Vermont’s energy future found… in Quebec

Sometimes it takes a while for news to reach your humble e-scribbler.

Still, news from this past March is topical.

Seems that Vermont and Quebec are working on a 26-year power purchase deal to supply the state with some lovely Hydro-Quebec electricity. A final deal is expected this month.

“I recognized then that Canada and Quebec would be critical to Vermont’s energy future, our border security and our economy,” said [Vermont Lieutenant-Governor Brian] Dubie. “So I visited the Canadian Embassy in Washington for a high-level briefing on our relationship. I learned that for a number of reasons, our official relationships were strained. So I made a commitment then to reestablish the lines of communication and repair those relationships.”

Observation1:  You don’t make friends being a perpetual anger-ball. 

Observation 2:  If NALCOR actually had markets for the Lower Churchill, they’d have money and if they had markets and money, they’d be building the Lower Churchill instead of wasting time and huge amounts of public cash using weak-assed arguments at Quebec’s energy regulator trying to stall running NALCOR’s [non-existent] Lower Churchill power through Quebec.

Observation 3:  Sparky speeches at the Chateau Laurier add up to a cup full of warm spit compared to a real contract to deliver power for 26 years.

Will anger-ball performance still work with mainland media?

The Old Man’s publicists decided to let the world in on his sooper sekrit speaking engagement in Ottawa with a media advisory issued at 9:00 AM on the day it takes place.

BP readers already knew about the gig from a post on May 27.

In the meantime, the mighty Ceeb is offering a live feed with “sparks promised.” Well, unless he’s planning on setting off some actual Roman candles in the ballroom of the Chateau, this will just be yet another tired rehash of the same old stuff.

This paranoid delusional ranting makes for good entertainment – slightly behind Friends re-runs -  but the locals in Ottawa might be just a wee be tired of the anger-ball thing.  What will be more interesting will be any scrum to see what questions the mob of reporters in Ottawa might pose. 

Especially considering the biggest unreported story in Danny-ville remains his five years of trying to get HQ to buy equity in the Lower Churchill.

Does the moustache tickle update?  Jerome! is in Ottawa with the Old Man.

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Air ambulance controversy - curious ATIP redaction may hold clue to full story

A briefing note prepared for the province’s health minister in early September 2009 may contain important clues to when a decision was taken to move an air ambulance aircraft from St. Anthony to Goose Bay.

In a section headed “Medical Flight Specialists”, the briefing note points to the problem of putting specially trained medical crews on aircraft outside St. John’s.  That’s the only place a medical flight specialist team exists since the provincial health department created the program in August 2007.  Before 2007, local medical staff accompanied patients being transported to another hospital inside or outside the province by medical evacuation aircraft.

As part of the relocation of one aircraft to goose Bay, the provincial government will train a new medical flight specialist team.  In the meantime, any staff needed for a medical evacuation from Goose Bay would have to originate in St. John’s or travel to St. John’s first and then return to goose Bay.  That’s exactly the problem identified in the September 4, 2009 briefing note regardless of where outside St. John’s the health department based an aircraft.

Note that the final four bullets in that section are deleted.  Three are deleted under a discretionary section of the province’s access to information law  about to advice to a cabinet minister or government body. There’s no indication what that information might be.

But a fourth bullet is deleted because it relates to “plans that relate to the management of personnel of or the administration of a public body and that have not yet been implemented or made public…”.  The province’s access to information allows the head of a department the discretion whether or note to censor that information.  In this case, the department head decided to censor the information.

These deletions are important since they relate to a dispute over when the provincial government decided to move the air ambulance. Both provincial Tories and the Grit opposition have tied the move  - directly or indirectly  - to last fall’s by-election in the district formerly represented by provincial Tory cabinet minister Trevor Taylor.

Taylor resigned unexpectedly last fall.  The provincial Liberals won the by-election held in October. Health care was a major issue in the by-election. In a letter to a local newspaper in the district in May, Taylor tied the by-election to the ambulance relocation.

While the Premier and health minister have denied the connection they have also hinted strongly that further protests by people in Taylor’s former district might lead to other cuts.

Paul Oram, the province’s health minister in September 2009, resigned suddenly in early October, citing ill health.

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Enviro minister of denial

Charlene Johnson, by some accounts the province’s environment minister, answering a question in the House of Assembly about a potential oil spill in Placentia Bay where tankers travel daily to a refinery and an oil storage facility:

Mr. Speaker, there is one thing that she has right, and that is that we have the jurisdiction in the Department of Environment and Conservation should the oil, in the unlikely event, that should the oil reach land then it does come under the Department of Environment and Conservation, Mr. Speaker. [Emphasis added]

And there’s no way she’d ever expropriate a polluted paper mill either.

Who ya trying to impress, Charlene?

‘Cause if it’s no one you are doing a fine job.

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Working mills versus a catastrophe

As part of its restructuring efforts, AbitibiBowater just announced the company has offloaded four mills and some other wood products plants to another company.

The new owners are excited about using the mill and the timber to make things and employ people.

Just imagine people in central Newfoundland working in the woods industry with a new company that had bought assets from AbitibiBowater.

Perish the thought.

Just imagine the mess there‘d have been if the provincial government hadn’t swooped in and seized all the stuff AbitibiBowater was ready to sell to another company just so they could create jobs with them.

Chaos, for sure.

Thank God the Old Man was brilliant enough to opt for catastrophe instead.

There are gulfs and then there are #oilspill gulfs

labradore explains in graphic detail the gulf between the Old Man’s bland assurances that such things could never happen here and what an oil spill of BP magnitude in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (centred theoretically on Old Harry or a field near it) might look like.

The Premier focused his attention on current production wells which are a couple of hundred miles offshore.

But there is another offshore that isn’t quite so far away.

Bear in mind this isn’t based on an analysis of currents and so forth.  it’s just what you get if you lay a map of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico in another oil rich Gulf.

What opens, as a result, is not so much a gulf but ye olde chasm of credibility that swallows the Premier’s assurances whole.

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Harper and Williams and message control: the second parts

The second part of Canadian Press’ expose.

And for good measure, the second part of the 2006 BP series on the local version of the same idea.

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Harper and Williams share love of total message control

Steve has Message Event Proposals.

Danny just controls everything.

The first in a series by Canadian Press (h/t @stphnmaher) and a three-parter (here’s the first one) from your humble e-scribbler, circa 2006.

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Weekly Top Traffic Drivers: May 31 – June 4

1. Lower Churchill decision up in the air, indefinitely
2. The World the Old Man Lives In
3. Lower Churchill cost estimates skyrocket
4. Lower Churchill costs: now up to $14 billion and counting
5. Rumpole and the Phantom Judges
6. Like we told you:  “Lower Churchill decision…”
7. May Stat Porn
8. How not to do social media
9. The pictures tell another oil spill story
10. Physician heal thyself:  Dunderdale edition

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Famous Comments by Telegram editors

1892:  ‘I’m certainly not buying any argument the city will burn to the ground.”

1894:  ‘I’m certainly not buying any argument that the country is bankrupt.”

January 1934:  “I’m certainly not buying any argument that the country is bankrupt.”

1969:  “I am certainly not buying any argument that this is a bad deal with Hydro-Quebec.”

1988:  “I am certainly not buying any argument that this cucumber factory will be a big waste of money.”

2009:  “I’m certainly not buying any argument that government spending is unsustainable.”

2010:  “I am certainly not buying any argument that the Premier should tell us he is having heart surgery.”

2010:  “I’m certainly not buying an argument that the provincial government expropriated the mill, even by mistake.”

2010:  “I’m certainly not buying any argument that NL simply botched its case.”

Plus ca change, as they say.

The tradition continues (read the comments section).

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Oil’s down, budget pucker factor up …again

When you project an average price of oil at US$83 and forecast a billion dollar budget shortfall on that basis, having oil at US$71-ish must make the old sphincter twitch a notch tighter than it used to be.

Heaven only knows what other economic news does.

Kinda makes all that effort spent on poll goosing seem…well…a tad bit…silly.

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Physician heal thyself: Dunderdale version

Natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale displaying her now-usual level of unjustified arrogance:

I advise the Leader of the Opposition to pipe down now and learn a few things. Hold your tongue and open up your ears and learn something so you can stop making a fool of yourself.

She was trying to explain something she clearly didn’t understand, namely open access tariffs for jurisdictions that sell electricity into the United States.

One thing Kath didn’t notice was a crucial part of the provincial government’s argument in front of the Quebec energy regulator. You see, the provincial government’s energy corporation argued that Hydro-Quebec Transmission didn’t follow the rules. 

And that was the sum total of their argument.

They said it.

As the Regie reported and as NALCOR’s lawyers dutifully translated the French:

[386]…NLH did not call any experts to testify on these technical questions or to contradict witness Deguire.

That’s right.  They did not present a single piece of evidence to support their claim or to refute HQT's witnesses.

Now you have to bear in mind that NALCOR’s argument on this was that HQT had failed to do a complete assessment of the five routes along which they theoretically wanted to ship power and five loads they wanted to ship using a direct current intertie as required by the open access transmission rules.  [paragraph 376]

At the last minute, just as NALCOR’s time to option a route was about to expire, they accused HQT of not doing a complete review because direct current intertie was just a NALCOR preference. [paragraph 379] HQT demonstrated pretty easily with documents signed by NALCOR officials that DC was more than just a preference and that it also made a huge amount of technical sense.

[388] NLH did not any tender [tender any?] technical evidence to contradict witness Deguire. In reply, it restricted itself to arguing that it was not required to submit evidence to establish that
the impact study was incomplete and that it sufficed to refer to the wording of section 19.3 of the OATT for a finding that the study did not contain the essential elements required by that regulatory provision.

Just saying it was supposedly good enough such that no evidence was required.

And what about when HQT was able to show that NALCOR’s argument on some points – like say the issue of DC intertie  - was more than a preference?  Well, that apparently really doesn’t require much comment either.  The foolishness of it is readily apparent.

At this point, sensible people are likely wondering not only why NALCOR was pursuing all this but who allowed the lawyers to make such a weak-assed presentation.

Well, that would be either the folks at NALCOR or folks like Kath and the Old Man or both.

Maybe the next time Kathy gets some idea about keeping mouth shut and learning something, she might want to take her own advice.

Quite frankly, that display of breathtaking incompetence in the Regie hearings has succeeded only in making the people of this province out to be complete idiots, not just mere fools.

And she’s ultimately responsible for it.

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The pictures tell another #oilspill story

Natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale, as quoted in a recent Telegram editorial:

Mr. Speaker, in terms of an oil spill offshore, the greatest vulnerability will exist to the bird population.   Mr. Speaker, based on 40 to 50 years of wind study, it is shown that oil, because of the wave action and the coldness of the sea, Mr. Speaker, breaks up and disperses. ... Mr. Speaker, we had an oil spill in 2004 on the Terra Nova. Mr. Speaker, that oil dispersed, broke up, and went away. Ocean floor studies have been done, Mr. Speaker, there is no evidence of oil from that oil spill on the floor around our Terra Nova project.

From the same editorial, a quote attributed to a Chevron report on drilling in the Orphan Basin:

The report notes a spill could cause 'relatively few' to a 'very large' number of seabird deaths. But overall, it concludes a spill 'will not result in any significant residual impacts' on animals.

And when you’ve digested that, take a look at some pictures from the Gulf of Mexico.

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Very lucky indeed

The Old Man Hisself, in the House of Assembly this week, speaking of the $14.7 billion Lower Churchill project, arguably one of the most expensive hydro megaprojects on the drawing boards of North America today:

…from an economic perspective we are in a situation where we have enough information to really sit down and talk with any industrial developer at any point in time.

Yes, NALCOR is ready to talk about building this project any time at all, just as they have before now.

And just for comparison sake, from last fall, energy analyst Tom Adams has a different take:

Just as natural gas from the Mackenzie delta is now recognized as uneconomic in light of foreseeable market conditions, the factors that have driven down power prices in Northeastern North America make the economics of Lower Churchill development unviable for the foreseeable future. Newfoundlanders are lucky that Nalcor, their Crown energy company, is not out in the market the trying to sell high cost power right now. [Emphasis added.]

Yes, the people of this province are lucky indeed to have people looking after the Lower Churchill who’d be smart enough not to try and flog a project estimated at upwards of $15 billion in a depressed energy market.

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Enviro minister trades with the enemy

Sometimes it’s hard to know which is funnier:  environment minister Charlene Johnson’s repeated attempts to be arrogant and condescending even when she is completely shagging up or her admission that her answer to the mounds of used tires in the province collected under a recycling program is exactly the same answer used by her Liberal predecessor.

I can get the exact details for him on the cost for shipping to Quebec. Certainly, under their failed attempts in the past that is where the tires went as well, so I imagine it would be somewhere in line when you had to ship them to Quebec as well. Mr. Speaker, shipping tires to Quebec is certainly, we know, the cheapest option for the tires.

Yes, folks, the tires are being shipped to Quebec.

Charlene Johnson is trading with the enemy.

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Williams party support drops nine points

Support for the Danny Williams Conservative party dropped nine points in three months according to the latest poll results from the provincial government’s pollster.

Corporate Research Associate’s quarterly poll showed that 58% of respondents indicated they would vote for the provincial Conservatives party if an election were held tomorrow.  That’s down from 67% in February.

The numbers are likely grossly inaccurate even with the correction presented here. The orange line shows the actual percentage of eligible voters who voted Progressive Conservative in the last provincial general election in October 2007. The blue line is CRA’s number, adjusted to remove their artificial inflation of Tory support.

The provincial government’s pollster doesn’t report the numbers this way, though.  CRA routinely inflates Tory support by as much as 28% by only reporting the percentage of decided voters.

These corrected figures also don’t account for the provincial government’s deliberate efforts to skew CRA’s polling numbers. As Bond Papers noted in late 2006, the Williams administration times its communications activities to correspond with their own pollster’s polling periods. probably one of the most significant examples of this would be the Premier’s disingenuous “have province’ announcement during the November sweeps month.

Local news media also routinely report CRA polls inaccurately by accepting at face value the CRA news releases.

Even allowing for problems with CRA’s polling, and for the government’s organized poll goosing efforts, that’s the largest quarterly drop CRA has reported for the Williams Tories since early 2005.

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Lower Churchill costs: now up to $14 billion and counting

According to Premier Danny Williams, the Lower Churchill project – which he estimates at a cost of up to $12 billion -  is “ the lowest cost , the cheapest hydroelectric project in all of North America.”  Dead link to CBC story June 1, 2010 quoting Williams]

That’s more than a bit of a stretch, even for the Old Man and his legendary love of absurd comments bordering on the ridiculous.

A simple comparison of costs based on information in the public domain demonstrates that the Premier’s claims in this case are once again nothing short of ridiculous.

For example, a 1998 cost estimate of the project elements to develop both Lower Churchill dam sites and the transmission infeeds (one to Quebec and the other to Soldier’s Pond, just west of St. John’s) put the cost at $10.5 billion.

Now we can add to that the costs of getting the power across to Nova Scotia, for example and then down into the United States.

According to the Chronicle-Herald, a study done for the Nova Scotia government put the cost of connecting from Newfoundland to Cape Breton between $800 million and $1.2 billion.  Hooking to the US would add another $2.0 billion to $3.0 billion to that.

The only thing we’d be missing at that point is a connection from Deer Lake to Port aux Basques or where ever the line would go to connect with Nova Scotia.

Even at that, we’d be looking at between $2.8 billion to $4.2 billion on top of the $10.5 billion to use the so-called Atlantic route.

That puts the grand total at between $13.3 billion and $14.7 billion.

Not bad for a project that the current administration touted in 2005 as costing about $3.3 billion.
But since Danny Williams said it is the lowest cost hydro-project in North America we can be pretty much assured he was talking through his hat.

Maybe he was talking in relative terms, like say as a measure of how much it would cost to get the power up and out to market for every megawatt produced;  it’s called, not surprisingly, a cost per megawatt calculation.

Well, the Lower Churchill’s 2800 megawatt project would come out as follows.  For good measure, there’s a comparison with the La Romaine project in Quebec which is already under way.

Cost	Cost per megawatt	Notes
$10.5 billion	$3.75 million	1998 projected cost, includes connection Quebec and Newfoundland only (currently under enviro assessment)
$12.0 billion	$4.285 million	2010 Williams upper-end estimate of project costs, link to Newfoundland and Quebec only. [Update]
$13.3 billion	$4.75 million	Low-end estimate to connect to NS and US
$14.7 billion	$5.25 million	High-end estimate to connect to NS and US
$6.5 billion	$4.195348 million	Hydro-Quebec’s La Romaine, 1550 MW

British Columbia’s Site C dam will deliver 900 megawatts for an estimated $6.0 billion so that will more expensive on a cost per megawatt basis.  That’s over $6.6 million per megawatt.  Another power project in Ontario will add 440 megawatts of power to an existing hydro structure for a cost of $2.0 billion or $4.5 million per megawatt.

By comparison, wind power projects run about $3.5 million per installed megawatt, according to a wind industry website.

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North Amethyst pumps first oil

A few things to note about the news that the White Rose extension field – called North Amethyst – pumped its first oil this week;

1. It took only four years to go from discovery to production. reducing the time from discovery to production is huge for the future of the offshore industry.
2. Tiebacks.  Expect to see more of them as Terra Nova dries out, for example.  Floating platforms are the most cost-effective way to exploit the numerous small fields that have already been discovered offshore. The gang at Terra Nova and eventually at White Rose can just float their hulls around, hook up to underwater pipes and pump the crude cheaply, efficiently and in a way that should be as environmentally sound as oil production can be.
3. An established royalty regime is a key part of promoting development.  That’s what worked for this deal and helped speed up development. Thankfully, while the 2007 energy plan called for a complete overall of the royalty regime, the generic regime is still in place.  Given the rate the current crowd do things, we wouldn’t see a royalty regime to replace the current one for decades.  As it is, the existing, pre-2003 royalty regimes – not the Old Man’s tweaks – are producing the lion’s share of offshore cash these days.

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How not to do social media

Kudos to the City of St. John’s for adopting a great way to build strong effective relationships with citizens.

"It's important that we communicate with people in ways that they want to be communicated to, and it's about getting the message out to the broadest range of people that we can," Coun. Danny Breen told Monday evening's council meeting.

Spot on, Danny!

But unless the City has its claims already staked to the most common or likely variations on the City’s identity at both Twitter and Facebook, the smartarse brigade will be there ahead of them.

That’s why you wait to unveil your strategy rather than say we are going to be doing this in a while.

AFAIK, @cityoflegends is available as of this moment.

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May Stat Porn

From May 1 to May 31:

• 13,508 visits.
• 19,427 page views.

Top 10 pages:

1. The World the Old Man Lives In
2. Lower Churchill:  Imaginary project.  Imaginary News Stories.
3. How our system doesn’t work
4. So long.  It’s been good to know you.
5. Reach for the Screech.
6. Tail-gunner Bob:  equality is not a “realistic philosophy”
7. 2001 Moonbus from Moebius in April
8. Potato, potato:  hydro version
9. AbitibiBowater files reorg plan
10. Court docket now online

By far and away, the most popular specific page in the past month has been the chart of the paranoid world described by the Premier’s statements about Quebec.

The other stories represent a mixed bag ranging from a discussion of our weakened political system in the province to a post about the Provincial Court docket.  Speaking of older posts, the docket one continues to be a popular item for search terms hits.  Ditto the 1/55th scale moonbus model from Moebius.  It’s been a sought-after item since 1969 when the old Aurora issued it for a single season.

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