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Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee
One thing the government may want to think about regarding oil activity if it's what drives the provincial budgets, is making it easier to obtain a surface lease within a reasonable time frame and making clearer guidelines on tenure.
The current spin the wheel of randomness going on does not help businesses plan their investments. We have one of the most burdensome regulatory systems in the world. I don't have a problem with regulations, but speed up the G D processes.
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That will just increase labour costs and inflation.
One of the main problems with oil sands development is that it has been too fast, which has hamstrung the government to a large degree.
The problem isn't that they areN'T being developed fast enough, it's that they are developing too fast.
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Perhaps the current price shock will give us pause – pause to consider what an Alberta with more control on the pace of development and without the inflationary impacts which come with open-access development would look like. Had we been able to maintain costs at even double those considered by the National Energy Board, we’d have seen substantially higher taxes, royalties, and profits per barrel, although of course on fewer barrels, and we’d find ourselves much better-positioned to weather the downturns in oil prices which inevitably come. Perhaps it’s time for the Alberta government to acknowledge that it’s not optimal to simply leave the market to decide the pace of oil sands development: the government is and must be a key part of the market as the representative of the owners of the resource, the regulator of extraction and the construction of new projects, and the administrator of the royalty regime. Rising oil prices since the early 2000s have hidden a lot of sins in the oil sands, and some of those sins are going to cause a lot more pain in Alberta than need be the case for as long as this most recent drop in prices last. Perhaps, this time, we’ll learn from our mistakes.
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http://www.macleans.ca/economy/econo...o-bite-us-now/
It is yet ANOTHER ideologically motivated, wrong-headed error.
Oil sands don't need less regulation, if anything, they need more.