NAFTA’s TRUMP CARd

High oil: NAFTA’s trump card

Posted: June 14, 2008, 3:04 PM by Diane Francis

Canadian Politics, Energy, U.S. Politics, Environment, China, Middle East

Note worker beside the world’s biggest machinery on the world’s biggest construction site at the world’s biggest oil region in Alberta’s oil sands.

The global economy is now tripolar and growth is driven by three roughly equal major economic engines: North America, Europe and Asia. However, high commodity prices threaten to slow Asia and Europe’s economies.

NDP calls for halt to Tar Sands projects

NDP targets new projects in oilsands

By DAVE DORMER

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Federal NDP Leader Jack Layton has again called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to impose a moratorium on new oilsands projects in Alberta until a better environmental strategy is crafted.

There should be a halt “until (the federal government) can prove to Albertans, to First Nations and to all Canadians that it has examined the cumulative social and environmental impacts of the oilsands development and has plans in place to address those consequences,” Layton said at the Alberta NDP’s annual convention in Calgary.

Some foreign workers unqualified to work – says union

By CAROL CHRISTIAN, SUN MEDIA

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FORT MCMURRAY — With increasing mistrust of government regulation of electricians’ trade qualifications, some in the oilsands are taking matters into their own hands.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has a team of Asian workers that now checks the references and the work histories of Chinese immigrants seeking membership before working in the oilsands.

It’s being done as part of an effort to weed out some Chinese immigrants who are unqualified, even though they hold Ontario industrial electrician trade tickets or the Alberta equivalent.

Energy firms put on the spot

Symposium lures investors and protesters

Jon Harding

Calgary Herald

Monday, June 16, 2008

Oil and gas companies swimming in cash. Protesters handing out bottles of Athabasca River water.

Both await 350 of the top institutional investors in the Canadian oilpatch as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) investment symposium begins Monday in Calgary.

The annual CAPP event opens with a different backdrop to a year ago, when drilling activity in Western Canada was in a rut and capital markets were dry as dust, particularly for scores of Canada’s junior and intermediate explorers.

Oil prices are fluttering towards $140 US a barrel and natural gas prices are up roughly 70 per cent since January — an almost immeasurable difference, although one that investors in equities have still not taken completely to heart. Some Canadian oil and gas stocks are up but the group as a whole has lagged behind growth in surging oil and natural gas.

Meanwhile, the world’s focus on Alberta’s oilsands has recently intensified amid global supply constraints and growing concern about the massive play’s environmental footprint.