No doubt you’ve heard that Alberta’s oil and gas industry recently launched a PR campaign to counter the negative publicity the sector often receives. It’s called Alberta is Energy.
One of the messages industry is trying to get out is how many jobs are reliant on the oil and gas sector. By one count, one of every six Albertans is directly or indirectly employed in the oil and gas business. That’s about 600,000 residents—and it includes those of us whose companies help build the structures and the roads and the myriad other facilities that dot the Alberta energy landscape.
For the longest time, I’ve had the sense that job statistics tended to go in one ear and out the other. I think that stopped—at least temporarily—with this latest recession. Now we see unemployment in this province at levels not seen since the 1990s. Statistics become a lot more personal when they affect us directly, and certainly many of us know people who lost their jobs as a result of the economic meltdown. Or maybe we were a casualty ourselves.
I’ll leave it to you to debate whether or not the recession is over. But this I know: the economy is on the mend. Look at the signs: the markets are up, company earnings are generally positive, and housing starts have been strong.
I’m particularly encouraged that activity is returning to the energy sector—again. Land-sale spending is way up over last year, and small and medium size producers have increased their oil-drilling programs. Because this province is so reliant on energy production, the domino effect on other sectors—i.e. construction—should be apparent.
In this issue you’ll learn about some of the developments fuelling my optimism. They include planned pipeline projects (page 30), getting roads in shape for new modules that will soon be on their way to the oilsands (page 34), and the innovative Swan Hills Synfuels In-Situ Coal Gasification/Sagitawah Power Project (page 43).
To be sure, there’s still a lot of uncertainty out there. Volatility and instability are common in the market; any little event seems to set it off. What’s ahead in the last half of 2010, not to mention next year or 2012, is anyone’s guess. But if anything, this recession should remind us all that the economy is cyclical. There are good times. There are bad. And although we have recessions, even they come to an end.
Thank goodness.
