Anger Ball

Premier Dwight Ball got angry on Tuesday.

He's angry at the suggestion that he approved paying severance to Ed Martin.

Well, really he's angry at is how much Martin wound up getting now that the amounts are becoming known and unpopular but we'll get back to that.

There's actually no question that Ball was aware Martin got severance.  As the Telegram's James McLeod has noted,  VOCM's Fred Hutton asked specifically about severance on April 21.  Here's the exchange:

VOCM News Director Fred Hutton: Has Ed Martin’s severance been worked out yet? 

Alarums and Excursions #nlpoli

Dwight Ball is hiding details of his involvement in the decision to give an enormous and unwarranted severance package paid to Ed Martin despite the fact Martin had quit as Nalcor's chief executive.

That became plain in Ball's responses to repeated questions from both opposition politicians and reporters on Wednesday.  They all asked Ball repeatedly if he discussed severance with Martin in either of two meetings the Premier had with Martin in mid-April. Ball's answer was deliberately evasive.  He had clearly rehearsed the wording precisely because he repeated it over and over and over again. The question required a mere yes or no in reply. Instead,  Ball said again and again that the matter of severance was one for the board.  Every word Ball said more than either yes or no confirmed that what he was saying was not true.

Ball also said repeatedly that he only became aware of the details of the severance on May 5. He stressed the word "details" because it is an important word for him.  Ball repeatedly stressed the word as if knowing the details of the severance were more important than knowing about and approving of the fact that Martin had received severance in the first place.

That's the sort of distinction that only comes to a certain breed of lawyers or people who would describe *themselves* political strategists.  They think this sort of thing is clever.  It isn't.  It is merely too cute by half.  Everyone knows the ploy for what it is.  It's as transparent as saying someone has quit an important job to spend more time with his family.  No one believes that one because we have heard the same lie so many times. Had we all played a drinking game with Dwight Ball on Wednesday, we'd be in hospital with acute alcohol poisoning for taking a shot every time he dodged.

Ball digs himself deeper into hole #nlpoli

Dwight Ball's latest version of Ed Martin's departure from Nalcor only deepens the political quagmire into which the Premier and his staff have worked themselves with diligent effort and persistence.

Here's how.

Offense and Defense #nlpoli

If you're not on offense, you are on defense.

And in politics, if you are on defense, you are losing.

The Liberals wound up on the defensive yet again Wednesday with the resignation of Ed Martin and the entire Nalcor board.

To be sure, Williams-era appointees like Martin or former board chair Ken Marshall have been responsible for the mess that is Muskrat Falls. The province will be better off seeing the backside of them if only because they can no longer make a very bad situation they alone created all the worse.

The political problem for Premier Dwight Ball and the Liberals is in how Martin left.

Getting while the getting is good. #nlpoli

As if on cue,  Danny Williams' publicist tweeted praise for Ed Martin as soon as news broke that Danny Williams' right-hand for so many years was leaving the energy corporation Williams created.

Almost an hour later, she flipped out a statement from the former Premier himself praising Martin, Nalcor, and Muskrat Falls in terms that were eerily similar to ones Premier Dwight Ball had used when he announced Martin was leaving Wednesday morning.

Reporters raced across town in a late winter storm to get from Ball's scrum to hear what Martin would say. Martin began with a recitation of his accomplishments and threw heaps of praise at the men and women of Nalcor.  He spoke in the most glowing terms of everything Nalcor was doing including Muskrat Falls.

And then he explained that he was leaving.

Time to go.

In 2010,  shortly after unveiling Muskrat Falls,  Danny Williams quit suddenly, unexpectedly too.

Time to go, he'd said.

Actions and words #nlpoli

The provincial cabinet has known since January - at least - that the powerhouse at Muskrat Falls is only 15% completed despite a huge payout to the contractor.

That's what Nalcor reported to the committee of provincial bureaucrats named by the Conservatives to get a report from Nalcor every now and again.  They can't do anything else except receive the reports and pass them on to cabinet.  They still do it under the Liberals.

The company hired by cabinet to conduct yet another review of information supplied by Nalcor that government already had included a little table of progress on major components at Muskrat Falls.  The powerhouse is a major component.

But it isn't on EY's table, shown at right and released earlier this month.  It's lumped in with "spillway" and shows it is supposedly almost 40% complete.

There's a lot of difference between 15 and 40.

Old whine still sour #nlpoli

"I'm concerned that we have an aging asset,”  natural resources minister Siobhan Coady told CBC in explaining the most recent break downs at the Holyrood generating station.

About two years ago, in the midst of darknl,  then-Premier Kathy Dunderdale said pretty much the same thing:  “We've talked incessantly, it seems to me, over the last number of years about the aging facility in Holyrood and the fact that that facility needed to be replaced.”  Before that, Nalcor and its supporters used “aging infrastructure” and the inevitable climb of oil prices as the excuse to build the multi-billion dollar Muskrat Falls project.

The old whine in new skins isn't any sweeter in the ear whether it is coming from Coady or Dunderdale.

Indeed, what’s most disturbing about Siobhan Coady's media interview is that in the two years since darknl we have learned that the lines someone fed Coady are not true.

Yet someone still fed Coady the false lines and Coady used them.

The Third Line #nlpoli

Most people in Newfoundland and Labrador never think about the electricity into their homes.  They don’t know where it comes from and they certainly don’t have any idea how it gets from the generating plants to their fridges, washing machines, and television sets.

People are thinking about those things a lot more these days, in the wake of the recent power supply crisis.

One of the issues you will likely hear a lot more about in upcoming hearings by the public utilities board is about a new power transmission line from the hydro generating station at Bay d’Espoir across the isthmus and on to Holyrood.

Here’s some additional information about the project.

The Confidence Campaign #nlpoli #darknl

The provincial government started its campaign to gain control of the political agenda on Thursday with its announcement that it would appoint someone to do something sometime in the future.

The conventional media outlets didn’t report Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s announcement that way.  The Telegram, for example, called it an “independent” review but acknowledged in the second sentence of its brief story that Dunderdale “doesn't know the shape or scope of the review”. 

CBC went farther in its online story, saying that the “independent review” would “look at the current electrical system in Newfoundland and Labrador; how it operates, how it is managed, and how it is regulated as the province moves from an isolated system to an interconnected system.”

But really, all of that is just an unsubstantiated claim, given that the news release includes these words in a quote attributed to the Premier:

…over the next six weeks my government will work to draft terms of reference and identify an independent body to conduct a review.

Dunderstan #nlpoli

In January 2012, Ed Martin and his nasally drone ridiculed the idea of shifting demand for electricity from one part of the day to another so that his company wouldn’t have a problem meeting spikes in demand during the winter.

He dismissed the idea as “theoretical” even though it’s widely used across Canada in places where the electricity system is well managed.

Two years later, almost to the day, energy conservation and demand management are Martin’s best friend to help people get through what his Conservative friends are willing to concede was the current “inconvenience.” 

The Great Blizzard/Blackout 2014 #nlpoli

Some observations:

1.  Yep.  It’s a crisis.

When you have a major utility cutting electricity to people in a blizzard at random, for random periods of time because it cannot supply enough electricity to meet demand, you have a crisis.

That’s what it feels like to the people in it.  That’s what it is.

People never knew when their lights would be on or off, nor would they know for how long.  The Newfoundland Power and the NL Hydro operations people who briefed the public were straightforward and factual.  They did their jobs well.

The thing is that the public emergency system, including the politicians, didn’t clue in that randomly shutting off power to thousands of voters at a time over the course of several days might be a bit of a problem for the voters.

Muskrat, Martin, and Meaning #nlpoli

Note the number of times Ed Martin says “open”  or “transparent” within the first five minutes of his weekend interview for On Point with David Cochrane.

Odds are very high that these words relate to a very sensitive issue for Nalcor, revealed by their extensive polling.

Put the On Point interview together with Martin’s article in the weekend Telegram  - not online - and you can see why these ideas are causing Nalcor such problems.

Looking beyond the Hebron sandbox #nlpoli

ExxonMobil drew a line in the sand this morning, and the minister and I are here to draw another line in the sand, as far as this project is concerned.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale, 21 June 2012

Premier Kathy Dunderdale and natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy spent more than a half hour meeting with reporters on Thursday to talk about the provincial government’s position that a major module for the Hebron project must be built in the province.

Take a look at the scrum video.  There is a lot of talk.  There is a whole lot of talk.  Some of it tough-sounding.  There are threats.

But there is so much talk, and so much rambling, and so many threats that most of the talk is unconvincing.

A closer look at the history and the agreements pulls you toward the same conclusion.

Bullshit then or now? Nalcor boss changes story on natural gas and Muskrat megadebt project

Ed Martin dismisses the idea that natural gas might be a sensible replacement for burning Bunker C at Holyrood.

Here’s the whole story from VOCM in the event they disappear it:

Nalcor has considered - and rejected - the use of liquefied natural gas at the Holyrood generating station as an alternative to Bunker C oil. Because of the current and projected cost of oil, Newfoundland and Labrador's energy corporation has decided to develop Muskrat Falls hydroelectric power on the Lower Churchill River.

Nalcor CEO Ed Martin, speaking on VOCM Open Line with Randy Simms on Tuesday, said the corporation would have to construct a plant to liquefy the natural gas, which is a very costly venture. The other alternative is to tap in to the international market for natural gas and have tankers, which are supplying markets abroad, offload material for Holyrood.

But from the that was then, this is now file, Martin didn’t always think that way.

A mere seven months ago, Martin sang a very different tune.

Back then, turning natural gas to electricity was one of the great opportunities that lay in building a line from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia. The Telegram covered Martin’s speech to the Board of Trade

Many of those opportunities flow from the Maritime link connecting the island portion of the province with the rest of the North American electrical grid.

One example: the possibility of generating electricity from natural gas, also known as gas-to-wire. It’s also an alternative to building pipelines to export natural gas.

So the question is:  was Ed Martin bullshitting in December or is he bullshitting now?

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Muskrat Falls: Internal contradictions

Nalcor headman Ed Martin is supposed to be selling the Muskrat falls plan for the Conservatives to help their re-election bid.

He is talking up the economic wonderments of a power line from the island of Newfoundland into Nova Scotia.

One of the things such a line makes feasible, Martin claims, is a thermal plant to turn natural gas into electricity.  Natural gas is currently so cheap that American generators are selling electricity from their gas plants in the United States to New Brunswick.

But, as the Telegram reports,

Martin said converting natural gas to electricity would also require a small gas turbine plant and a lot of study.

“Our focus right now, no question, is the Lower Churchill … and that’s going to be a five- to six-year construction project.

“We’d have to see if gas was there, we’d have to run the economics, it would be sometime after that. But, once again, five or six years is not that long a time.”

“There” is onshore at Parsons Pond.  But there is also gas offshore Newfoundland and Labrador so it is not like there is a shortage of available gas nor is the idea of using the gas to fire a generator such a novel idea.

However, note that Martin says that gas generation is something to be studied down the road a ways, once the Lower Churchill is done. “We’d have to run the economics, it would be sometime after” Muskrat is up and running.

Gas-to-electricity generation is not green but it is a lot less environmentally damaging than burning diesel at a plant like the now infamous one at Holyrood.  Don’t forget that the main use for the power at Muskrat Falls is to replace the evil generators at Holyrood.

So with all that firmly in front of your eyes, note that Kathy Dunderdale keeps insisting that all the alternatives to Muskrat falls have already been studied and that the Falls option is the cheapest. As she said on the last day of a very short session of the legislature:

“Mr. Speaker, they are going to have to pay a lot less for Muskrat Falls power than for any other alternative that is available to the people in Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Speaker…”

“We have considered all of the options available to us…”

So if Ed Martin hasn’t already studied the cost of generating electricity from natural gas – by his own admission, no less – then how can Kathy Dunderdale say that Ed Martin has already studied replacing Holyrood with gas generation and found that such a plan would cost more than $6.5 billion?

Well, she can’t. 

Not unless Ed Martin is fibbing.

And if Ed isn’t fibbing then that means that Kathy Dunderdale is fibbing or doesn’t understand her briefings.

Now there’s a shocker.

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Lower Churchill: more potato, potato

Sometimes really interesting things crop up in two stories about the Lower Churchill. 

Take for example, the likelihood of a deal with Emera to run a power line to Nova Scotia.  There’s a Canadian Press story dated November 1 that says this:

The head of Nalcor Energy won't say whether the Newfoundland and Labrador Crown agency is close to inking a deal with Emera Inc. (TSX:EMA) on the proposed Lower Churchill hydroelectric project.

Then there’s a CBC story dated November 1 that says something else:

Hydroelectric power from a proposed project in Labrador could reach the Maritimes within five to six years, Ed Martin, president of Newfoundland's Nalcor Energy, said Monday.

That five years obviously wouldn’t start today because as of 2010, the project is still bogged down in an environmental assessment.  Still, Ed didn’t give a probably projection on that.  It could – entirely fantastically  - be pumping juice in five years;  odds are though that the project would not be pushing electricity a decade from now. 

Premier Danny Williams recently told a gathering of the province’s Reform-based Conservative Party that a deal to develop one dam was possibly very close.  Ed Martin, the head of the province’s energy corporation told reporters in Halifax this week that  - from the CBC story – "[t]ime will not drive us. It has to be right."

Hmmm.

Potato.  Potato.

Tomato. Tomato.

Maybe the whole thing’s off. 

Maybe the whole thing’s on.

Maybe the whole thing is half on, and half off, go-it-alone and with partners simultaneously.

Surely you’ve noticed that since 2005 this project has gone from doing it alone to doing it with partners to doing only a bit of it with partners and still nothing has happened after five years of endless public posturing.

Oh yes, and five years of secret talks, in addition to the public talking about it.

And the price, meanwhile is still $6.5 billion for the smaller dam and a bunch of expensive transmission lines.  That was the original price for two dams and a line to Quebec. The whole thing could actually cost as much as $14 billion.

But that’s not the end of the flippin’ and da floppin’.

Danny Williams told his Conservative followers that the line to Nova Scotia would be a sweet way to reject Quebec after all their slights, real and imagined, over the years.  According to CBC, Martin said that shipping all that power means NALCOR needs a line to Nova Scotia in addition to a line that runs through Quebec.

"If we are going to move the kind of volumes we're talking about over the 50 years, we've come to the conclusion we need both routes."

And in leading up to that comment, Martin restated one of the ideas your humble e-scribbler floated, just so he could refute it:

"With respect to that question of is it something that we're using it from a leverage perspective, the answer is no,"

Still, though, if Ed Martin actually had a deal or was really close to one, he’d be announcing it rather than talking about all sorts of scenarios and possibilities.

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Lower Churchill, Nova Scotia and NB Power: “The sheer economics of it…”

And it is not like people haven’t said this before:

Premier Darrell Dexter said he’s not surprised Newfoundland and Labrador is looking for a cheaper option than an underwater cable connection to Nova Scotia for moving energy from Lower Churchill to market.

"The sheer economics of it are undeniable in terms of a transportation corridor for that energy," the premier said after a cabinet meeting Thursday.

Read down a wee bit further in the Chronicle-herald story and you get this:

An SNC-Lavalin transmission system study for the Nova Scotia government estimates the cost of connecting Newfoundland and Nova Scotia at $800 million to $1.2 billion. The estimate of connecting Nova Scotia to New England is $2 billion to $3 billion.

Yes, stringing underwater power cables from some point in Newfoundland and Labrador to Nova Scotia would cost at least $1.2 billion.  Initial cost estimates are always low on megaprojects like this. 

But to get to that bit, you’d have to string the long from Gull Island, down to the coast of Labrador, across to the island of Newfoundland down to some point on the southwest coast of the island to get to the bit that costs at least $1.2 billion.

The cost of that plus the line out to Soldier’s Pond near St. John’s would be $2.0 billion or more.

You can tell the Nova Scotia option was never being seriously considered.  There isn’t any plan to do it currently under environmental review.

Now all this too has to make you wonder why Darrell joined in attacking Shawn Graham in New Brunswick. His whole position on this just didn’t make any sense before. And it really doesn’t make any sense now that he admits he knows the whole power line to Nova Scotia is just so much crap.

In fact, Dexter acknowledges the whole thing is crap because he adamantly insists that there’s no way Nova Scotia taxpayers would be on the hook to help build it.

“We’re not going to build it,” he said.

 

Not surprisingly, NALCOR Energy boss Ed Martin is talking about the cost of land transmission through Quebec. Hearings into NALCOR’s application/objections on that front are due to start this week. Land transmission is pretty much the only economically viable way of getting Labrador power out to any market.

The current estimate for building a new set of power lines across Quebec is $3.0 billion.  That’s not bad considering the estimates for the line Soldier’s Pond for a mere 800 megawatts.

You can tell the crowd at NALCOR understand the whole game currently being played.  Look at the way it wound up in the Telegram over the weekend:

Regardless of what happens, officials say the regulator's decisions will provide certainty for Newfoundland and Labrador's energy corporation as it tries to get the Lower Churchill hydro project off the ground.

"We've collected all the information we need," Nalcor Energy president Ed Martin said in an interview.

"This is one of the key pieces left. I'm going to have enough information (after) this to be able to complete my discussions with potential customers."

When people start talking about certainty, then you know they’ve comes to terms with reality.  “At least we’ll know for sure…” should be one of the stages of grief.

For the record and just for all those people who are still over the shock that the line through Gros Morne was a political racket for nothing, let’s get this straight as well.  The provincial government isn’t concerned that Hydro-Quebec is blocking the precious Legacy Project.

At least one person in the government is pissed off that the whole thing just can’t get off the ground for one simple thing:

the sheer economics of it.

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Too bad wishing didn’t make it so

There are times you have to feel sorry for Ed Martin. 

The fellow was hired out of a successful career in the oil industry to try and create a professional, competent energy company on behalf of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. 

After four years, he’s managed to create a company with a pretty good reputation in the oil patch locally.  There’s plenty of knowledge and expertise behind the blue windows on the Arterial.

Too bad for Ed that he and his gang are saddled  with a bunch pulling his strings who are viewed in some quarters as being like a crowd of petty potentates of some mythical banana republic.

Take, for example, this latest charade on Churchill Falls.

Ed Martin knows that left to his own devices he could deliver the goods on an energy deal. Martin isn’t the kind of fellow who would take a battleaxe to the head of someone he wanted to do business with.  When asked by Hydro Quebec and the Lower Churchill last August, Martin was the consummate professional:  confident, factual and assertive.

Even in the most recent version of the story to come dribbling from the government benches, this Article 1375 thing looks more like a political lash-up than a serious idea.  if you believe it, after three years of carrying on discussions of its own with lawyers and other geniuses, the provincial government decided to share the fruits of its labours with Martin.  Ed then got a separate legal opinion and off went a letter.

We must note at this juncture that Kathy Dunderdale established without question on Wednesday that her retraction of the “we are planning to sue everyone” story was bogus.  Well, it was a big clue she was going to deliver a nose puller anyway when she came down to the scrum accompanied by government’s chief lawyer at the time,  but now anyone can say with confidence that if there was inaccurate statement of facts in 2008 by Kathy Dunderdale, it wasn’t that the government was considering legal options related to Churchill Falls. Let’s just put it that way.

What Kathy and the former chief lawyer for government told the legislature on Wednesday constitutes an admission that, for all practical purposes,  cabinet runs NALCOR and its various subsidiaries.  The board of directors is irrelevant.  There are notional walls between the interlocking directorates of NALCOR but ultimately the thing is, a la Nigeria, pretty much a government department not a stand-alone corporation.

If the company were the company and government were the government, cabinet ministers would not spend three years and multiple trips to Montreal to look after business that should properly be left to the officers of the company.  If the company were not merely an adjunct of the government, Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale would not have spent five years carrying on secret discussions with Hydro-Quebec officials and politicians in Quebec trying to cut a deal on the Lower Churchill, without redress for the 1969 contract.

Should this latest bit of theatre ever get to court, Hydro Quebec will quickly and easily establish the crass political manipulations behind the little campaign about fairness.  They will be able to construct a longer chain of events and comments by the Premier and others which colour the actions of NALCOR and its subsidiary.  

At the very least they can throw up a plausible argument  that bad faith has abounded but that Hydro-Quebec has not been the perpetrator of it.  As a rule judges do not like this sort of stuff.  The current administration found out just how much judges dislike people jerking others about in Ruelokke or Henley v. Cable Atlantic.

Perhaps that is why the Premier is so shy about taking another of his cases to court.  What was it he said?  Something about the vagaries of court decisions?

Get real, people.

And at the end of it all, odds are good that -  as in the water rights reversion case -  Newfoundland and Labrador will be screwed by people playing at being lawyers and politicians.

This whole game of charades goes nicely with the question posed to Martin on Monday about the issue and the political tie-in to the legislature opening.  The simple answer for Martin should have been:  there is none.  Instead he had this enormous and intricate answer about going into decision mode, grunting, groaning and sweating before finally producing the Golden BB of a letter.

Someone, somewhere actually thought in advance of an obvious question and took the time to contrive an elaborate and prepared answer and rehearse Ed in it such that the end result all but screamed “bullshit!”

Sad that Ed should be put in such a spot.

To his credit, Martin continues to carry himself with great dignity.  Faced with the rejection by Quebec’s deputy premier of the idea of re-opening the contract, Martin told reporters:

"We made a good strong decision here. Obviously, we stand by it. We need to hear back from Hydro-Québec and, when we do, we'll determine what the next steps are," said Nalcor CEO Ed Martin.

He said Nalcor is giving Hydro-Québec until Jan. 15 to deliver an official response.

They won’t need that long. 

Martin’s HQ counterpart, Thierry Vandal, told The Gazette :

"It's more of the same," Vandal said in an interview yesterday with The Gazette.

"It's one for the lawyers."

He isn't budging from the view that "this is a valid contract and we expect it to be respected."

But you know, the more you look at this, the more you think that maybe there actually could be a successful resolution to the 1969 case and even development of the Lower Churchill if only…

if only you could just get the politicians out of the whole affair.

Too bad wishing doesn’t make it so.

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What Hydro Quebec gets in the Maritimes

Quebec Premier Jean Charest revealed today that Hydro Quebec has started negotiations to take over electricity delivery on Prince Edward island.

He made the announcement at a major energy conference in Boston that brought together every major actor in the energy business on the north-eastern part of the continent. 

Hot on the heels of news about Hydro Quebec’s deal to buy NB Power, this is hardly surprising. 

Hydro Quebec has seen its revenues from electricity exports shrink by about 30% over last year.  There’s little chance of that rebounding in the near term as the Untied States gropes its way out of a recession.

There’s hardly a better place for Hydro Quebec to go hunting for new customers than New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.  In both places, electricity rates are in no danger of dropping.  Hydro Quebec has a pile of power and no place to sell it. they’ve also got the cash ready to go.

Sounds like a match made in heaven.

Hydro Quebec has deep enough pockets to buy up the financial mess known as NB Power, deliver electricity rate relief to New Brunswick consumers and make good money when a hunk of Quebec electricity would normally be making a better return somewhere else.

Watch for the same sort of deal in Prince Edward Island.

It works for everyone.  What’s been missing in all the second rate commentary, hype and pure political bullshit flowing in Atlantic Canada these past few weeks is that Hydro Quebec is cutting a straight up business deal in the Maritimes.  They are in business to make money and make money they will.

When the American markets rebound Hydro Quebec will be ready with its existing generating capability, the 8,500 megawatts in development through wind and hydro in Quebec, Point LePreau,  and the hydro in New Brunswick and the wind generation that has been and will be developed in both PEI and New Brunswick.

All of that is considerably closer to American markets than the Lower Churchill.  It will be shipped over existing infrastructure.  Any new power lines that are needed will be shorter and considerably less costly to develop than either new lines through Quebec from Labrador.  let’s not even talk about the so-called Anglo-Saxon route.  It was ludicrously expensive in 1965 and it remains so the better part of a half century later.

There’s no surprise, in all this, that the Newfoundland and Labrador energy corporation and Premier Danny Williams decided to stay away from a meeting of anybody who is anybody in energy in New England and Eastern Canada.

Not only would there be the embarrassment of being in the room for Charest’s announcement, they’d also have to spend two days with a bunch of people who know the real score on the Lower Churchill.  These people just don’t have the time or the inclination to have smoke blown up their backsides.  They’ve got better things to do.

No surprise either that the same day the big news breaks in Boston, the provincial government here announced a one day junket to New York to talk about an imaginary future energy project  and other what-ifs with an unknown group of people.  They’ll turn out for the free nosh, if nothing else, and back home the locals can just cover this as if it was news.

Hydro Quebec went to the Maritimes and it’s been picking up assets, customers and future earning potential on both sides of the border along the way.

Danny, Kathy and Ed are going to New York for a few hours.

Bet they won’t come back with much more than a few souvenir pictures of Danny, Ed, Kathy and Liz standing in front of the Ed Sullivan Theatre.

It’s right around the corner from the Hilton on Avenue of the Americas.

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Hydro Quebec not an issue: Ed Martin

A few days before Danny Williams tried to blame Hydro-Quebec for delays and problems in the Lower Churchill project, NALCO chief executive Ed Martin was singing the same old song about what a great project he had and how any day now he’d be ready to start talking to prospective customers about a sale.

He’s been saying that for three years.

But here’s part of what you’ll find in the August 31 Toronto Star:

Martin doesn't see the Quebec issue as a major stumbling block, as regulation requires the province to allow access to its grid in return for a set tariff. Hydro Quebec and Nalcor are just working out the details.

That’s the exact opposite of the line Danny has been pushing for a week or so, now.

You can also notice in this piece that  - according to Martin - the project will be financed at least in part by oil revenues.  Some of those are flowing now from White Rose, but others won’t be along for the better part of the next decade.

Ed Martin is going to have to pull off some neat financial tricks if he plans to pay for a $10 to $14 billion project  Danny Williams said will be pushing power in 2015 when the cash Martin is counting on won’t start showing up at his front door until around 2020. 

But anyway…

Ed needs to talk to Danny or vice versa.  Basically these guys are on two completely different pages about this project. 

Then again, Danny and others seem to be on different pages quite a bit lately, including with himself over Hydro-Quebec and an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill.

Rest assured though, that as much as Danny Williams and his team appear to be all over the map, there is a piece of paper somewhere with the word plan written on the top of it.

At least that’s what he felt compelled to tell the local board of trade the other day after a local newspaper editor pointed out the decidedly errat…mercuri…caprici…ummm…errr… impulsive way the provincial government tends to be. 

Well, he said “slaphappy” too, but let’s use impulsive because it is a bit friendlier than most of the words that come to mind.

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