Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on Feb. 20th, 2007

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Saudi Arabia is the number one producer in the world, with the number one reserves; we're number two. What does it cost in Saudi Arabia to produce a barrel of oil?

[Gordon Lambert]

It's $2 or $3.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

So it's quite a bit more expensive to produce a barrel of oil in Canada.

[Gordon Lambert]

Yes.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I've been in Fort McMurray for almost 40 years now. I remember something I'm not allowed to mention in Alberta, the national energy program, which was brought in by the Liberal government some time ago. What it did to our community and to Alberta's economy generally—I just want to talk about it very briefly. There were 25,000 people in the community at that time, I think. My parents were in business. Every private business in the area closed down within probably four or five years, putting many people out of work and into bankruptcy. It was based on something that you talked about, which was investor confidence.

I would just like to ask you what you see as the most important thing we can do as a government, on policy, in relation to what we're doing now on Bill C-30. Is it in relation to investor confidence?

[Gordon Lambert]

That's absolutely fundamental. If we impose a punitive target or a price on carbon that ends up being punitive, and shareholders aren't captive, they will simply exit the industry, which then hinders our ability to actually make the changes we're trying to make. It would definitely be one of those unintended consequences that would undermine progress on the environment.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

This is the last question on this. In 1986-87, Dee Parkinson was, I think, your president and CEO. At that time, Suncor actually considered closing its doors because of the profitability or lack thereof. Is that not correct?

[Gordon Lambert]

It was in 1987, yes.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

How many employees, currently, does Suncor have in northern Alberta?

[Gordon Lambert]

It depends on whether you count full-time and contract workers. At any point in time, on our site, we'll have upwards of 10,000 workers in total.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Do you know the mix of those people, as far as where they're from in Alberta or Canada?

[Gordon Lambert]

They're from across Canada, from all regions. There are even international skilled trades workers on site as well.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Are there benefits to sequestration, over and above just being able to capture greenhouse gases? For instance, my understanding is that doing sequestration will actually be more efficient than pumping other products such as clean water into the surface for gas recovery. Is that correct?

[Gordon Lambert]

Yes, there's substantial use of water flooding of conventional oil reservoirs as a way of improving efficiency of extraction. CO₂ can be used as a substitute for water flooding, and we can get incremental conventional oil recovery as a result.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Is that looked on as a number one prospect right now for the energy companies in northern Alberta?

[Gordon Lambert]

Because there's a revenue stream that's generated through CO₂ injection into reservoirs of that type, it does tend to be quite attractive. But if we're trying to maximize CO₂ recovery and avoidance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we'd also be injecting CO₂ into storage reservoirs, which primarily would be depleted gas reservoirs. But of course there's no revenue stream that accrues if we store CO₂.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

So, in essence, as gas is being pumped from around the province, or even from Saskatchewan, as the case may be, the faster the sequestration technology is advanced, the more advantageous it is to the industry as well as to the earth.

[Gordon Lambert]

Yes, and we think there's an opportunity for innovation in new uses of CO₂ as well that we just haven't really found yet, but that will happen once we have the CO₂ supply available.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lambert.

We'll move on to Monsieur Lussier. Vous avez cinq minutes, s'il vous plaît.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You state in your brief, Mr. Cleland, that natural gas accounts for 26% of the energy used in Canada and that this percentage is growing.

In which area do you think this growth will occur in the years ahead? Could vehicles fuelled by natural gas be one part of this growth?

[Michael Cleland]

The biggest area of growth is in power generation, and I suspect, looking forward, in distributed generation, in combined heat and power applications. It's growing as a share in other parts of the economy, including residential and commercial, and could grow more, actually displacing electricity.

There's some growth in vehicles, large heavy-duty vehicles, in urban areas, with some very good urban air quality benefits, but it's from a very small base.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

What about cars?

[Michael Cleland]

It's a lot harder. They've tried with police fleets and things in the past. Original equipment manufacturers have tended to shy away from it. The big opportunities going forward are large vehicles such as buses.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Bramley, you say that you are in favour of a carbon market and that carbon credits should be administered territorially.

Could you talk a little more about this idea of administering carbon credits territorially?

[Matthew Bramley]

We wanted to suggest an alternate way of reaching the targets for those who are not comfortable with funding projects abroad, the purchase of credits provided for by the Kyoto Protocol. The idea is to be able to pay $30 a tonne into a fund that would be independent of government. The money would be reinvested in projects that would result in reduced emissions locally, within the province where the payments are made. If it were impossible to find enough reduction opportunities in the province in question, there would be a subsidy to enable polluters to remain within the $30-a-tonne maximum. In this way, we could achieve some geographical balance, for those who are concerned about this issue, while reassuring the industry about the price per tonne.