Our industry is under constant attack from this government, which is especially annoying for those of us who work in it.
| Date Published | November 26, 2015 |
| Company | Leadstone Group Inc. |
| Article Author | Chris Grabill |
| Article Type | November 2015 Issue |
| Category | Articles, Oil & Gas |
| Tags | E&P, Economic Downturns, Oil & Gas Downturn, Oil & Gas: Government, S&S |
Our industry is under constant attack from this government, which is especially annoying for those of us who work in it.
Thank you for your service to Alberta, but like all things must come to an end, I release you from serving out your term for the next four years.
Your leader and her cabinet are ideologues and have brought in out-of-province, anti-oil activists as their most trusted advisors. You, the accidental MLA’s, should be these advisors and you should be getting your input from your constituents in Alberta. This is not the case. And with the election of another Trudeau in Ottawa, Alberta is in further grave danger, so the time for action is now.
We have already been wrought with your hasty corporate tax hike and bizarre minimum wage action, but that is only the beginning. The laboured quest for a royalty review and the introduction of your pointless and crushing climate policy is making an already bad situation worse. I implore you, read any oil companies’ statements on upcoming budgets. Almost every single one has words to the tune of – ‘our budget will be reduced or remain flexible due to low oil prices AND (my emphasis) the uncertainty around carbon policies and royalty reviews with the government of Alberta’.
This is not the way to sustain ourselves in this low price environment.
The Paris climate summit will do nothing to save the planet. Even if you were to transcribe to the dubious science that CO2 (plant food) caused by people is mucking with Mother Nature’s thermostat, the impact of reduction in Alberta’s CO2 is miniscule. The cost is profound. I am sure not many of you took economics in school, but one of the first lectures you hear is the guns and butter graph, where eventually the increased benefit to one action is not worth the relating cost to another – well, your polices are STARTING at the long plain at the end of the chart when it comes to CO2 strategy. It is punitive to every Albertan. Fuel to drive their kids to activities and utilities for the comfort of their home are going to be more expensive to already strained Alberta families, c’mon.
Our industry is under constant attack from this government, which is especially annoying for those of us who work in it. We are not ‘embarrassing’ (Notley’s word) and not one single buyer of our resource would say ‘no thanks’ based on our environmental record. That is patently false. The world market buys oil from some of the most ruthless dictators in the world who let oil ooze over their land and the lousy camps their indentured workers dwell in. We innovate, maintain strong regulations, and are polite and even complacent in the face of vitriol and ignorance of environmentalist’s biggest wacko’s.
I am unsure if the leadership of your party is simply willfully ignorant of the facts to curry favour with the ‘right’ people or if it is more nefarious and their end goal is part of some diabolical wealth redistribution program, but regardless, you are part of that problem now and I think, as an Albertan, you know that’s not right.
If you were one of the folks who got an NDP MLA on that convulsive election day, please feel free to send them this letter or one of your own thoughts. Their emails can be simply found here: assemmbly.ab.ca
Chris Grail
A Worried Albertan
Originally published in the