How else did you think Prime Minister Paul Martin was going to pay for an extra $18 billion for health care?

The day after the Amazing Martin pulled a very expensive white rabbit out of his hat, Ottawa put its 19-per-cent stake in Petro-Canada – all 49.4 million shares – on the chopping block.

If you think that’s a coincidence, then you really do believe in magic.

It makes you wonder how much of the strategy Martin’s stage crew crafted before the closed-door bargaining session with premiers and territorial leaders that – shazzam! – produced the 11th-hour deal.

Let’s see. At one point in the negotiations, federal officials offered the first ministers an additional $14.7 billion for health care over six years. And Martin himself reportedly mused about $15 billion. The final deal ended up being $18 billion extra over six years.

Guess how much the federal stake in Petro-Canada is worth? That’s right – about $3 billion and change.

So Martin got his deal for pretty close to the price he wanted. Ottawa will simply use the money from the Petro-Canada sale to top up the remaining $3 billion over six years.

Sure, sure, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale promised that “part of the proceeds” will be used to help develop new technologies to address environmental challenges.

Goodale didn’t say what part. But you can bet on it being the tiny part.

Politicians! Sometimes you wish they could all do a good disappearing act.

Watchdog Group Appears MIA

The oilsands rush in the Fort McMurray area is literally changing the landscape.

But who’s looking at the big picture? What are the land, water and air in the region going to be like 20 years from now?

ATCO Structures, under a contract from Nexen Inc., will build two construction camps that together will have more people than many Alberta towns, for Nexen’s and OPTI Canada Inc.’s joint Long Lake project.

A north camp will accommodate about 850 people, while a south camp will house more than 1,240. The camps will include dormitories, kitchen, dining and recreational facilities, as well as a multi-unit office complex sprawling more than 3,150 square metres.

ATCO will manufacture the modular buildings at its Calgary and Spruce Grove facilities and transport them by truck to the Long Lake site, about 40 kilometres southeast of Fort McMurray.

The north camp and office are scheduled to be built before January, while the south camp will be finished by next June.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is building an entire airport to fly workers in from across Western Canada and around the world to fill up to 6,000 jobs at its $8.5-billion Horizon oilsands project north of Fort McMurray.

The airport will handle daily flights of aircraft as large as a 200-seat Boeing 737, with service to Edmonton, Calgary, Kamloops and Saskatoon, according to a report. Horizon’s three construction camps will each house 1,500 people.

Northeast Alberta Transportation Corp. (NEATcor), which wants to build a heavy-gauge freight railway to the oilsands, has even grander visions.

NEATcor’s $2.6-billion scheme includes building a 135-metre tall and 1.6- kilometre-long bridge across the Athabasca River on the western edge of Fort McMurray. The new span would be nearly three times as high as Edmonton’s High Level Bridge and twice as long.

Since 1967, the oilsands industry has spent $21 billion on new and expanded projects in northern Alberta.

Over the next decade, nearly two dozen companies plan to spend an additional $24 billion, and the total investment could rise to as much as $40 billion by 2025.

Meanwhile, a multi- stakeholder group that was formed to make recommendations on how to manage the overall, long-term effects of this oilsands boom seems to be moribund, or at least way behind the actual development occurring on the ground.

The Cumulative Effects Management Association (CEMA) includes more than 40 members from industry, government, First Nations and environmental groups.

CEMA is working on recommendations (none of them binding on government or oilsands operators) that encompass looking after the fish and wildlife, landscape and biodiversity, cultural and historical resources, reclamation, acid rain, ground-level ozone, in-stream flow needs of rivers, watershed protection, surface water quality, trace metals and air pollution.

But CEMA’s website (www.cemaonline.ca/about.htm) shows the association published its last newsletter more than two years ago. And of the 11 separate areas being worked on, recommendations have been made in only one – trace metals.

CEMA apparently is working on a new public website – perhaps one with revised timetables for delivering results?

The lack of progress doesn’t inspire confidence that, along with the welcome revenue and jobs generated by the oilsands, the land, air and water in the Athabasca region will also be protected for all Albertans in the future.

Oceans Apart

What a difference an ocean makes in the hunt for oil and gas!

Companies such as ExxonMobil Canada Ltd., Shell Canada Ltd., Marathon Canada Petroleum ULC and El Paso Corp. are bailing out of exploration offshore Nova Scotia faster than a fisherman in a leaky dory.

Houston-based El Paso last week sold its half-stake in two offshore Nova Scotia natural gas exploration blocks to Canadian Superior Energy Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

Marathon Canada pulled the plug last month after coming up dry on its $80-million Crimson F-81 oil well, two weeks after ExxonMobil called it quits on a shallow-water well near Sable Island.

Nearly a dozen leases held with Nova Scotia’s regulator expired this summer, with another 12 due to expire by the end of the year.

In fact, there have been no major discoveries off Canada’s East Coast since 1998, when EnCana Corp. found a large gas pool at Deep Panuke – although a production project has yet to be built.

Yet just take a gander across the Atlantic.

Talisman Energy Inc. is spending $770 million to develop its new Tweedsmuir and Tweedsmuir South oilfields in the North Sea, about 160 kilometres northeast of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Drilling is expected to begin in early 2005, with production of up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day by late 2006.

Talisman also plans to start building this year a $58-million offshore wind-power pilot plant, in water about 35 to 45 metres deep, to supply electricity to its Beatrice field located 25 kilometres off the east coast of Scotland.

Now there’s an idea for companies giving up on offshore Nova Scotia. Unlike ever-elusive oil, wind at least is easy to find.

Niko Gassing Up

Speaking of finds, Niko Resources Ltd. says it has made its most successful natural gas discovery to date in the Feni Block in Bangladesh.

The Calgary-based junior energy firm directionally drilled the Feni 4 well to a total depth of 3,100 metres, after acquiring 3-D seismic data detailing the reservoir.

Niko says the well produced gas at a rate of 32 million cubic feet a day, and additional potential gas- bearing zones are being tested. The company is the operator of the onshore field and holds an 80-per-cent working interest in the project.

Niko, which focuses on oil and gas properties in India and Bangladesh (and has one of the oilpatch’s more culturally diverse photo galleries on its website: www.nikoresources.com) generated an annual profit at the end of its 2004 fiscal year (March 31) of $25.4 million on revenues of $88.7 million.

How Green Is My Province

Alberta towns and cities are leading the way in reducing energy use and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the Alberta Plus Initiative, a pilot program funded and run by Climate Change Central’s office of energy efficiency, 19 municipal building projects have received a total $614,000 in grants. Natural Resources Canada also contributed funding through its Commercial Building Incentive Program.

Over the next decade, the projects are expected to save more than $3 million in energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 24,000 tonnes.

The program, which ended this summer, funded energy-efficiency projects that ranged from schools in Calgary and Banff to a police station in Edmonton and a seniors’ centre in Vegreville.

One project, the Mountain View Seniors’ Housing complex in Didsbury, is now the most energy-efficient commercial building in the province. The eco-building, 64 per cent more efficient than a standard reference building, is producing more than $34,000 a year in energy savings.

With results like that, Climate Change Central, which is now seeking funding for a longer-term program, deserves all the support it can get.

(Mark Lowey can be reached at mark@businessedge.ca)