“I love oil and gas” in Alberta

This comes out of the tap when you open it. All political parties claim that oil and gas is good for Albertans and Canadians. No doubt, a large sector of the economy is based on oil and gas resources in Alberta. Generously saying, there are 140,000 people employed in the oil and gas sector in Alberta in 2017. It is 6.1% of employment share of the total number of employed. Also, it is estimated that around 50,000 people lost their jobs after the “downturn”.

So how good is oil and gas for Albertans and Canadians? Obviously, it is good for the 6.1% employed in oil and gas. A good livelihood. Do Albertans or Canadians share from the stupendous profits of the oil and gas sector? Nope, that goes to the 20-30 people of shareholders plus ~20 in the board of directors per company. What trickles down to you is the meager corporate tax collected from those companies. That fuels all public services. And portions of it is recycled back to these companies as subsidies.

The whole pipeline fiasco in Alberta has to be put into perspective. In the last 40-50 years oil and gas companies have built their pipelines as they saw fit. Nobody complained that Alberta is landlocked, can’t sell its oil to foreign markets. It was comfortable to sell the oil to the US. Then came the oil price crunch. Nobody saw it coming. As a result, Kinder Morgan did not choose to build the extension of the Trans Mountain Pipeline to the BC coast. The federal government stepped in and bought it for 4.5 billion. You and I will foot the bill, however expensive it will be and when it is built, it will be re-privatized so private corporations can profit from its operation.

This is a common phenomenon in capitalist economies, governments socialize costs and privatize profits. What you will see out of it is perhaps the couple of thousand jobs for its realization and corporate taxes paid to federal and provincial coffins. Other than that, it does not make sense for you. You will not be benefited. If it remained in public hands you could say, that a larger portion trickles to you, because the profit from operating it would largely trickle to you.

The oil and gas lobby are very powerful in Alberta. All governments, including the Notley government, are in their pockets. The media is also jumping to the bandwagon amplifying the message: “oil and gas is good for you”, “I love it”. Don’t be fooled.

One more note. The world oil price crunch came about because suddenly a huge amount of oil has been dumped to the market (i.e., fracking). Every market participant, private corporations and state-owned corporations all around the world competing to get the most money for themselves completely disregarding the consequences on the world economy. Capitalism in action. Its “rationale” is irrational. And Albertans “want” to dump its share to the market, more oil to the fire.