Another oil executive lurched into my inbox the other day. He sneered at my \u201cwoke journalism\u201d and dismissed the energy transition as \u201cUN climate alarmism,” hardly novel thoughts in downtown Calgary office towers. If the Alberta oil and gas industry begins to decline next decade, as reputable modellers at the International Energy Agency and Canadian Energy Regulator think it might, we can look back at the sector\u2019s hubris today as the cause.<\/span><\/p>\n Alberta oilmen have never lacked self-confidence. Executives see themselves as masters of the universe. Peter Foster called them \u201cblue-eyed sheiks\u201d in his masterful account of the Canadian oil establishment. Why wouldn\u2019t they be arrogant? Canada is the world\u2019s fourth largest producer of oil and fifth largest producer of gas.<\/span><\/p>\n Canada is an energy superpower. Not \u201cemerging,\u201d as former Prime Minister Stephen Harper famously said in 2006, but a bonafide player. And Alberta runs the show. Most of the companies operating in other oil and gas provinces are headquartered in Calgary.<\/span><\/p>\n Many Canadians outside Alberta marvel at the influence of oil and gas lobbyists with the federal Liberals. They can\u2019t understand why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is so tolerant of Premier Danielle Smith\u2019s political antics. The answer is simple: Alberta\u2019s economic heft gives it political clout. Smith whines that Trudeau doesn\u2019t listen, but the truth is that Alberta has the federal government’s ear in a firm grip.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Alberta usually gets some version of what it wants. Oil lobbyists have successfully pressured Ottawa to modify and delay important energy and climate policies.\u00a0This contradicts the victim narrative so popular these days, but it is true nonetheless.<\/span><\/p>\n Is it any wonder that the denizens of the Calgary Petroleum Club have swelled heads?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I offered the intrusive oil executive a free hour-long presentation to his board of directors, of which he is chair, about the energy transition and its implications for Alberta. He considered it briefly, then declined. \u201cYour loss,\u201d I replied.<\/span><\/p>\n Versions of that same talk have been delivered to Alberta business and professional groups, gatherings of greenish folks, labour organizations, post-secondary students, and many others. A common comment during the question and answer session is that the information I present explains news they\u2019ve been hearing about for years, but didn\u2019t have a framework to help them understand it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Alberta\u2019s oil and gas leadership, on the other hand, isn\u2019t interested in understanding the energy transition.\u00a0 Industry is retrenching, withdrawing from energy transition spending on renewables and emerging clean technologies in favour of cutting extraction costs and delivering ever higher returns to shareholders. Profits have never been higher and they\u2019re expected to remain so for the rest of this decade.<\/span><\/p>\n The blue-eyed sheikhs are rolling again.<\/span><\/p>\n But Proverbs tells us, \u201cPride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hubris. Exaggerated pride or self-confidence. That will be the downfall of the Alberta oil and gas companies. What role might hubris play in their failure?<\/span><\/p>\n It already blinds them to the rapid rise of their competition: electricity as fuel for electric transportation of all kinds. Cars, trucks, buses, delivery vans, autonomous vehicles (eventually), and so on. Most of Asia\u2019s fleet of two and three-wheeled vehicles are already electric. BloombergNEF forecasts that global consumption of road transport fuel, almost half of the demand for oil, will peak in 2025.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A mere one or two years away!<\/span><\/p>\n Public comments by the blue-eyed sheikhs and my interactions with them suggest they are simply not curious about the competition. They prefer sniggering at laughably inaccurate Facebook memes to investigating the root causes of the energy transition.<\/span><\/p>\n Mention China\u2019s rise as a clean energy industrial powerhouse and their response is invariably \u201cbut, but\u2026coal!\u201d They don\u2019t understand that China\u2019s massive lead in scaling the factories that build the energy of the future has forced the United States, Europe, and other industrial players like South Korea and Japan to invest enormous resources to play catch up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That, in turn, sparked a clean energy arms race that is well underway.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019d never know it by listening to the denizens of what is euphemistically called \u201cthe Calgary bubble.\u201d The blue-eyed sheikhs are basking in the glow of record profits and looking to the past as their guide, not the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, the competition is readying to eat their lunch. Mark my words, historians will wryly note how Alberta\u2019s fall began just as the oil and gas industry reached its apex of success. My guess is that point will arrive before 2030.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n They can\u2019t say they weren\u2019t warned.<\/span><\/p>\n To paraphrase an old English proverb, there are none so blind and deaf as those who refuse to see and hear.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"