Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Resource extraction is a lot about momentum,meaning we should have started everything 20 years ago. The danger there is changing markets and demands, which does make it hard to capitalize a lot of these projects. It's like the McKenzie gas pipeline that made all the sense in the world until gas prices plummeted when horizontal drilling became a thing. Had gas prices remained high, we may have had an export pipeline to the north.
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Yeah it's about momentum, but more importantly a long term commitment and some sort of unified national strategy... which admittedly is not something that seems to be a particular strength of Canada at the moment. We can't even seem to agree whether having a resource industry is a good thing, never mind trying to maximize its potential through some specific strategy.
IMO, as a baseline I think we at least need to go back to having a mindset of seeing our natural resources as something to be proud of, not something we hide from. At any point in time, the parameters may change, the preferred commodity may change, but we should at least work towards being in a position to get lucky. When the Germans came calling a few years ago desperate for our gas, we may not have had the perfect answer, but I think we could've at least done something other than politely declining. No matter how you measure it, you don't think that could've benefited the ole' GDP?
Meanwhile the Americans went from barely exporting any gas to becoming the world's leading supplier in 8 years.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...as-leader.html