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By David Yager
November 2, 2021
Political events of the past two weeks have exposed the emotional fragility of those fortunate enough to still be working in Canada’s battered oil and gas industry.
What is not understood by the millions who dispense advice about what the fifth largest combined oil and gas producing nation in the world must do next is how many oil workers have become afflicted with PTSD, or Petroleum Travesty Stress Disorder.
It is because of how much the future of petroleum has changed. It’s why I titled my book From Miracle to Menace – Alberta, A Carbon Story.
This century it has become open season on fossil fuels, the companies that produce them, those who fund their businesses, politicians who support them, and the people they employ.
Last week, US congressional hearings began on whether or not big oil intentionally concealed that it knew hydrocarbon emissions would change the climate, then misled the public about the danger of their deadly products.
While interrogating the CEO of Chevron, Michigan congressional member Rashida Tlaib accused Michael Wirth of “poisoning the planet” and called him a “climate criminal.”
Just another day at the office in 2021 while keeping civilization moving – enduring insults and personal attacks that woke culture insists no human being should ever be subjected to.
Relentless attacks on our morality and intentions – combined with collapsed commodity prices, higher taxes, pipeline opposition and obstructive legislation – have taken a toll on the psyche of many oil workers.
Emotional damages from the industry version of PTSD include loss of confidence, dignity, confusion about known facts, feelings of persecution, shattered trust, growing insecurity about the future, and loss of trust in Canadian politics.
Confusion about previously known facts is particularly damaging. It is the repeated assertion that interruptible solar or wind generated electricity can replace coal, gas and oil. Suggestions to the contrary are ignored or met with ridicule and accusations of being a climate change denier.
The physical damages that exacerbate PTSD are real. They include loss of employment, investments, homes, wealth and retirement savings.
The same treatment that any “criminal” would expect, but only after being convicted.
So when the latest crop of newly elected politicians recently advised the ‘patch that “the beatings will continue until morale improves,” the industry can be forgiven for its public hostility.
First it was new Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek on October 19. Less than 12 hours after she became mayor of the oil capital of Canada, she stated publicly that her first order of business would be to formally declare a climate emergency on behalf of Calgary’s municipal government.
Industry reaction ranged from anger to disbelief. In a city where its major industry has been struggling in one way or another for over 15 years, the new mayor concluded that symbolic virtue signaling was task number one.
Calgary is the epicenter of Canada’s massive oil and gas industry. But this message delivered this way means that if we’ve been punished socially and economically, it is only because so many believe we deserve it.
The increasingly popular climate emergency declaration is a purposeful and powerful statement that providing the hydrocarbon-based energy and products that have powered the fantastic growth and prosperity of modern civilization is, in fact, a terrible activity that threatens the future of the planet.
It’s a crime. Because anybody who does something this awful to another person would be arrested and jailed.
A week later Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his government’s new cabinet. On the heels of Alberta’s successful provincial referendum challenging the provincial equalization formula and the release of the inquiry into foreign funding of anti-energy campaigns, Ottawa used the event to poke a stick in the eye of Premier Jason Kenney and everyone who voted for him.
Another jaw dropper and insult to oil workers, particularly Guilbeault. It’s one thing for the environment minister to be the mouthpiece for the government’s climate policies. It is quite another to put a professional oil hater in charge of supervising this industry’s behavior and performance.
Prior to politics, Wilkinson had worked in the private sector in various environmental initiatives. But a recent editorial the National Post described him as someone “…who previously made a career of seeking handouts for green energy companies, and who takes over at natural resources, a department that used to be responsible for promoting the development of Canadian resources, but will likely be repurposed to further the government’s climate change goals.”
The reaction to this nugget was universally negative. In an industry that has publicly capitulated to everything climate – executives who now chant Net Zero by 2050 every day on the way to the office – this was regional wedge politics at its worst.
What makes these political and emotional setbacks so painful is that for the first time in years, commodity prices and production volumes are high enough that the industry is starting to look like it makes sense again.
But it’s like whack-a-mole. You finally stick your head up to look around and get clobbered again.
Until recently, natural gas prices had fallen for 14 years. In October of 2005, Alberta’s natural gas reference price briefly tagged $11.38 GJ. It finally hit bottom at $0.55 GJ in July of 2019, a 95% decline.
The impact has been devasting on employment, producers, service companies, royalties, taxes, municipalities and the provincial treasury.
Efforts to brand gas as another bad fossil fuel, block hydraulic fracturing and oppose LNG exports continue.
Oil, which gets all the attention, has done better but it has also been in a generally downward trajectory for 13 years. Corrected for inflation, WTI averaged US$116.17 a barrel in 2008. For 2020 it was only US$34.15, 71% less.
You know the rest. Blocked pipelines, tanker bans, emission caps, and starving the industry for capital through fossil fuel divestment and ESG investing. All the politically correct things to do.
Alberta’s employment numbers from 2014 to 2019 tell the story (2020 omitted because of the pandemic).
According to Statistics Canada, from 2014 to 2019 there were 32,724 jobs lost in oil and gas, 41,698 in construction, 13,368 in manufacturing, and 12,737 in professional, scientific and technical services. Few if any workers have found replacement employment at the same or higher income.
The most remarkable aspect of the recent reminders from Gondek and Trudeau that the “energy transition” is underway and unstoppable is that the rest of the world is going in the opposite direction.
Supporters of the multi-year assault on fossil fuels are encountering shortages of coal, natural gas and oil. So prices are going way up.
They liked the idea until they had to pay for it.
The new energy sources that were going to save civilization from itself – renewables like wind and solar – are being exposed as horribly oversold in terms of their quantity and reliability.
Oops.
For years, the industry has valiantly tried to convince our fellow Canadians of the importance and legitimacy of the oil and gas business. It has trumpeted the highest standards of business ethics, inclusion, transparency, accountability, emissions reductions, environmental protection and public safety.
And energy security of supply.
Regardless, Canada is the only major oil and gas producer hell bent on going in the opposite direction of all the other major producing countries. There is no evidence of a decline in consumer demand globally.
As the US expands LNG exports to become a major player, Canada continues to block pipelines and projects.
This is occurring as more people realize that natural gas is the most important energy source available to quickly facilitate material reductions in global emissions and an orderly transition to non-carbon energy in the decades ahead.
Meanwhile, our gas fetches the lowest market-set prices in the world.
But the lights are coming on. Elsewhere, regrettably.
Reuters carried a story October 31 titled, “Biden pushes G20 energy producing countries to boost production.” The story opened, “US President Joe Biden on Saturday urged major G20 energy producing countries with spare capacity to boost production to ensure a stronger global economic recovery as part of a broad effort to pressure OPEC and its partners to increase oil supply.”
It seems energy security matters again, at least for now. What a world.
What woke politics, virtue signaling, and political opportunism has done to the oil industry and its people is indeed a travesty.
Which, by definition, is “a false, absurd, or distorted representation.”
What else could you call such a determined effort to rid the planet of something nobody in possession of all the facts and their mental faculties would dream of living without?
Like the jet fuel that got everybody to COP26 in Glasgow.
So to my fellow oil workers, friends, colleagues and business associates I have had the privilege of being engaged with for the past 50 years, I offer the following.
As I have said in hundreds of interviews and written in dozens of articles over the years, there is no plot or insidious master plan. We sell fuel and heat in a large cold country. We create things modern civilization cannot live without.
The foundation of our industry is much stronger, and our future is much more secure, than the political futures of those in public office who are telling us what to do, think and say.
Canadian politicians will never shut down the Canadian oil and gas business until a suitable and currently non-existent substitute is available.
When it does exist, it will probably be the oil industry that invents it.
It could be a long and very disruptive winter. We’ll see what the total economic and human cost will be.
And if the words of some politician drive you crazy, just plead insanity. It’s not your fault.
David Yager is an oil service executive, energy policy analyst, oil writer and author of From Miracle to Menace – Alberta, A Carbon Story. More at www.miracletomenace.ca
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