Poor Public Image Has Cost Oilpatch Billions

Until recently, the oilpatch couldn't care less. Oilmen seemed quite content to go about the business of producing and selling oil, doing it as responsibly and as intelligently as possible, while keeping contact with the outside world -- i.e. most people outside Alberta unsympathetic to high oil profits --at a minimum. All that changed in the past couple of years. Their poor public image -- sometimes fuelled by a few malcontents with Internet access and long distribution lists of politicians and the media, or low-budget environmental groups -- is costing them billions in adverse government decisions. In the past year alone, the Canadian sector, or large factions within the sector, arguably lost every public policy battle it engaged in: It failed to sway the federal Tories to reverse their decision to tax oil and gas trusts; it lost the climate change debate; it lost the accelerated capital cost allowance federally and provincially; a consortium led by Imperial Oil Ltd. failed to convince the federal Tories they should gain fiscal breaks to build the Mackenzie pipeline; it lost the energy policy debate with Newfoundland and it lost the royalty debate in Alberta. Of all those hits, the Alberta royalty battle cut the deepest, since oil companies never expected such a punishing blow from their own home team. ... http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=7d09d2d2-0787-40cf-a65c-7e60a2993b8a

Note: http://www.canada.com/n...