Justin's White Elephant

 

The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the Justin Trudeau Memorial Pipeline Trans Mountain pipeline will be a big loser for the federal treasury.  With costs now at $21.4 billion and expected to rise further there's no profit to be had.  The government paid top dollar for the project when the private sector wouldn't touch it.

The pipeline will, however, deliver a dandy subsidy to the energy giants that will benefit from the prime minister's largesse. They don't care if it costs 20 billion. They don't care if it costs 50 billion. Let the government eat the losses.

Comments

  1. Bill MalcolmMarch 4, 2022 at 4:40 PM

    Of course, there is the revolutionary capitalistic thought of charging appropriate fees for the transport of the "product" flowing in the soon to be three pipes. You know, as in enough to pay for the investment and opersting costs. It's not like there's an alternative cheaper method of transport for about a million barrels per day. Twinning the rails of a railroad would take for ever and might still be impracticable. I don't remember, did Trudeau promise some cheap "freight" rate when he gifted Alberta with the federal purchase of TM and took over building TMX?

    Environmental destruction proceeds apace, so might as well charge for the privilege of allowing something like this pipeline to proceed. Probably be $6 or $8 a bbl. Then when kenney and the prairie tribes of capital privilege gophers wail and howl bloody blue murder, the rejoinder would be: Well, buy it from us and run it yourself. Nothing better for the purloined pension plans of government workers and teachers to pay for through the Alberta Investment Management Company. AIMCo lost over $2 billion a couple of years ago, proving that private investment beats Canada Pension Plan going away. NOT. Once ever, apparentlu, but Cons love the fiction that government is inefficient, It's their core nonsensical belief in the infallibility of the Preston Man, whose fossilized blue bones were discovered in a Calgary backyard, and carbon-dated to the Cretinacious Period..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibMarch 4, 2022 at 5:59 PM

      Bill, I understand the majors have locked in, long term 'budget' contracts. The risks and the losses are all ours. The Dauphin has painted Canadians into a corner.

      Delete
  2. TrailblazerMarch 4, 2022 at 5:05 PM

    So; Justin's memorial pipeline is going to transport dilbit extracted by a Russian owned company through pipe produced by another Russian owned company!
    All of this whilst pipeline expansion is geared to shipping oil to a foreign nation, the USA.

    Energy independent! not really.
    Dependent on oil companies ??

    TB

    ReplyDelete
  3. TrailblazerMarch 4, 2022 at 5:22 PM

    To add.....

    https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/03/01/opinion/jason-kenney-has-russia-problem

    Oil rules Canada.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
  4. Northern PoVMarch 5, 2022 at 6:48 AM

    Please help with my dilemma. A poll on Jr's greatest hits.

    Which betrayal was worse:

    1) Electoral Reform
    ('The last election using fptp.')

    2) TMX purchase.
    (Reversing an incredible environmental win that used capitalism as a tool.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. The Disaffected LibMarch 5, 2022 at 8:57 AM

    Electoral reform. If we had #1 we would not have #2.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Owen GrayMarch 5, 2022 at 11:47 AM

    And it didn't earn him a single vote in Alberta.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibMarch 5, 2022 at 1:19 PM

      True enough, Owen. Yet this was a political decision and devoid of courage. This was done out of fear. It was fear that dispatched Morneau to Texas with the government chequebook. It was fear that drove Morneau to pay a premium price when no one in the private sector would touch Kinder Morgan's TMX. Those Gringos learned a few things from their years at EnRon. Greenhorn Morneau was easy meat.

      It was a bad deal from the get-go. While Trudeau stuck with the $12 billion nonsense, critics said it was bound to go beyond 20 billion. Using BC's November floods and the pandemic as cover to explain the 70 per cent overrun is putting lipstick on a pig.

      I expect Justin will move on before we go to the polls in 2025.

      Delete
  7. TroyMarch 7, 2022 at 3:03 PM

    Year ago, when I stated TMEX would cost $30 billion, I was half-kidding. Now it seems I underestimated.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Up in Smoke. 300 Sq. Mi. of Amazon Rainforest Lost Every Day.

Image
  The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at what should be an alarming rate. 312 sq. mi. or 808 sq. kms. every day. Over the past 30 years humans have destroyed a patch of the Amazon equal in area to the states of Texas and New Mexico . The Amazon – historically a great carbon absorber, since trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen – now releases more carbon than it stores, which adds to, rather helps to reduce, our global climate crisis. Deforestation rates decreased slightly from 2004 to 2012. But since then, they’re back on the rise, especially in the past couple of years, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil. In 2018, as Bolsonaro campaigned as a patriotic man of the people, scientists predicted that once the Amazon lost more than 25% of its tree cover, it would become a drier ecosystem, all because deforestation changes weather patterns (due to how trees respire), which in turn reduces rainfall. Furthermore, as the forest becomes fragmented, areas surrounded...
Read more

The Cognoscenti Syndrome

  There is a group of people I think of as the Cognoscenti, people who are well educated, very informed and of rapidly diminishing relevance. Their ranks include writers such as Chris Hedges and Glen Greenwald. These are people who have honed an almost Puritanical value system, readily finding fault in any direction. They are scathing in their attacks on Republicans and Democrats alike to the point where they become nihilists. They don't endorse. They prescribe. This is where they fail. They're unable to advocate for anything that might resonate with the public whose interests they argue are being trammeled. Donald Trump was bad but Joe Biden is scarcely better. This is where their elitism comes in.  74 million may have voted for Trump but, hey, they didn't know any better. The mob that stormed the Capitol. They were just victims of the system venting their frustrations. All the racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, white nationalism - inevitable side effects of their oppr...
Read more

Who Asks "Why?"

Every time there's a conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, all we hear is 'why?'  Why, as in, whose fault is this? It's easier to affix blame if you can truncate the event. Pick a convenient start date, something recent. In this case we'll make it either the Israeli eviction of Arabs from Jerusalem or the scuffle that took place outside the mosque in response. If those don't work, let's go for Hamas launching unguided rockets into Israel. That's even better because it tags Hamas with the blame. The nice thing about this approach is you can just keep using it. It goes on and on, just as it has for the past half-century since the '67 war. You can even date this whole mess to the beginning of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. The Israelis are said to have called these periodic wars, "mowing the lawn." The idea is that, every now and then, you have to take these Arabs to the woodshed. And then you keep your powder dry unt...
Read more