Plains Midstream Canada is out of the regulatory penalty box after passing an audit imposed by the Alberta Energy Regulator following several polluting leaks from its petroleum pipelines. But the regulator says it will continue to keep a close eye on the activities of the Calgary-based subsidiary of Plains All American Pipeline, L.P., of Houston. […]
Shell looks to 2015 for Arctic drilling
Shell has applied for a permit to drill for oil in the Alaskan Arctic next summer. The company hasn’t made a final decision to persevere with summer drilling in the difficult location,but proposals submitted to Washington kept options open. The plan proposes two drilling rigs in the Chukchi Sea, producing more than 400,000 barrels a […]
Premiers give stamp of approval to climate change plan
Ontario and Quebec have seized the leadership of a long-promised Canadian energy strategy, shifting the focus to climate change and clean energy from the pipeline agenda. At the closing session of their annual conference on Prince Edward Island, premiers released the outline of the Canadian Energy Strategy, which every one of them has endorsed. The […]
Louisiana is sinking, oil refineries threatened
Southeastern Louisiana is sinking – fast. In only 80 years 5,200 square kilometres of coast have become open ocean. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists say by 2100 “the Gulf of Mexico could rise as much as 4.3 feet across this landscape,” meaning that all of the infrastructure located outside of the protective […]
Comment: Refining lets us control our oil
Canada has a problem. We are blessed with a resource — oil — needed by people around the world but we’re selling 99 per cent of that resource to one customer, the United States. We’re selling it at a significant discount. We do this because it’s what the pipeline infrastructure in North America obliges us […]
Can new technology ease concerns over pipeline safety?
Who could have ever imagined that North America would surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas liquids? A decade ago, that would have seemed laughable. Yet that’s exactly what has happened; and it’s not just Saudi Arabia that has been left in North America’s dust — Russia has, too. […]
Quest to sequester, a Shell Canada first
To paraphrase a famous observation, “Everybody talks about climate change, but nobody does much about it.” Indeed, media reports and scientific publications may be thick with discussion of this extraordinary environmental phenomenon but practical proposals for directly dealing with it are thin on the ground while full-scale initiatives are even more scarce. It is worth […]
Inspiring innovation
Development of the Alberta oil sands in a responsible manner brings complex challenges that are driving technological innovation across the country. Individuals and businesses are helping to establish Canada as a world leader in tailings reclamation, water treatment and liquids storage. TAILINGS RECLAMATION ElectroKinetic Solutions, is proposing to apply its patented electro-kinetic reclamation (EKR) technology […]
Comment: Oil sands phase-out may be Canada’s greatest contribution to the world
The occasion of writing this column prompted reflection on my engineering career, in particular three critical junctures. The first was in 1970, when my teacher pointed to Northern Alberta on a map at the front of our classroom, declaring that the oil embedded in the soil there would be Canada’s most important contribution to the […]
Promoters of proposed Sarnia refinery launching study
Backers of a push to see a new $10-billion refinery built in Sarnia-Lambton, Ontario to upgrade oil sands bitumen gathered in late August to launch a pre-feasibility study. Clem Bowman, a former head of Imperial Oil’s research department in Sarnia who went on to play an important role in developing Alberta’s oil sands, returned to […]
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