Observations on the Royalty Review Panel Open House

In the following I will share the observations of a man who attended last night’s Royalty Review Panel Open House in Calgary, originally posted on Instaface or Facegram or whatever it’s called. This man is an entrepreneur in the Alberta oil industry, so it seems reasonable that he understands many of the underlying issues. His reporting rings true to me and it should deeply unsettle not just Albertans, but also the other Canadians who gobble up the transfer payments out of Alberta:

Well I went ahead and attended the Royalty Review Panel Open House in Calgary last evening to see what they had to say. They had lots of stand up displays with hundreds of factoids about supply, world prices, reserves and a whole bunch of other information most of us Albertans have known about for decades. Interestingly enough they had whiteboards for attendees to write comments, Trevor Marr took pictures and the attendees were hammering the government hard on the many points you’ve already posted, read, liked and shared on these pages.

I spoke and asked questions about the risk of engaging in a review at a time when prices are low and royalty revenues are already in full collapse. The Al Gore trained political hack, ATB CEO Dave Mowat did confirm that the government would be lucky to collect $3 Billion this year, down from $9 Billion last year. He couldn’t answer why if we were at $13 Billion prior to the last review and it contributed to a drop to $9B since and were now down at less than $3B, what good could possibly come from throwing two plus years of uncertainty into the mix now? He kept referring to how they were sure that they could OPTIMIZE the royalty rates. But no, the full report wouldn’t be shared with Albertans as a large portion of their process was so complicated it could only be done by 3 separate expert non public panels that they are hiring to work for a whole month. But the end result would be the best Royalty Rate system ever done and the OPTIMIZED recommendations would be provided to the NDP government by December 31st, 2015. He also said that since oil would be phased out over the next 20-30 years, it can no longer be viewed as a finite resource since we have more than will ever be able to be sold! He said the inability to get to markets wasn’t relevant to the rate structure! He also said if our oil wasn’t competitive in the world markets not having pipelines to those possible clients didn’t matter. He said it wasn’t their concern if other taxations such as corporate tax rate increases or carbon tax burdens were put on our oil and gas industry as they were only mandated to recommend a royalty rate structure that was based upon 4 core principles that could guide all the future rate reviews. He suggested that every two years or so they might want to adjust rates! He admitted that the $65 Billion in annual investment by the oil and gas industry was dependent upon both pricing and royalty competitiveness. He wouldn’t say how much lower the investment is this year nor how much investment might be withheld due to the not knowing what the rates are going to be. He couldn’t answer as to how long it might take the NDP government to implement their recommendations or even if they would.