Evidence of meeting #37 for Natural Resources in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sands.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Corporate Development, HTC Purenergy Inc.
It is very, very expensive in the early days.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm going to have to cut you off, because I'm going to run out of time and I want to get to Mr. Potter for a second.
Mr. Potter, in April this year this federal government resisted Sinopec's offer to buy into the tar sands, particularly on the export of raw bitumen to a lower-level region for refinement. The Prime Minister had made a commitment in 2006 and then again in 2008 not to export raw bitumen to jurisdictions that had lower environmental standards than our own.
You talked about free market and geopolitics being two factors in an energy security environment. Is what the Prime Minister did in alignment with free market principles, to resist a free market offer for Sinopec to come in and buy up a big chunk in the oil sands?
Chief Operating Officer, Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
I'm not a market expert, so I probably won't get into hot water by trying to answer the question directly.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
It's an interesting moment, though, isn't it? Sinopec wants to buy ConocoPhillips. Some billions of dollars of so-called foreign investment are on the table and the government says no. The government says it's because of lower standards in China, in particular, for upgrading on GHG emissions.
Chief Operating Officer, Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
That is a very strong geopolitical reality. That's why you have the expertise in other groups, not in my person, to actually advise you accordingly. I will advise you on the technology and on the research needs for it, but the market side of it is beyond my résumé, if you want to be simplistic.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Then it comes back to what this committee's trying to study, which is around the notions of energy security. If I'm in the oil sector, that puts an element of uncertainty to me in terms of who I'm available to be sold to and who I'm not, depending on where they come from. This was a Chinese endeavour. If it had been German, French, or Australian, maybe the sale would have gone ahead. We don't know. It's again back to the role of the federal government.
Ms. Krause, I want to turn to you for a second. I've looked at your article in the post, and I think you've had to take some down, in terms of the connections of Tides Canada and Tides in the U.S., but perhaps not. Your thesis is that outside influence, essentially, outside money is coming in and affecting Canadian policy and Canadian lives. Is that right? Is that the concern you raise in the article I'm reading?
As an Individual
My concern is that there's a mix of interests. It's not purely about the environment. I can see that what they're doing would protect the environment, but I can also see the other purposes on other--
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The notion of the money coming from the U.S.... If the money had been raised in Toronto or Calgary or Vancouver to fight that same fight, your concerns would be fewer. In your article, again and again you talk about how the money is--
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
No, you very much do. These are your own words.
The question I have is this. There's a proposal happening right now with the Enbridge pipeline, which I'm sure all the witnesses are familiar with. Enbridge has told me and told the public that they've raised $100 million, $10 million from 10 different companies to promote their project. Some of those companies are foreign and they are buying influence, if they can. They are paying for things in Kitimat Village, which you mentioned earlier. They're paying for festivities. They're paying for new skateboard parks. They're spending money, which is of foreign origin, to affect Canadians' hearts and minds. Why haven't you investigated that?
As an Individual
Let me be very clear. I think charities should be doing charity. I would be just as disappointed if Canadian charitable foundations were funding something that wasn't exclusively charitable. It just so happens that the charitable foundations that are funding this are American. I would be calling them out, no matter which country they were from--
As an Individual
--including if they were from our own.
Yes, there is some charitable funding, but very, very little compared to what is coming in from other sources.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So you have no concern about Enbridge. That's fascinating.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The question she didn't get to answer, Chair, was that Enbridge has raised similar tens of millions of dollars, but there's no concern at all.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Well, your time's up. She may choose to answer it when she's responding to questions from Mr. Allen, who is next.
Go ahead, please, Mr. Allen.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
Ms. Inman, I'd like to start with you and pick up on one of the comments that Mr. Cullen started, which was building $40 per tonne into the pricing. Then you talked about the $15 per tonne in Alberta. What would that impact be? We all know that it's going to be transferred to the consumer. What would be the impact of that on the consumer? Do you have any estimates on what that price per tonne is?
Executive Director, Corporate Development, HTC Purenergy Inc.
On the gap at the moment between the cost of capture, the cost of transportation, and the cost of injecting that into a reservoir that may have incremental oil production, I believe the cost is somewhere between $70 and $100. Right at the moment the tax in Alberta is $15 a tonne, so that's not going to get us anywhere close to covering those costs. When I talked to the enhanced oil recovery producers, they're saying “Well, maybe a price of $40 a tonne is something we would like to pay”. So you can see there's a very large gap, and that's why, to get this industry kick-started, we need some help from the government to get our technology, which I believe is completely proven technology at this very small scale, into the commercial realm. We would like that kick-started with the government's assistance.
Does that answer your question?
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
It does. Either way, we're going to create, in my view, a false market, because—
Executive Director, Corporate Development, HTC Purenergy Inc.
Not over time.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
—the government has been subsidizing, or the consumers are going to pay in the end.
Executive Director, Corporate Development, HTC Purenergy Inc.
But only in the beginning.
I don't have those exact numbers with me, Mr. Allen, but I can get them for you. If you take that out over the vast number of consumers there are across the country, it's a very, very small increment in terms of the cost of our energy that we use every day in our homes and in our cars. It's much, much smaller than we think it is.
Recently, in the last few years, gasoline prices have tripled. Did anybody stop driving their cars? No, they didn't. So I don't think that in the end the consumer is going to be vastly affected by the cost to capture our carbon. But we do need the government to get on board with this so we can get it started. In the end, the consumers will be willing to pay for it.
Conservative
Mike Allen Conservative Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
Okay. Well, I might debate that with you.
Ms. Krause, going to you with respect to one of the comments you made, that activism isn't what it used to be, yes, I would say so. I mean, I'm looking at some of the chief investment officers' salaries here on one of the slides--$1.6 million, $1.5 million a year in CEO salaries. They're pretty significant dollars; they're almost like the major banks.
You said $300 million over the last ten years in some of the research you've done. You also commented it was on three things, though. It was oil and gas, it was forestry, and that type of thing. Then you said this year it has gone from $15 million to $18 million, the lobby efforts on oil and gas.
Has that been a decreasing amount over the ten years, or have you seen the oil and gas ramp up? Are you seeing an acceleration in those amounts in the last ten years, or even in the last two or three years?