What People Don’t Realize: Oil & Gas Industry

5 KEY POINTS: What people don’t realize about the oil and gas industry.

Have you seen a renewable energy project that did not use oil or gas to create it?

Renewable energy relies on oil and gas to make it happen. Oil and gas is the bridge to new energy. Think construction of a wind farm and how that energy product requires trucks, cars, transport, gas in tanks, petroleum plastics, and chemicals, to build it.

Think about aviation and how it requires oil and gas to fuel planes, choppers and other carriers. Think products and plastics and how they are required in the building of renewable structures like solar panels. Even basic office tools like the plastics used in computers require petroleum. The phone in your hand is mostly made from many types of petroleum plastics.

There is no renewable energy without the use of some type of oil and gas and its related products so it is ludicrous to think one industry or the other. It’s both.

Oil and gas is the number one commodity on the planet. Why? Because it is in just about in everything we make and in every project we are involved in. The next time someone argues about oil and gas vs renewables realize it’s a non-issue. This is the reality, currently, there is no renewable energy project that can supply towns, cities or countries, with energy without oil and gas.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not the time of renewable energy. This is the time where oil and gas “bridge us to the development of new energy”. Both are critical and essential to the other.

Oil and gas is the foundation of solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, geothermal and every other type of renewable energy source. Clearly, none of them would exist nor could they be constructed and developed without oil and gas fuel and products.

OIL: CANADA’S GLOBAL ADVANTAGE

Canada is ranked number three in the world of proven oil reserves and it ranks in the top ten of oil-producing nations worldwide. We must do everything in our power to maintain that position and to elevate it, which includes energy dominance, pipeline progress, and global market acquisition.

IIf Canada doesn’t get its priorities straight and focus on maintaining its position as one the most powerful oil and gas producers in the world, we are going to be in really bad shape. If we are not supplying the world with oil and gas, other developing countries will take our place, and we will no longer hold the ticket to new emergy energy solutions, at the levels that we could.

We must have pipelines that extend to the west and the east of Canada to get our oil to buying markets beyond the United States. We can’t rely on the US as our primary buying partner anymore, as the US has developed their own resources. They are becoming more energy independent and they need our oil less and less.

Selling Canadian oil and gas around the world means mega- opportunity for the nation. It means we can diversify our portfolio of energy offerings, and capitalize on globalization, as we are selling to the world market from both sides of Canada. This model of progress would ensure that oil-producing provinces like Newfoundland are in a primary and powerful position for world oil demand and geographically positioned to tap into world oil shipping lanes. This would, in turn, creates further oil exploration and production offshore Newfoundland because more infrastructure, builds more infrastructure. That’s how it works.

OIL PRICE LESSONS LEARNED

We all felt the devastating impact of a low oil price in Canada. It has affected every single one of us in some way, shape or form. Let the drop in oil price be our strongest teacher in realizing that a nation without oil and gas is crippling to our economy, our livelihood and ultimately our communities, families and well being.

Think about Canada without oil and gas and how that will stifle every other industry sector that we hope to develop; from renewables to new technology and other incoming industry sectors. Every industry requires oil and gas to fuel them into existence. Every industry requires strong financial companies to invest, build and scale. Our nation requires oil and gas as the foundation for everything else.

We must not throw away our strength in oil and gas and think we can replace it with a renewably powered world. It won’t work that way because that’s like trying to win the Olympics in hockey if the players don’t have hockey sticks. It’s like trying to write the number one hit song, without a voice to sing it. It’s like trying to create the best business plan with no financial backing to bring it to life.

We must ‘build on our strengths’ and that’s how we will bring in the future of new energy in. Anything less and we will have limited financial resources, tools, and funds to elevate ourselves to new methodologies that meet an exponentially changing energy driven world.

If there is one smart thing we could do right now, it is to educate our nation about what life would be like if we developed our oil and gas industry to its highest capacity and brought in new energy and tech innovation at record levels as a result.

Comparatively, we need to educate our people on what life would be like without Canada’s oil and gas production and where Canada would be without it. We would then understand that the outcome would be devastating! We would set back the clock 60 years.

MEDIA SOLUTIONS

The smartest thing we could do right now is use publically-funded media channels like CBC to report and educate our people on nationally impactful topics rather than focus on drama, crime and court stories that divert us from the important matters of the day. While we are busy watching that stuff we are only creating more of it by not being laser-sharp focused and educated on the important business decisions of the nation.

The single most important and pressing topic of the day is Canada’s oil and gas position and the development of Alberta’s oil and gas which ultimately allows us to hold our position on the world stage.

Are we really going to allow the minority voices of environmentalists to stop oil and gas progress when it could be detrimental to the pace and progress of renewable energy? Is that a logical proposition? Now that’s a story worth investigating and reporting on CBC.

In order to ‘really’ understand what’s going on in Canada, we have to look at the big picture and the big impacts and how they link together, to form the future of the prosperity of this nation. Like it or not it’s oil and gas that will elevate us to the highest possible level of success.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

A fallacy about new energy is that it will be more effective than oil and gas and leave us better off environmentally. At first glance, that seems sensible. It’s a renewable source and can’t be depleted. But as you dig deeper you realize it’s not so cut and dry. Every single industry has an environmental footprint, including renewable energy. Just building a renewable energy project impacts the environment in many and varied ways. Offshore wind farms have as much impact on the environment as offshore oil platforms and we need oil and gas to build an offshore wind farm.

The other thing to consider is the cost of being environmentally responsible. The reason the oil and gas industry is the strongest industrial sector on the planet for safety and environmental stewardship is that of its income level – they can afford to be. The fact that the oil and gas industry is so profitable is the exact reason that it is so rigorously and proactively environmentally compliant.

Renewables won’t have the same level of income and profitability to be as compliant environmentally, as the oil and gas sector. Wait until we get the scorecard results of renewable energy impact. I have a feeling it will be right up there with oil and gas.

Our goal should be “carbon neutrality” for all energy sectors, rather than energy industry derivative. Those minority groups advocating new energy should keep those communication funds for better use; like environmental compliance of new energy projects as they come on stream. It’s a costly business!

THE GLOBAL GAME

Let’s get educated. Let’s utilize the media in all it’s various channels to do so. Energy creates more energy and this is an inclusive global game.

Winning with energy means the oil industry needs to get louder, people need more information and that’s a responsibility of media. Canada has to get global savvy and work much smarter on