My last few articles on Teck and the future of our real estate market generated some interesting debate among some of my friends. As many of the people in the Valley are familiar with the ups and downs of the coal business, the question of whether it will last is a valid one.
For me personally the discussion is a type of a deja vous moment – I am sure I have been in this debate elsewhere many years ago.
I was working at Syncrude in the late seventies and early eighties, when the Trudeau Government created what became known as the National Energy Program (NEP), which was followed by decline of the oil price and collapse of investment into the oil sands.
Everything stopped mid-stream, projects that took millions of dollars to start, were simply shattered and Alberta’s economy went from boom to bust at a speed that was hard to comprehend. Looking at Trudeau, and trying to understand what happened, taught me a very valuable lesson - one should often be wary of people with good intentions. Many of my friends in the oil patch were hit pretty hard and became quite cautious about the future.
In 1984, I left Fort McMurray and went to Edmonton to study at the University of Alberta, but kept going back to Syncrude or Suncor during the summers. In the early nineties, a friend enticed me to move back to work for a contractor who had projects at both of the plants. That was the beginning of the boom and things took off rapidly.
And here is my deja vous, since many of the old timers took a good beating in the early eighties, not everyone was ready to believe this new boom would last. Judging by the cavalier reaction of the Alberta government to the infrastructure deficiencies in Fort McMurray, I think some in the government did not believe in the longevity of the boom as well.
But this time it was different, in the eighties China was not a factor in the collapse of the oil price. However, in the nineties China, as well as India, made all the difference in supporting the rising price of oil.