I think it is generally agreed that Alberta is more generous than it need be given the price of oil. Of course it is quite expensive to extract oil from the tar sands deposits so if the price of oil were to drop significantly I suppose the incentives and low royalties would make more sense. But in that case it might make more sense to just leave it in the ground until the price increases. Anyway there is no reason that the government of Alberta or in a joint venture with the feds could not develop the oil sands rather than having big oil do it. However, it is questionable to what extent they should be developed at all given the environmental consequences and costs involved. It might make more sense to invest in alternative sources of energy. Alberta has huge wind potential in the foothills of the Rockies and other areas as well. --- Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 4/8/07, ken hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Thanks for the URL. The watch is run by the > Pembina > > Institute. This think tank is actually located in > > Alberta. It seems to have a reasonable number of > > staff. > > I post a media release here. The blue print can be > > downloaded from the site. > > Notice that the release says that Albertans > should > > think like an owner rather than that they should > > nationalise the industry so the governments could > > realise the profits. The ownership will actually > be > > granted to big oil corps. To develop the project > > responsibly can only mean for them to maximise > > shareholder profits. > > I know nothing about economics of oil sands, as I'm > just starting to > look into it. Is it the case that, but for the > bargain-basement deals > offered by the government, investors wouldn't be > investing in the oil > sands, or is it that they would be still investing a > lot into them > even if the deals were a lot worse for them? Can > you or anyone tell > me? > -- > Yoshie > Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html
