I am writing in regards to the editorial last week titled Get ’er done not good enough.
As stated by Greg Neiman, I also say it is a terrible loss to Alberta’s economy if we ship unrefined crude across our border. We will end up purchasing the finished product, oil and gasoline when it should be refined here.
As stated in my letter, which was in the Advocate a few months ago, the Keystone pipeline when completed will move 1.1 million barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Houston area and this will create an estimated 20,000 jobs in that area.
And that is just Keystone. There is another pipeline in the works that will transport raw oil to the B.C. coast to be shipped to other countries, where it will be refined and most likely sold back to us.
I went to see my MLA, Cal Dallas, and asked him why Alberta is shipping all the unrefined oil, in the Keystone pipeline case, to Houston where 20,000 jobs will be created and ultimately sold back to us as gasoline. Dallas informed me it was not feasible to build a refinery in Alberta at this time. So I asked him to show me the feasibility study that must have been completed to make such a statement and after a while he forwarded me a letter from Ron Liepert, minster of energy, stating that the government of Alberta will not get into building refineries.
I do not know why Liepert feels the Alberta government should not get into the refinery business. Norway has its own nationally-owned oil company, Stat Oil, and they do very well. Imagine all the jobs that would be created by a new refinery being built in, if not Alberta, another province in Canada.
If Liepert does not want to build a refinery then why not make it a stipulation for a new oilsands project? Instead of granting a licence to build a $2-billion oilsands plant, make a contract so the company must build a $1-billion oilsands plant and a $1-billion refinery.
There are other ways to get a refinery built in Alberta without the government building it.
I feel it is a real tragic waste of Alberta’s non-renewable resources to ship unrefined oil to the U.S. only to have them benefit from the thousands of jobs it will create.
I feel that that prosperity and jobs should stay in Alberta for our future generations to benefit from.
The government just does not seem to care to look at the long-range picture, just the “get ’er done fast now” picture.
Ed Tatarnic
Red Deer