Shard

Any jitters in Alberta with the falling oil price?

Atlantic Xpat

At the other end of the country in a province that is wholly dependent upon oil and that has had a conservative government spending cash from non-renewable resources like a drunken sailor for the past decade there are one or two jitters. If not outright panic.

Shard

Yes, I can imagine. If it continues long enough you may even be getting your peoples back!

cbrown89

It's all over the place at the moment but it will stabalise shortly, hopefully at around $70 a barrel for WTI. The Republicans hope to push through Keystone again in Jan and LNG in BC may see projects awarded next year. Gas price has plummeted as well but a mere notch in the belt compared to a 30 year look ahead. Thats my 2 cents anyway...

ging

Agreed. It's been up and down like a nympho's knickers from day one. Haven't seen any "Lord Give Us Another Oil Boom And I Promise Not To Piss It All Away" bumper stickers around yet.

Steve_

Jitters? The govt. appears to be wetting itself based on Prentice's recent speeches. Apparently the govt. loses $215 million of revenue for every $1 drop in the price of a barrel of oil so the estimate at the moment is the govt. will lose $4-6 billion of tax revenue, which works out somewhere around $3,000 per taxpayer.

Not surprisingly they're strongly hinting income taxes will have to go up. Which I hope means they're going to finally scrap the utterly stupid flat tax and replace it with a proper progressive banding system.

They also seem to be hinting at scrapping the TRA, finally. Which is important because it collects corporation tax and does a very bad job of it, so the CRA would take over.

Also talking about toll roads, although I have no idea how that is remotely practical, there are no roads under construction that could be tolled except the SW ring road and that won't be finished for years.

Personally I think it's a good thing because there are just too many people moving here. Hopefully it will slow things down a bit.

However raising the income tax isn't going to help much if this drop in prices stays in place longer than a year, if it goes on longer than that, things are going to get very messy. The law requires a referendum in order to bring in a sales tax, so that isn't going to happen.

Shard

Not into a big Alberta ?

Piff Poff

OHs company had a meeting to tell staff that work is predicted to slow right down. A lot of the business is fleet vehicles, they are expecting it to slow down due to projects being stalled/cancelled. Hopefully it won't affect OH too much, maybe he can go back to having Saturdays off.

mandymoochops

Yup oh mentined that there'd be a lot of lifted trucks going back soon. Luckily he's drilling for potash in SK for the next 7 or so months (fingers crossed)

scrubbedexpat091

Can't possibly be that hard to toll existing roads, modern technology means there is no toll booths necessary, just have to install the camera equipment needed to take license photos.

I hate tolls, it would not be so bad if they offered alternatives to driving, or made the tolls reasonable, but they tend to make the tolls crazy high which makes them a hardship.

Steve_

Yes but politically it's impossible, because a toll road tends to be an alternative route - there aren't any. You can't toll vehicles on the QE2 for example. The only possibilities are the ring roads and they aren't finished yet.

Steve_

Even the city manager said he wished there would be a slowdown, they just can't build the infrastructure quickly enough. Costs about $10,000 per person who moves to Calgary apparently and that is just impossible to do given the tax revenue.

scrubbedexpat091

Possibly depending on politics, doesn't sway BC government though, and they keep winning elections. It can be done with limited political issues if the other parties are too weak to win.

scootb

The bridge girders for the Henday are just about complete,and I am now working hard on pieces for the new Oilers stadium.
Can't say I have noticed any slow down at all,in fact I'm back on nightshift 6 days/week to try keep up.
I don't think the slump in oil prices will last,it never does,it dips,people panic as it is their nature,then a couple of weeks later oil goes back up and those same people complain about the cost of gas lol.

Steve_

Talk to people who were around in the 1980s, that lasted a long time.

I don't think this is going to be like that, because demand is still going up, but this is a price war and it's going to carry on for awhile because OPEC can't drop production because of several reasons, one of them being that Russia is a bit of a wildcard because they're desperate for money, also they're trying to force the frakkers out of business. Which clearly won't work. Really I think it's just the OPEC members don't trust each other anymore than they trust Russia so it's better to be upfront that they can't cut production than have countries try and be sly about it.

So is there going to be a bit of a slump but I can't see it lasting more than 18 months. It will certainly bugger up the government's fiscal budget for the next 12 months though, that is certain. And I wouldn't be surprised if income taxes go up.