NS Writers Scorch Alberta Govt ‘Snake Oil’ While Analysts Cite Gas as ‘Dying Commodity

A trio of writers in Halifax is accusing Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government of misinformation over its “freezing in the dark” propaganda campaign, just as two energy analysts declare one of Smith’s favourite fossil fuels, natural gas, a “dying commodity”.

Smith launched the campaign in late September with truck-borne mobile billboards in Ottawa, carrying the evidence-free warning that Canadians will freeze in the dark if the federal government’s Clean Electricity Regulations go into effect. When the ads reached Nova Scotia, authors Brenna Walsh, Brian Gifford, and Mark Butler swung into action.

The ads “are paid for by a government that doesn’t usually show interest as far east as the Maritimes,” Walsh and Gifford wrote for the Calgary Herald. But Smith poured C$8 million in taxpayers’ dollars into her Tell The Feds campaign when “there is zero evidence to support Alberta’s claims for Nova Scotia, and the declarations being made about Alberta are easily disputable. This puts the campaign in the arena of misinformation and propaganda, clearly aimed at pushing forward the Alberta government’s own goals at the expense of Canadians.”

“The ads claim that our power rates could rise by up to four times and we’ll face blackouts,” Gifford and Butler added for Halifax’s Saltwire Media. “Don’t believe a word of it. There isn’t a shred of evidence to back up these claims for Nova Scotia. Alberta is selling snake oil.”

With the industry “attempting to launch into a weakening market,” and multiple new projects set to flood past global demand, the change in conditions “means that developing LNG in Canada is an economically risky proposition,” the two analysts caution. “And propping up LNG as a ‘cleaner’ energy export than some of Canada’s dirtier fuels is undermined by higher-than-expected methane emissions in LNG supply chains, not to mention the large energy needs of LNG infrastructure itself.”

At which point, they conclude, it’s governments’ responsibility to “protect taxpayers from this risk” by cutting off the flow of subsidies, tax breaks, exemptions, discounts ,and deferrals to the industry—including the cost of building transmission lines to electrify LNG facilities. |Read more https://www.theenergymix.com/2023/11/13/ns-writers-scorch-alberta-govt-snake-oil-while-analysts-cite-gas-as-dying-commodity/| theenergymix.com/2023/11/13/ns…

#abpoli #nspoli #UCP #misinformation #propaganda #SnakeOil #LNG #smith #politics