Little Change to Alberta oil royalties

[foragefarmer]

Farmranger

At $30/barrel oil, if the NDP had raised royalties , and with jobs being lost, you'd be the first on here screaming. They also have a few more years to act on this, so if oil goes up, maybe the royalties will then be raised.

I don't think the NDP could do anything that would please you Farmrange, along with others here on Agriville. How's the golf game?

[FarmRanger]

You did get one thing right forage, I would have condemned an increase in costs to an industry that is already bleeding. But that is irrelevant to a campaign promise that has turned out to be a false claim about the "fairness" of the Royalty structure. Remember, our premier agreed with the findings of the Royalty review. That same Review said that the amount that Royalties would increase with oil price increases was fair as well.

This is in direct contradiction to the NDP campaign which as it turns out was wrong. Elected on a promise to fix something that wasn't broken. Would have been nice if they'd bothered to investigate the truth about the Royalty structure at the time, but the lie that oil companies weren't paying their fair share was just too good not to use to get elected. These kinds of lies work exceptionally well at appealing to uninformed voter's greed. "Vote for us, we'll get you something for free at someone else's expense (who aren't paying their "fair" share and have more money than you).

<i>"How's the golf game?"</i>
My golf game sucks thanks, I keep losing the ball in the snow. How's your cabinet appointment going?

[perfecho]

Not broken...perhaps the royalty regime was ok (although I wonder what a $100 /barrel review would have looked like)..there is the other side, the pay backs....when Peter Elzinga, Klein's chair who helped him get re-elected, went to the oil sands as a consultant and suddenly more tax concessions began to appear...at $60 a barrel, which was pretty high at the time.
There were many articles, about how so many dollars went back, so this part is only half the story....

"For the second year in a row, Dunn still cannot understand why the Alberta Royalty Tax Credit program continues to dole out $82 million in royalty refunds despite record oil and gas prices.

Nor could he really understand the reasoning between royalty reduction programs that exempted, reduced or waived Crown royalties totaling $517 million last year."

...Dunn was auditor general at he time and there are many, many more articles. Just the fact that we are out of money before the governments changed hands should be a clue.

Now , I agree Notely is not Alberta's saviour, but I am still glad there is change....