‘We keep beating our oil industry with a stick, and nobody wants to say enough is enough’

Craig Copeland, the mayor of Cold Lake, can’t realise why a lot of Canadian politicians are unmoved by the devastation of Alberta oil centres like his own.

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Located in northeastern Alberta around the idyllic lake that inspired its name, Cold Lake is one of Alberta’s largest oilsands hubs. It sits along with many of the sweet spots from the Athabasca deposits and is encompassed by a cluster of steam-assisted gravity drainage operations by oil majors for example Imperial Oil Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc., Husky Energy Inc., Devon Energy Corp. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.

Together, they produce as much as 500,000 barrels a day, which makes it one of Canada’s top value-creating communities. You will not look for a prouder one.

Cold Lake is also a big Canadian Air Force town and also the home of its fighter pilot training course, but its young population has been hard hit by the postponement of the large list of oilsands projects in the past year as companies roll back investment to cope with the oil price collapse.

Those projects were said to be the sector’s future simply because they use more complex technology than traditional mining operations do. Instead, they fell as hard because the cost of oil. Copeland estimates 1,000 out of the 5,000 people working directly within the oil industry are unemployed in the 40,000-resident Lakeland area, but that doesn’t include the indirect job losses.

There would be a time in 2012/2014 when you couldn’t obtain a room in Cold Lake. Now parking lots are vacant

Businesses that offer services to grease companies – many of them owned by the area’s large aboriginal population – are hurting. Construction workers from across Canada are now being told to go home. Restaurants and hotels still empty.

According to StatsCan, the unemployment rate in Wood Buffalo/Cold Lake, where most oilsands projects are based, shot up to nine percent in January, from 8.6 per cent in December and 5.4 per cent last year. Before that, any discuss labour involved shortages.

“There is really a noticeable quietness,” Copeland said. “There would be a amount of time in 2012/2014 whenever you couldn’t obtain a room in Cold Lake. Now parking lots are vacant and you can begin to see the difference.”

The blows started coming using the crash in oil prices orchestrated by Saudi Arabia in late 2014 to claw back share of the market from higher-cost producers in the usa and Canada.

Today, Copeland worries more about the long term. The oilsands’ growth story has lost traction because of insufficient pipeline capacity and climate-change policy – and that is a Made in Canada problem.

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Without market access and also the right business conditions, oilsands production could freeze at current levels, he said, and thus would the exploration work, construction projects, support services, and retail, transportation and hospitality jobs that fueled the area’s – and Canada’s – economy.

We have allowed misinformation to dictate the agenda in Alberta

“That conversation isn’t talked about enough,” he explained. “And it’s all linked to the pipes. There needs to be an industry for your oil to go to.”

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Pipelines to Canada’s West and East Coasts, and to the U.S. Gulf Coast, have stalled. The Alberta government is working on implementing a 100-megatonne-a-year cap on greenhouse-gas emissions for the oilsands industry, up from about 70 today.

Such a cap would restrain many planned projects. The us government, meanwhile, is working on its very own plan, and it is reforming energy regulation to incorporate a climate-change test on pipelines and the oil projects that feed them.

Copeland’s harshest criticism is for environmentally friendly movement, that they said has never bothered to find out about the practices from the oil industry in the area, preferring instead to blindly organize protests if this did go.

Anybody who has been to oil facilities can see their minimal land disturbance, their preoccupation with following regulations, their fear of harming the environment, he explained.

“We keep beating our oil industry having a stick, and nobody wants to stand up and say, ‘Enough is sufficient. Environmentalists, clean up your bags and deal with your personal neighbourhoods,'” said Copeland, with a background in fish and wildlife management and runs the Cold Lake Fish Hatchery.



“We have allowed misinformation, and guys like Neil Young and David Suzuki, to dictate the agenda in Alberta. We have got to get it back, and the best way is for federal and provincial politicians to say, ‘We are building pipe. Let’s go.'”

A insufficient growth doesn’t mean production is going to be shut in. Oilsands operations will continue to create, just like they have throughout the downturn, because investments happen to be made. It means Canada will continue to obtain a lot of its oil from unsavoury regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, rather than hard-working towns like Cold Lake.

According to some labour demand outlook report made public now by Petroleum Labour Market Information, Canada’s oilsands sector is shifting from growth and expansion to improving the reliability and performance of current operations.

It projects demand for onsite construction workers will be 92-per-cent lower by 2018 – representing nearly 20,000 fewer jobs – compared to 2014 projections. Operations tasks are likely to increase modestly, to around 35,000 in 2018, but that’s still thousands lacking previous expectations.



Cold Lake grew from an influx of largely young workers from all over Canada, lured by high-paying oil jobs and great recreation facilities funded by oil companies. Many bought homes, started families and meant to stay for the long term – eight per cent of their human population is 4 years old or younger.

Copeland notes his counterparts in Quebec and Bc who criticize pipelines aren’t talking about the reasons of the young, unable to get jobs in your own home, gone to live in his community for work. The final big project built nearby, Imperial’s Nabiye, employed 1,500 construction workers, he explained. Of these, 90 per cent were tradesmen from across Canada, including big groups from Quebec and Vancouver Island.

It’s unlikely, he points out, that newer industries such as technology will relocate to meet the increasing demand if the oil patch dries up. “If we allow the environmentalists win, where do these young people go for work?” he asks.

ccattaneo@nationalpost.com

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