BONUS: Author Don Gillmor on his latest book "On Oil" | Climate Book Reviews

We're sharing another episode of Ed’s podcast Climate Book Reviews with acclaimed Canadian author Don Gillmor on his latest non-fiction work, On Oil.

Ed is joined by his regular co-host Dr. Roger Thompson, Director of Writing Programs and Professor at Arizona State University.

This episode dives into the sharply drawn and darkly funny world of On Oil, a slim and punchy examination of the most earth-altering industry of our time. Drawing from Gillmor's early years working on Alberta oil rigs and his deep experience as a journalist and novelist, the book traces how oil has shaped not only our landscapes and economies, but also our politics, foreign policy, and our public imagination.

It's a lively and wide-ranging conversation with Don about the inspiration behind the book, and how the oil industry—like a character in a novel—is navigating a world in flux.

About Our Guest:

Don Gillmor is an award-winning Canadian novelist, journalist and children's book author. His journalism and criticism have appeared in The Walrus, where he was a senior editor; Saturday Night and Toronto Life, where he was a contributing editor; and Rolling Stone, GQ, The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, among other publications. He has won 12 National Magazine Awards.

About Your Hosts:

Roger Thompson is a professor and writer at ASU. He began his career working with environmental literature and nature writing and established with Ed Whittingham an environmental internship program in Banff, Alberta for students at a VMI, a military college. His most recent environmental book, No Word for Wilderness: Italy’s Grizzlies and the Race to Save the Rarest Bears on Earth (Ashland Creek), documents the attempts by grassroots activists and university faculty to preserve the Marsican bears of Abruzzo, and it reveals for the first time the mafia’s attempts to use National Parks to fleece EU subsidies.

Ed Whittingham is a clean energy policy/finance professional specializing in renewable electricity generation and transmission, carbon capture, carbon removal and low carbon transportation. He is a Public Policy Forum fellow and formerly the executive director of the Pembina Institute, a national clean energy think tank.

Produced by Amit Tandon & Bespoke Podcasts

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Don Gillmor: When it began the kind of entrepreneurial energy and the kind of technological expertise that you needed in order to solve that problem, which was to, you know, dig this sticky, complicated substance out of the ground in a, in a hostile environment and, and, and get something viable, uh, energy wise out of a.

You know, it was extraordinary. Um, but I think that has sort of disappeared that they're now just, they're, they're functioning as well as they need to and they're not gonna make much in the way of technological improvements on any front, whether it's environmental or, you know, production. 'cause they can just sort of coast along and take the profits, uh, that they're taking.

[00:00:43] Ed Whittingham: Hey there, it's Ed. I'm sharing another episode of my occasional podcast called Climate Book Reviews. But with all the great climate theme books coming out these days, it's becoming a little less occasional. I co-host it with Dr. Roger Thompson, director of Writing Programs and professor at Arizona State University.

Our goal with the pod is to curate some climate energy related books worth knowing about. In this episode, we dive into the sharply drawn and darkly funny world of. On oil. The latest nonfiction work by acclaimed Canadian author, Don Gillmor On Oil is a slim and punchy examination of the most earth altering industry of our time.

Drawing from Gillmor's early years working on Alberta oil rigs and is a deep experience as a journalist and novelist. The book traces how oil is shaped not only our landscapes and economies, but also our politics, foreign policy, and our public imagination. We had a lively and wide raging conversation with Dawn about the inspiration behind the book and how the oil industry like characters in a novel is navigating a world in flux.

I think you'll enjoy it. For more information, visit climate book reviews.com. And now over to Roger. Happy listening. Hey, Roger. How are you doing? Doing great. How are you Doing? Good. Hey, just for this podcast recording because. Dawn writes of so many organizations and characters and events that I am familiar with from my time working in and around the oil and gas sector, particularly when I was at the Emin Institute.

It's, I I'm gonna have to resist the temptation to get into the war stories and especially with some of the more colorful characters. So, uh, just as you being the hostess with the mostess, feel free to. Reign me in if, if I get too down. Uh, a, a story. 

[00:02:29] Roger Thompson: No, no. I think, I think we want war stories. If we can, uh, we can build them up.

Uh, I think that's absolutely great and probably our listeners will really enjoy hearing those. In fact, I, I think we want to start that way with some of danzo old stories as this book kind of traces out. And, and I've got lots to say about this book. I'm sure you do, ed, especially given your connection to the, the oil sands.

Uh, Don it sounds like you have experience working. Uh, firsthand in, in, uh, the oil sand. So I'm wondering if you could just give us, and you trace this out, you give us some really lovely narrative in the, in the book about your time there really colorful narrative and really great read. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about your experiences there and then how that laid the groundwork for this book.

[00:03:07] Don Gillmor: Well, I was, I was living in Calgary in the seventies. I moved there, I was at the University of Calgary in 1972. And um, I was looking for a summer job and everyone said, well, you gotta work in oil. That's where all the money is. So a friend of mine and myself, we went down, we just went downtown and we dropped off our very slim resumes to every oil company.

Finally a secretary said to us, you know, you two idiots are never gonna get a job like this. If you want a job in the oil rigs, drive out to the rigs. And so we rented a car, we drove east towards medicine hat where the, this huge gas field and um, the first rig we stopped at had a sign saying This rig has worked zero accident free days.

We thought, well, there's a job opening here. And there was a guy sitting on a 40 gallon drum, um, with his hand all wrapped in gauze. There was blood all over his jeans and you know, he is obviously waiting to be taken to emergency. But even with that, we couldn't get a job. The guy said, you know, you don't have any experience.

We don't need you. But we drove around for three days and um, we finally got to a, a rig where. Uh, the whole crew hadn't shown up, and which wasn't that unusual back then in the oil fields. And this was, this was early seventies, so we had long hair and, um, you know, our, our Grateful Dead t-shirts on. Um, the driller just looked at us and said, well, I guess you drills will have to do, and, uh, hired us both and that was the beginning of my, uh, oil career basically.

And I, uh, I mean the job was terrible, but it paid, uh, a lot and it was seven days a week. This was, um, you know, there was camp jobs where you kind of went in and out. But with the, out on the prairies, you know, you would work, um, eight hours a day till you went back to school. And, uh, so the whole summer was the oil world.

And because I was an English major, you know, it was a very colorful subculture, especially back then. So it had a lot of appeal in a, a kind, perverse way, 

[00:05:03] Ed Whittingham: you know. Just, sorry, one, one. All right. I'll already get into a story on, on accidents. I remember Dawn being on a Greyhound bus. When I was at the Pember Institute, I used to like get from Calgary to Edmonton and back buy Greyhound at advertise to say it's the cheapest way to go.

And you'd meet lots of colorful characters along the way. And I sat next to a guy who was still visibly bleeding through his sock down into his foot and his shoe. And he was, while he was sitting there, you know, he was actually. There's enough blood that it was starting to drip onto the floor of the Greyhound.

He had just come from a site, he'd had some accident that had left this huge gash in his, his upper ankle that was causing the bleeding. And he said, listen, my foreman, uh, went, he went to an ATM, he got out 2000 bucks. He gave it to me and he said, go disappear for a week and go get drunk. And, and it was already like, it was I think 10:00 AM and he was already like halfway there to getting drunk.

And the whole thing was his foreman didn't want him on site. They didn't want a WCB claim, Workers' compensation board claim. Just go disappear, have a bender for a week, and then come back when you're all healed up. Here's the, the oil, 

[00:06:14] Don Gillmor: uh, health, uh, system in action. My goodness. 

[00:06:18] Roger Thompson: Nothing, like more alcohol to, uh, coagulate the blood stronger to Yeah, 

[00:06:23] Ed Whittingham: exactly.

[00:06:24] Roger Thompson: Together. Well, Don, at the time then, I mean, you said you're an English major, you, you, surely you weren't imagining a book, uh, at that time that might kinda speak to this. 

[00:06:34] Don Gillmor: Um, you know, I wasn't, but when I graduated, I, by that time I thought, you know, I, I will write something about this and I, but I thought it would be a novel and I tried to write a novel back then, and it just.

It never gelled. It was just a collection of kind of wacky anecdotes, you know? Mm-hmm. And so I put that aside. I did end up writing a novel about oil called Long Change, which came out about, I don't know, a decade ago, but it took me that long for the kind of novel part to Percolate. Um, yeah, it was kind of a 30 year gestation period.

[00:07:06] Roger Thompson: Great. So then what prompted the kind of return here to telling these stories in this format? In this particular book, 

[00:07:12] Don Gillmor: uh, what happened was there's a, a Bi Oasis, which is the publisher based in Windsor. They have a series called Field Notes. And so there's, they're essentially kind of long essays and there's one on class, there's one on risk, one on failure there.

I think there's 10 titles out right now, and I have a novel with them. And the, the um, publisher there said, you know, is there something in the field note. Um, world that you'd like to write. And I said, well, you know, uh, maybe I could write about oil because there's, you know, a bit of memoir there. And, um, plus I, you know, I reported on it off and on when I was a journalist, and this is sort of an interesting moment right now.

I don't know if you ever read Peter MA's book, uh, crude World, but the subtitle of that book was, uh, the Violent Twilight of Oil, which has always sort of stuck in my head. I sort of feel we're in that moment right now, and I thought now would be a good time to kind of get this down the, the nonfiction version.

[00:08:05] Roger Thompson: This, uh, this is reminding me of some of the discussion that you have throughout your book. Uh, one of the key phrases you bring up is this notion of a moral imperative for oil discovery and extraction. And I'm, I'm curious about that moral imperative and how it intersects with this, uh, violent twilight in your mind.

[00:08:23] Don Gillmor: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the moral imperative, certainly. When Alberta, you know, when I was there it was all, all conventional oil for the most part. So it's all the oil rigs and the foothills and the prairies and, you know, the oil sands had just started, uh, in 67, I guess we would, you know, call it their, their birth.

Um, and you know, they weren't making money. I think they were still viewed as folly by most conventional oil producers even. But when they were christened, you know, and they really were christened, it was by Ernest Manning who was the, uh, then premier of Alberta and John Howard Pugh, who was. The head of Sun Oil and both of them were, um, you know, strong evangelical Christians and Manning still had a, um, his own, his own, um, Bible radio program as he was while he was premier.

You know, I think they really viewed the oil sense as this gift from God. And I think they, you know, pew came from that perspective. I think from, you know, his experience in Texas where there was this strong correlation between. Oil and, and that brand of Christianity, and that there was this sort of moral imperative to extract as much oil as possible and this would, uh, you know, benefit mankind.

[00:09:34] Roger Thompson: Yeah. This is, for me, as someone who grew up in Oklahoma, this was one of the most intriguing and, and, uh, to me, one of most thoughtful parts of, of your book, which I, again, I won't say it's a brief book, but it's a. Engaging book, um, and well worth someone picking up and, and reading. And part of it is this.

Point and you, and you point to other people who have spoken about it as this intersection in certain parts of the world and the country of faith, religion, and oil extraction. I'm reminded of a family story. There's, uh, when I was a child, there was a guy in, um, Fort Worth. Think Fort Worth, who, who had decided that the Bible had given him the sign as to where oil in Israel was, and it was based around this idea, the foot of Asher and the tribe of Asher.

And so it, this area, uh, I saw the Haifa and he was convinced, right, that the oil would be there and that Israel would finally become free from dependence on other countries for energy. So the, the, so this kind of nation building linked with faith, linked with oil and energy extraction and, and deployment.

I mean, you do a really nice job of kind of, well, not surveying it, but illustrating why that's important to understanding what happens with oil exploration around the globe. I think this is a really meaningful contribution here. 

[00:10:54] Don Gillmor: Yeah, and I think, you know, you see evidence of it now, I mean, less so in Alberta now, uh, but certainly in Texas.

Uh, I mentioned the book, uh, Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes, you know, two loyal guys who are both. Evangelical Christians and who are convinced that this is the destiny and anyone who's opposing this is essentially aligned with the devil and that they're creating that kind of o old school dichotomy, I think, you know, which is to their advantage.

It has really created this, you know, kind of. Fascinating and kind of biblical landscape down there. 

[00:11:28] Ed Whittingham: You also, um, uh, Dawn, I, I like your chapter when you talk about the resource curse and of course in Alberta where I live, that's an ongoing conversation, especially when, in any given time a government's budget is based, you know, somewhere to the tune of 25 to 30% on resource revenue, which is a rapid, rapidly cycling commodity price, which means it goes up and goes down.

And we have good times, we have bad times, and. We have surpluses and then we have debts. But you also dealt with Equatorial, Guinea and Nigeria. And it reminded me, and actually just recently over at Energy versus Climate, another podcast that I'm part of, we had a woman, uh, named Rose, uh, MoSo on, and we talked about energy transition Sub-Saharan Africa.

And I told a story of some of the work I'd do for, uh, on an as an advisor to Shell Global. Including meeting with Shell's country chair at the time, a guy named Wasi Kubo, uh, country chair for Nigeria and talking. So you, you deal with Nigeria and its resource curse. What you might have omitted in that story was how you get a big company like Shell, which definitely, you know, has received its fair share of criticism, including in Nigeria and I think of Ken Sarah Wewa and, uh, his execution in the nineties and Shell's complicit complicity in that.

Here I was at the highest level of Shell saying We actually want to get out of Nigeria, but we can't, like, because we account for 25% of GDP and if we pull out, we're gonna bankrupt the company country immediately. And then a Chinese state oil, uh, state owned enterprise is gonna come in and we're worried that they're gonna be far worse than us.

And one of the reasons they wanted to get outta Nigeria was because of the safety issues that you talked about and the fact that at any given day, you know, one to three out of every 10 barrels of oil produced goes missing for some cottage industry where it's refined and, and the great expense of the Nigerian delta, uh, in terms of environmental cost.

So it's just this lousy situation, not just for the country in many ways. But also for a company that is the cornerstone of the oil and gas industry there, I don't normally defend Shell, I don't normally defend oil and gas companies, but it was very interesting to hear the country, the country chair for Nigeria speak very, uh, very, uh, eloquently 

[00:13:46] Don Gillmor: about it.

Yeah, I mean, I, that's a really interesting problem because, you know, at the last top conference that you had, the environmental Minister of Nigeria saying. Something to that effect that if, you know, there's just no way that they can, uh, make a transition quickly and, and maybe they can't even make one slowly at this point.

And I think this is sort of the buy-in you get into that, once oil kind of takes over the way it has in a country like that, you're, you're not left with any alternative because the industries that have been eroded by, you know, the fact that oil's kind of taken over the entire economy, e either they can't come roaring back, whether it's agriculture or fishing because of degradation of.

Environment or you know, that, that they, the expertise is no longer there. And so you do create this problem that can only be solved by you in, in effect. I mean, as you say, shell ends up being, you know, the, the best solution to this problem that, uh, in, in effect that they've helped create. I 

[00:14:46] Roger Thompson: mean, would you, would you apply that equally to Alberta, as you would to Nigeria?

[00:14:49] Don Gillmor: Uh, well, you know, to a degree they, they're, they're suffering from the resource curse as well. You know, to a degree they're gonna be left with some of the same problems. One, one of it's just a question of scale that Alberta's so massive that. So much of this is happening off stage basically for most people.

And when it comes time to clean up, it's gonna be a problem that I think no one will be able to afford. You know, certainly the government won't be at that point. I don't think private enterprise will be as well. There's not, there's not enough money put aside right now. So you're gonna end up with, I think, you know, in principle, some of the same issues, but on a, on a different scale.

[00:15:27] Roger Thompson: Are there obvious pathways? I mean, I'm curious, ed, your response to that question also. 

[00:15:32] Ed Whittingham: So I'll start, Alberta has, uh, Dawn, you introduced the concept of orphan well sites in Alberta. And an orphan well is, you know, essentially a, a well that's been abandoned by an oil and gas producing, uh, company. And it's left as this kind of an environmental insult, uh, on the landscape and Alberta has.

Sort of on the order of, uh, hundreds of thousands of orphan wells. I'd have to go back to my time as briefly on the Alberta Energy Regulator Board until, uh, Jason Kenny, uh, wanted to show me the door. But, uh, I quit before I could get fired. Uh, but we were looking at it then, and this is the problem when you have.

Say a couple or, uh, uh, you know, basically a, an oil and ca uh, an oil and gas entrepreneur, a wildcatter who then hits up a couple orthodontists in Calgary and goes out and sinks a couple wells and then runs it till it's profitable and then goes belly up and then leaves that behind. And there's not enough money there to pay for the cleanup.

So the, the amount of money that Alberta has set aside for cleanup is a fraction of what the liability is. And that's before we get to some of the liabilities in the oil sands around tailings ponds. So there's this constant discussion of. Should we set more money aside? What's the responsibility of the federal government?

What's the responsibility? The provincial government, and the one thing that in COVID relief that the province and the Feds could agree upon was, okay, well, let's create jobs and let's actually spend some money to clean up these wells. That's a good thing. But really the, the solution is make sure that.

Companies set aside enough money before they develop so that there is money set aside and the ones where that have already been left on the landscape. Unfortunately, it comes down to the public purse for the most part, un unle until, or unless you're capturing more of that wealth from the companies. But of course the companies themselves don't like it when you ask them to set more money aside or you increase their taxes.

And generally Alberta considers its competitive advantage here as maintaining a low tax environment, right. So that that wild powder can go hit up the orthodontists and, and start producing. 

[00:17:43] Roger Thompson: Well, I, I imagine with the oil sands in particular, that's one that's a, it's a required advantage that they have, right?

I mean, there's, it's already so expensive anyway. If you add further tax to it, what's the, what's incentive at that point to exploit that land, that resource at that point? Mm-hmm. I would assume, in fact, uh, that kind of brings me to. One of the things that I thought was the what for me was one of the most useful chapters in, it's early in your book, Don, is this kind of survey brief history and it's not long and, but it kind of coalesces all the core issues of the oil sands.

It's early, it's a kinda this, uh, I think you pose it as kind of a, not just a time of transformation, but this kind of myth building around what the oil might do for Alberta. And I just found that chapter really engaging and really helpful. Right. As someone who's not in Canada. Who, uh, knows a bit about the oil sands and, um, the problems with extraction there, uh, both in terms of physically and for the industry, but also in terms of the, uh, results of it and for the local population.

So that kind of survey was really helpful. I mean, be pointing people. To it. Right? As as, hey, if you wanna try to have a snapshot of the oil sands and the issues at stake, it's gonna be there. And I'm curious about, in kind of crafting that chapter, how much that was for you, if you were trying to highlight certain features in particular, or whether you were really just trying to give a quick history in some sort of way.

[00:19:04] Don Gillmor: Well, yeah, I wanted to do a kind of, just a quick history and you know, one of the things that I find interesting, especially now, is that. When it started, it was essentially this sort of American Canadian co-production. And then, you know, once they kind of changed the, the tax rules and the royalty rules, you suddenly had this massive influx of foreign capital and you know, the Japanese and Chinese, everyone was kind of getting involved.

And then kinda everyone, all those people pulled away in the last decade for the most part. And you're now back down to these sort of six. Uh, you know, Calgary headquartered companies are not necessarily Canadian owned, but they're headquartered in Calgary and they now control 95% of the oil sands. And so you, you know, you started as this sort of Canadian American enterprise and you're kind of ending as one as well.

You know, I think when it began the kind of entrepreneurial energy and the kind of technological expertise that you needed in order to solve that problem, which is to, you know, dig this sticky. Complicated substance out of the ground in a, in a hostile environment and, and, and get something viable, uh, energy-wise out of it.

You know, it was extraordinary. Um, uh, but I think that has sort of disappeared, uh, that, that they're now just, they're, they're functioning as well as they need to and they're not gonna make much in the way of technological improvements on any front, whether it's environmental or, you know, production.

'cause they can just sort of coast along and take. The profits, uh, that they're taking. 

[00:20:35] Ed Whittingham: Yeah, and, and this is something I think people need to understand about the oil sands, which is still this very large. Pool of, uh, potential oil, uh, oil reserves, but also carbon. The company's up there. So Dawn, you're right, it's become basically Canadian companies plus Exxon.

And I was there, you know, when I was at the Emin Institute where you had a whole bunch of different Western industrialized co, uh, countries, and sometimes there's. State owned enterprise, like Stat Oil when it was owned 70% by Norway. You had, you know, French, the French, uh, company total get in. You'd mentioned Japanese company, JCOs, which had a demonstration project so they could get privy to it.

Uh, all of those companies have left and right now, the Canadian companies plus Exxon through Imperial, they're essentially moving toward like an income trust model that they realize you're not gonna grow. If there isn't a license to plug in billions of new capital to develop, you know, new oil sands mines, they can't get the approvals or, I mean, increasingly they think that the demand for the oil that they produce is not going to grow.

If anything, oil demand is going to peak and then there'll be, it won't decline. It'll be, uh, a long sort of peak and flatlining. But, uh, Canadian oil, regardless of carbon management or carbon policy around the world, just is very expensive and occupies a niche market. So you say, okay, we won't build anything new, so we're gonna take what we have and just optimize, optimize, optimize so that what we do produce is profitable.

And then as soon as it becomes unprofitable, you close down. And that is a very different model to the one that Don, you write about in the heady days of the nineties and the two thousands and even to the 2010s when the companies were tremendously growing. And they're going and throwing their names on new community centers or hockey arenas or colleges or whatever it was.

When you're fun functioning as an income trust, you cut out all the fat, you distribute all your pre proceeds as much as possible to shareholders. You lower your debt, and again, as soon as you become unprofitable, you just close up. That's 

[00:22:46] Don Gillmor: a disturbing thought. Yeah, that's interesting. And something I wanted to ask you, like the, one of the problems I find in, you know, reporting about oil is it's such a a, it's a moving target.

And because, you know, it's so tribal at the moment in terms of getting, you know, valid statistics so that, you know, like a few days ago, OPEC came out and said, um, you know, demand is gonna grow 44% between now and by 2050. And you know, you have the international. Energy agencies saying, well, no, it's going to peak in the next four years.

Um, and all kinds of things in between. And so, you know, trying to find what is the most reliable source of information is a real challenge. And I, you know, where do you look Ed when you're looking at this? 

[00:23:31] Ed Whittingham: You look at the OPEC stats, you look, uh, as you say at the IEA, I think the Eurasia group does, uh, very good, uh, work.

And then there are a bunch of like ryad. There are a bunch of other forecasters out there that you can look at. Yeah, but often they're talking about different things. I see that there's more of a consensus, uh, emerging. That oil demand isn't gonna shoot up. It's not gonna be on this hockey stick like trajectory anymore.

But as oil reserves decline, you're still gonna need new production to replace. The production that's being lost, that's declining. So let's say oil demand peaks at a hundred or a hundred, five or 110 barrels per day, whatever, a million barrels per day, whatever it is, you're still having to constantly generate new barrels as production dwindles.

So they can both be right, but they're just talking about different parts of the oil and gas production curve. Right? Right. 

[00:24:27] Roger Thompson: I mean, you, you bring this up in your book. Uh, at one point, Don, in fact, I like the way you phrase it. You talk at some point, you talk about that there was an era in which the, when you had inconvenient facts, the goal was to make them invisible, right?

To bury 'em, make them disappear. Uh, but now it seems to be in an era where we just make up counter stories, right? The counter facts. We don't, there's no attempt to suppress when you can just write a counter story regardless of what the facts are. And I can only imagine. In journalistic way, how impossible that makes the job is kind of finding out the reality and what the actual facts are.

[00:25:02] Don Gillmor: Yeah, and I think, you know, I mean, oil is prone to sort of paradox anyway, and, and, and, and contradiction and I, you know, you see right now for example, where President Trump has said, you know, what he wants to see is $40 a barrel oil. And on, on the other hand, he also is, you know, releasing all these public lands for drilling and saying to the drilling companies, drill, baby drill.

You know, you're not gonna have a lot of fracking happening at $40 a barrel. You know, at that point very few fracking companies are, are gonna be earning a profit. And he's a sort of extreme case, so they don't think he understands. Ecosystems aren't as strong point sort of in seeing how things reverberate.

But, um, you see that in oil, in, in a lot of different ways that there's these sort of. Inherent contradictions and um, that, that's one of the big challenges I think we face right now. 

[00:25:52] Ed Whittingham: And, and, and like that. I don't think Trump is gonna be very successful in really jacking up oil and gas production in the US beyond what it's already doing.

It's very healthy. It's producing a lot in the same way that no matter what he said about beautiful clean coal, he really couldn't jack up coal production in the United States. And the same way that on this side of the border. Mark Carney is saying he's open for business when it comes to new cross country pipeline.

Uh, that's great. And the Alberta government is there, uh, with, you know, cheerleader, pompoms. But the industry itself has still been largely silent. You haven't seen a proponent come forward and say, we see the business case for this. So I think ultimately this is for political ends and the market is sending the signals of what it thinks oil and gas demand is going to do.

And for North American, for the US and for Canada, it's saying, well, we don't have the same kind of irrational exuberance as our politicians have. And we're gonna take a much more of a cautious approach while still you see pockets booming. Dawn, like, you know, where you talked about unconventionals or even conventional plays where you, you, you see, you know, little spikes in production, but the, the, the.

Big spike in production that we had in the 20, the two thousands and the 2010s. I just really can't see it happening. No, and I 

[00:27:13] Don Gillmor: think, you know, the, the pipeline debate, which is, you know, I, I think about to enter a, a kind of frenzied period very shortly. 'cause you know, Danielle Smith had said, has said, we will be coming up with a proposal.

As you said, there's been this absolute silence on the part of actual pipeline and oil producers about building a pipeline. She's kind of working on a coalition, I guess, of the willing in terms of pipelines. But, you know, even if that were the case, if she's to assemble, uh, enough people in private enterprise who actually wanna build the pipeline, you know, if we're going, uh, uh, west to east and they're talking about that 4,600 kilometer pipeline, of which.

1600 kilometers would be new and 3000 or three, yeah, 3000 would be retrofitted. You know, if you look at Transmountain pipeline as any kind of model, it was, I think 960 kilometers or 12 years to build 34 billion. If we, you know, use that as a, a kind of loose model and, you know, it takes, let's say 15 years and 50 billion, uh, to build this, you know.

Some of that oil's raised Eastern Canada. Some of it's for export to Europe, but you know, what does the European export market look like in 2040 or 2042? Because I, my, my fear is that, you know, that North America is, is sort of inching towards this sort of global energy backwater, you know, but Europe and Asia are decarbonizing a much higher rate and we're.

We're gonna end up looking like Cuba with these kind of old gas bringing cars, you know, running around. I think that's the, the heart of the pipeline debate is, you know, what, what happens when that pipeline is finished, you know, in more than a decade from now. 

[00:28:55] Roger Thompson: I'm reminded of something I've heard Ed talk about on energy versus climate and that you bring up in your book also the kind of, and and you've mentioned us now, paradox of the oil industry that, uh, both Texas and Alberta, you know, oil Central also happen to be the ground zero for big development on renewables in the, in North America.

And so there's this tension there and I, and I do think part of Trump's attempt to kind of dial down Biden's, uh, mandate for. Increase renewables and trying to tamp that down. The resistance he's gotten to that, I think speaks to what both of you all are talking about, that the market uptake on some of this is on the renewables is, is developing and is energetic in a way that the oil industry may not be.

[00:29:37] Don Gillmor: Yeah, certainly. I mean, you know, it, it's interesting to see the development in Alberta where you know. By far, it's a province with the most renewable energy projects. But when Danielle Smith put that moratorium on new projects, it, it, you know, dampened investment, understandably. And I think, you know, she as well as others have been talking about this I, this concept of being an energy superpower and I just don't see how you can be an energy superpower.

Based solely on fossil fuels because you have a market that is international and quite easily manipulated and you really need the renewables there. And I think she missed that moment where Alberta could have been an energy super brand, still could be in the future, but you had a moment where you had all this renewable energy coming online.

And, um, I, I think with, you know, slightly better management of the oil sands and a, a robust renewable sector that's supported by the government rather than hindered by the government. Would change that landscape dramatically. And so, uh, it's a mystery to me why she's so, you know, vehemently opposed to those projects and why she puts the kind of hurdles in their way that she in fact removes for the oil and gas industry.

[00:30:48] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Uh, and, and putting a moratorium on a renewable electricity market in a way that her government would never do on oil and gas production, even though in 2005, and you wrote about this, Don Peter Lawed, the venerable Saint Lee, Peter Lawed, who was one of Alberta's great premiers, and he was premier.

For, uh, well, it's a decade and a half had actually gone up to the oil sands and saw the extent of the, uh, the production and the growth and, you know, uh, did the two plus two math very quickly. And that is, it's pretty clear that environmental management systems weren't keeping pace. With that pace of development.

You mentioned, by the way, this old report that we put out, uh, oil Sands Fever. Yeah, yeah. Uh, from 2005, I remember being part of that report and that was exactly what we're saying and we, being the Emin Institute, is that our environmental management systems aren't keeping, keeping pace and. Peter Lockheed himself said, well, maybe we need to take a timeout.

Maybe we need a pause on new development. And he was laughed outta the room as being like a socialist at the time. And now, what did the Smith government do in 2023 and, uh, in the summer, but do exactly that. Put a mor. A new renewable electricity development in the province really is throwing red meat to her base that were concerned by, you know, seeing bob's, you know, canola field next door be converted into, uh, a solar farm.

Now to be clear, you saw the pace of that development, uh, increase exponentially. So you had people on the ground seeing a lot of changes very quickly when there's no reason why you couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time, continue to. You know, develop new environmental management systems, uh, new approvals while still processing what was in the regulatory queue.

But yeah, you can punish one part of the energy system while you would never inflict the same kind of punishment on the other part of the energy system. I will say, just quickly on this energy superpower business, it was coined under the Stephen Harper government, perhaps by Stephen Harper himself is nonsense.

Personally, I think Canada doesn't control any part of the global energy system enough to any degree to ever consider itself as an energy superpower. And in the way that say the United States is now a superpower, Russia or, uh, you know, Saudi Arabia. Yeah. I, I 

[00:33:05] Don Gillmor: wonder if Saudi Arabia is the sole superpower in that they seem to be the only one that can kind of single-handedly manipulate the international crisis.

[00:33:14] Roger Thompson: It's a good point. I think we're, uh, we're winding on time here, so Don, I. Uh, tee you up an opportunity here if there's anything particular you wanna highlight, but, um, even if not there, regardless, I'd like to, for you, speak a little bit of who you're hoping picks up your book because it's an interesting book because on the one hand it's data rich, right?

There's this kind of whole middle section where you're kind of tracing out the nuts and bolts of the reality of the facts, right? Of what's going on. Uh, you've got these, this wonderful narrative. Elements that kinda show up throughout, especially front end and tail end about your own experiences. And then you've got these kind of, what, what I might call kind of moral ruminations, right?

Philosophical implications of, of what our dedication to oil might mean. So I'm, I'm curious a little bit about who you. Imagine this book being most useful for, I mean, it was useful for me. I don't mean to ask that skeptically in the slightest. Um, instead, I'm curious about who you imagined as kind of your core audience here.

Well, 

[00:34:10] Don Gillmor: I thought of the core audience as essentially kind of people who, you know, like me are consuming oil in some way but don't have a real good sense of the complications and implications of oil. Um, and I wanted something sort of concise and readable. I, I have to confess that the first draft of this book ended after the second last chapter after the Rapture, which ends on this very kind of downbeat book of Revelations coming apocalypse note.

And the, uh, editor said, listen, could you, could you do something to kind of give us a little bit of optimism at the end and. So I did write an epilogue that I started to look at, you know, through more, through, uh, you know, glass half full kind of lens. And I mean, there is a lot to be optimistic about out there.

So I did put some of that at the end. So I, I, uh, I would hope that people kind of take, uh, some sort of solace from that and, and recognize that there, there is a way out of this, uh, situation. 

[00:35:04] Ed Whittingham: Dawn. Um, I, I think it's wonderful prose. Like I find you're, you're an amazing writer. Yeah. So it's just, uh, able to breeze through and I frankly, in all the books on oil out there, I've never seen someone who can use prose the way that you do to talk about.

The production of it, which really is kind of miraculous. Yep. Uh, your storytelling's great. And so I'd like to talk about one character that I know personally that shows up in your book, and then maybe one thing that for next time, uh, a story that you could write. The character is Bruce Carson. Oh, yes. And, and a character's the right name.

[00:35:37] Don Gillmor: Yeah. 

[00:35:38] Ed Whittingham: This is a guy I got to know personally. Quite well. And so Roger, if you remember, he was an advisor to Prime Minister Harper. Then he was given this golden handshake, and the Golden handshake was I think 25 million to run the Canada School of Energy and Environment. Bruce was a, and, and he died a few years ago.

He was a high functioning alcoholic who had then, you know, he'd say, okay, well come out for dinner and have these meetings. And the guy could drink anyone under the table and then it'd still be up at 6:00 AM and he seemed to be clear-eyed and, and, and with it, I remember I ha hosted the dinner, uh, for the Japanese Consul General in Calgary.

He showed up and he brought flowers, not just for the Consul General's wife, but for my wife as well. Said this really nice touch. And then he told his stories how he's talking to the Prime Minister on the way. I invited him to, uh, Pemina staff board, uh, retreat. In Nordic, he showed up with Kitty Dawn. So Kitty was this woman who ran a brothel unbeknownst to all of us in I think North Carolina.

Yeah. Oh my God. And the two of them were like teenagers. We, we had these staff board retreats at the time, like a, a children's camp before we went upscale and had it at a proper hotel. And I had staff coming up to me saying. Every time I turn a corner like Bruce and Kitty are just like making out and he is got his tongue halfway down her throat, kitty's, walking around talking to my female colleagues saying, well, you really should have a pushup bra, honey if you wanna succeed in this world.

Oh my God. And then he went to the liquor store, Norde, he bought up. All the scotch in this little liquor store. And then he brought it to the assembly and he got my whole organization drunk. Like everyone. 'cause he had these, all these bottle of scotches. Like he was just this character and I was with him, Don, when it finally all came to an end.

And, uh, it was all coming to light and of all places, Aboriginal People's Television Network figured out that he had this criminal record that he was illegally lobbying for his then stripper girlfriend's, mother, mother word to get the beds to spend money on water treatment on reserve. And it was totally illegal.

Log lobbying and. My, I was sitting there and I was two feet away from Bruce in the basement of the petroleum club. My colleague Tim Weiss sends me this link and he is like, what the fuck? And you click on that. And that was the first time the story of Bruce went out. Holy cow. And I was looking at Bruce and afterward I'm like, Bruce, I gotta talk to you, man.

It's like, oh, no, no, you had to meet with a couple people including the head of cap at the time. I gotta talk to you. He's like, I can't hear it. Well just send me an email. He was an email guy. I walked outta the petroleum club, queued up in the email, sent him the link and said, I'm sorry, but your life is about to go ape shit.

That was it. That was the beginning of his massive, massive downfall and ultimately his conviction. 

[00:38:26] Roger Thompson: Wow. Did you have any communication with him after that? Oh yeah, 

[00:38:29] Ed Whittingham: yeah. Long after his dethroning, I met with him, uh, in Toronto on the edges of our, our, uh, our big annual gala. We went to Starbucks and yeah, he was in sort of ratty jeans and a, like a, a ratty winter jacket.

And he was kind of writing this newsletter called The Daily Brief at the time, which it sent out to, you know, people including ex-Prime ministers and Jim p Prentis at the time. He once shared his whole. CC list BBCC list by mistake. And you saw he had all these like high powered conservatives on his, uh, email list.

Wow. But he was doing like law clerk, clerk work to try to pay the bills. Oh boy. And that ended up being the last couple years of his life. And was he still with his 21-year-old escort girlfriend at that point? That didn't last and I remember at, at the Fairmont, Royal York in Toronto talking to Kitty, and it was another Bruce Carson special.

We had just about to go in and have a dinner, a very boozy dinner. And I saw Katie and I was about to ask him, oh hey, how's Bruce? And she cut me off and she said, he's fucking a stripper. There's no comeback for that. 

[00:39:41] Don Gillmor: Okay, well there's my next book right there. It's gonna be all Bruce all the time. Yeah, 

[00:39:46] Ed Whittingham: yeah, yeah.

So that's the character I ought to tell once I read that. I like, I am like I got, that's just three Bruce Carson stories of many. Many Bruce Carson stories. And then just for the next edition, the discussion I was part of between the CEOs and the environmentalists that led to the Alberta Climate Leadership Plan.

That's an interesting story. 'cause you, you really had the heads. You had Murray Edwards, head of CNRL, Lorraine Mitch Moore, head of Shell, Steve Williams, head of Suncorp, Brian Ferguson of SVUs and, uh, and, uh, rich Krueger to start, who's now the head of Suncorp. In, in sort of a, you know, clandestine way, meeting with the heads of the big environmental groups to talk about peace for our time.

And it actually led to, uh, Alberta taking the single largest step on climate policy, any jurisdiction at any time. But the whole backstory of that's indeed hold, 

[00:40:37] Don Gillmor: like the, 

[00:40:38] Ed Whittingham: the, I mean the big step that they took. 

[00:40:41] Don Gillmor: Did it stick? 

[00:40:41] Ed Whittingham: Yeah. Um, so the step that Alberta took became the basis for a lot of climate and energy policy that's still in place today.

You know, when we talk about the oil and gas emissions cap, and although it's much maligned by industry, that was something that the environmentalists and the CEOs crafted. For the oil sands specifically, I'm gonna form the basis of methane, uh, regs that are still in place today. And other parts I, I used to have the list of my fingertips, but yeah, it was influential.

But that whole coalition that came together crumbled pretty quickly 'cause we all got just delayed by our constituencies. Individually, CEOs and the environmentalists for apparently selling out our communities. 

[00:41:24] Roger Thompson: Oh yeah. I was gonna say this didn't come without costing bad. Yeah. Oh, no, no, 

[00:41:29] Ed Whittingham: no, no. Real professional cost, but certainly, yeah, you lost some friendships as a result.

[00:41:35] Roger Thompson: I mean, this, this speaks to one of the real core issues and of energy more broadly, but certainly in the oils, the, the solution is gonna have to be cross partnered, but doing so requires a type of collaboration that. Is gonna create a lot of ire, right. Um, because it's gonna create, sacrifice, require sacrifices on, on all sides that, um, constituents are not willing to give.

At least right now in the us you, you have a clear line of demarcation as to what side you're on, and any attempt to reach across that, at least from one side, it results in significant blowback. Right. Which is hard to over, which is all but impossible to overcome at the, in the current moment here in the States.

[00:42:14] Don Gillmor: Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Very true. Uh, the tribalism is a little less up here, but, uh, do you think we could go back for the, a second round of, uh, meeting with the, uh, environmentalists and the CEOs? No, no, 

[00:42:25] Ed Whittingham: no. It was a one shot deal. Yeah. One time deal. Mm-hmm. Yep. The conditions are right then. They're not right now, and I'm not sure they ever will be right again.

[00:42:32] Roger Thompson: Well, that's not a hopeful place to end on. If we go back to your editor, in fact, I was gonna tell you, Don, you're in good, you're in good company. I dunno if you know the story of Crime and Punishment from Eski. Oh yeah. But his, you know, he ended his book in, in a pretty dark spot and the editor said, nah, can you put a.

Put something nice at the end so it didn't send this kind of Christian, uh, uh, story of redemption that's tagged onto the end of it, which stands out like a sore thumb, but at the time was seen as necessary for sales. And I, I would say that, you know, your book, I think, I mean, it certainly speaks to me and I just, I really appreciate, I'm gonna echo what Ed said.

Your ability to kinda distill some of the core, not just, uh, facts and, uh, machination to the industry, but also just some of the core issues and to really, uh, not just concise, but direct and illuminating prose. Just, it's really admirable. It just, um, I can't, I, I will be pointing, there's certain chapters in particular that I just think are just, you know, spot on the stuff on the rapture, the stuff on the, um.

Like I said, on the summary of the development of the oil sands, I just, I just find these really great, great useful chapters that I, that I hope people will read. Uh, 

[00:43:40] Ed Whittingham: great. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Energy versus Climate. The show is created by David, Keith, Sara Hastings-Simon and me, Ed Whittingham, and produced by Amit Tandon.

Our title in show music is The Windup by Brian Lips. This season of Energy vs Climate is produced with support from the Trottier Family Foundation, the North Family Foundation, the Palmer Family Foundation, and our generous listeners. Sign up for updates and exclusive webinar access at energyvsclimate.com and review and rate us on your favorite podcast platform. This helps new listeners to find the show. Thanks for listening.