Has the door been slammed shut on the oil?
By Letter to the Editor on June 26, 2020.
It was our conservative hero Peter Lougheed who urged the Klein and Stelmach governments to slow down the growth of the oilsands, collect proper royalties and taxes, and refine our oil in Canada and they refused to listen. The oil executives agreed with Lougheed that something needed to be done about out pollution and they offered to join the Kyoto Accord and Klein and Harper refused to all of it. Dr. David Swann stood with the oil executives stating that it was having an adverse effect of many Albertans health and Klein had him fired. Public outcry forced Klein to apologize and offer him his job back, but he declined and eventually became leader of the Alberta Liberal Party. Now after the Notley and Trudeau governments agreed to work with the oil executives and implement the carbon tax that they fully supported, knowing how well it was working in other countries, along comes Liberal, turned Reformer, has never been a true Conservative in Jason Kenney to go against their wishes and destroy it. The backlash has been devastating to this province with Encana Corp. moving their head office from Calgary to Denver, Norway has removed all their investments from Alberta and told the world not to invest in Alberta’s dirty oil. If that wasn’t bad enough, now Joe Biden has made it crystal clear that if he is elected as President he will not allow Alberta’s dirty oil to be shipped by pipeline to the Texas refineries across the U.S., the risk of spills is too high. Those of us who had ties to the oil industry think Jason Kenney, instead of working with the oil executives, has in fact slammed the door shut on our industry and it will be impossible to attract new investors. Alan K. Spiller Edmonton 10-9
