evolution.”
There’s some cool in the field shots, including a time lapse of a walking rig on a pad site. Check it out.
Brian Zinchuk: How does an ice age start? With one snowflake
Editor’s note: I originally wrote this column in mid-April 10 years ago, at the tail end of a winter that never seemed to end. Funny how things haven’t changed that much since then, have they? Wasn’t the world supposed to warm up in the meantime? Anyhow – take the dates in that context. Also, looking at what Lake Tahoe has been getting, they might be living what I describe here, for real.
Remember how SaskPower was supposed to retire Boundary Dam Units 4 and 5? About that…
They can’t, yet, so they won’t.
On April 4, SaskPower said they would be extending the lives of both of those 139 megawatt units.
Energy executives say feds must make good on pledge to speed up project approvals
Canada’s oil and gas sector is hopeful the federal government will live up to its budget-day pledge to speed up the time it takes to build major infrastructure projects.
The Liberal government announced last week that it will unveil a plan aimed at speeding up the federal permitting process for major infrastructure projects before the end of the year.
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Cameco and Bruce Power extend supply agreement to 2040, providing Ontario reactors with Saskatchewan uranium
On April 4 Cameco and Bruce Power announced the extension of their long-term exclusive nuclear fuel supply arrangements for an additional 10 years through to 2040. This inter-provincial collaboration secures decades of Canadian-made nuclear energy that is essential to building a path to net-zero, while creating good jobs and benefitting ratepayers, Cameco said in a release.
Brian Zinchuk on Gormley: OPEC+ production cut, spring breakup, power interconnect with US, Arizona Lithium
Here’s April’s regular feature with Pipeline Online editor and owner Brian Zinchuk appearing on the John Gormley Show on CJME/CKOM on Wednesday, April 5. Up for discussion are OPEC+ cuts and rising oil prices, spring breakup, a questionable poll overseas about Canadian oil, a powerline interconnect with the United States, and Arizona Lithium’s (formerly Prairie Lithium) open house in Estevan.
Spring breakup finally begins, delayed three weeks from usual
The 2023 spring road restrictions come into force in Saskatchewan on Friday, April 7, according to an April 5 press release from the Ministry of Highways.
The announcement came roughly three weeks after the usual announcement of spring breakup road bans. That typically occurs within a few days of March 15, either before or after. This year, it’s 23 days after March 15.
Jim Warren, Part 1: The energy industry has been at the mercy of environmentalists and their allies in government for far too long
This column is the first in a series of four that will assess ways to improve perceptions about Western Canada’s fossil fuel industry among policy makers and the wider public. This column acknowledges past mistakes and looks at some industry analysts’ insights about what’s gone so badly wrong in the recent past. In subsequent columns we’ll look at ideas for increasing support for the industry and reducing the impact of its critics.
Oil could be headed back to US$100 a barrel this year: Industry experts
A surprise production cut by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC plus) is just one factor lifting the spirits of Canada’s energy sector executives these days, as experts say crude prices could return to US$100 a barrel later this year.
“Buoyant” and “extremely positive” were some of the terms used by CEOs on Tuesday to describe the mood at a major oil and gas conference in Toronto, which took place just two days after the unexpected move by OPEC sent oil futures surging.
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Letter to the Editor: SaskPower didn’t come up with its coal transition plans overnight
This transition, this plan, is not new for SaskPower. They undoubtably had to have been working on transition plans for many years. These projects don’t just come up over night.
One Alberta coal unit put out 26.4x the amount of power of the entire fleet of hundreds of wind turbines
At 1:36 p.m., Alberta saw its wind power generation drop to 14 megawatts out of 3,618. That’s 0.38 per cent of nameplate capacity, or 38 ten-thousandths.
Op-Ed: Saskatchewan Coal Transition Centre: Sabotaging our future: How SaskPower’s $1 billion scheme to import power from the U.S. will devastate Estevan and leave Saskatchewan’s economy vulnerable
SaskPower’s plan to replace clean, reliable and affordable coal-fired power from Estevan’s Boundary Dam with 650 MW of power from the Southwest Power Pool in the U.S. starting in 2027, will not only cost Saskatchewan residents a billion dollars, it will also devastate Estevan and put the entire provincial economy at risk. We hope that SaskPower has considered the following:
Oil prices soar on producer output cuts; World shares higher
Oil prices soared nearly 6% on Monday after Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers said they will cut production by 1.15 million barrels per day from May until the end of the year. Shares in Asia were mixed.
Ovintiv signs deal to buy Midland Basin assets for US$4.275B, selling Bakken assets
Ovintiv Inc. has signed a deal to buy a portfolio of assets in the Midland Basin in Texas in an agreement valued at US$4.275 billion in cash and shares.
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SaskPower wants 3,647 megawatts of wind and solar. But early this morning, Alberta’s 4,783 MW of the same produced just 29 MW
Wind was producing 0.8 per cent of its 3618 megawatts of nameplate capacity. When you add wind and solar, it was 0.6 per cent of total 4783 megawatts of wind and solar nameplate capacity.
But SaskPower is aiming to build a similar amount of wind and solar. What will it mean for us?
Quick Dick McDick: Trudeau’s Federal Carbon Tax
Quick Dick McDick chose to release this on April 1, April Fool’s Day. Why? Because that’s the day the federal carbon tax went up, again, this time by $15 per tonne to $65 per tonne of CO2 equivalent. (That’s a 30% increase, if you were counting).
For want of a pipeline: Canadian LNG should power low-carbon revolution, report says
As the world struggles to find the right balance between a carbon-free future and a present that still runs on fossil fuels, Canada could be leveraging its natural-gas riches to help fuel both, a new report suggests.
The report, to be released Monday by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, urges the federal government to finally get serious about building the infrastructure necessary to fast-track the extraction and export of liquid natural gas.
Six months of detailed analysis of SaskPower’s generation mix: We’re going to need a lot of reactors
Six months of daily electricity data in Saskatchewan has been compiled and visualized by Brahm Neufeld, an engineer from Saskatoon. Last fall he launched a Twitter account @SkElectricity, logging and detailing SaskPower’s daily power generation output. Data is collected daily from SaskPower’s “Where Our Power Comes From” dashboard.
Enbridge plans to partner on clean ammonia facility in Corpus Christi, TX
Enbridge Inc. says it has signed a letter of intent with Yara Clean Ammonia to jointly develop a blue ammonia production facility at the Enbridge Ingleside Energy Centre near Corpus Christi, Texas.