On that gravity model of trade. It really isn’t geographic distance that matters, it’s economic distance.
For a decade “black gold” drew roughnecks and executives by the thousand to “Fort Mac” in northeastern Alberta. Some were paid a fortune to move dirt. Then the oil price crashed, a fire ripped through the town, Canada’s grubby oil was shunned by investors and assailed by environmentalists and wages fell.
OK, oil price falls, so oil town goes bust. So what?
Except it still pays to ship oil from Venezuela to Houston. From Saudi to Japan. Why doesn’t it pay to ship from Alberta to Toronto?
With too few pipelines, Alberta could not get its product to market.
It’s economic distance that matters – here, transport links – not geographic distance. At with point everyone’s got to redo their models about trade with the EU. Sure, we’re close geographically. But that’s not the determinant of the gravity model of trade, is it?
Back 5 years ago I looked into the shipping costs to exporting an ISO container from the UK to Rotterdam and Beijing after discussions with a Remoaner. I was suprised because they were £400 and £800 (obviously the latter is subsidised because of the desire to fill otherwise empty containers), but it’s instructive: the world is becoming smaller
The Turdeau government – hell, pretty much every Canadian government for the last five decades, utterly despises Alberta and are in no way grateful for the billions of dollars Albertans send to the parasites out east.
“This year, equalization will cost Alberta taxpayers nearly $3 billion. That means that equalization will cost an Alberta family of four about $2,600 this year on average. Since equalization was created, Albertans have received less than 0.02% of all equalization payments”.
“Quebec will receive the most from equalization payments in the 2019–2020 year”.
Depends what you’re exporting. Fresh produce crossing the channel is obviously not going to travel well by container to China. Time-sensitive factory inputs, spare parts for machinery – you’d drive it in a lorry to Europe, but you’d want to fly it to Asia, which is expensive if it’s heavy.
Britain exports a lot of services though, which cost very little to transport. I wouldn’t want to be a food exporter this year though.
IIRC transportation costs are dominated by the final few miles from warehouse to retailer or end user
Global costs are a minor influence since the advent of containers and automated handling
“With too few pipelines, Alberta could not get its product to market.”
This has to be somebody’s fault. Point the finger, remove them from any position of authority, build more pipelines.
The stuff out the sands is heavy and sour. Additional processing needed to get it to flow, and get rid of the nasties.
What’s the cost of exporting a container to somewhere inland in continental Europe, say Vienna, versus getting it to east coast USA, say NYC or Baltimore? Cost per mile must be quite a lot more for land.
The Canadians sent a load of Albertan oil to the BC coast, put it into an oil tanker, sent the tanker down the east coast of the USA and Mexico to the Panama Canal then back up the west coast to a refinery in Newfoundland. These people are insane and evil.
Addolff. I think your geography is a bit bassackwards. BC is on the west coast of N America. Newfoundland is in the east.
However, isn’t economic distance actually regulatory distance? Or at least often regulatory distance?
The reason there’s no pipelines is the various provincial and federal governments as well as the courts keep caving into demands from all the various protest groups.
Interesting the BC project has support from the interior First Nations but not the coastal ones, you can figure out which benefits the most, but the media pretty much only reports the protests
Anonnymouse: I did some calculations some time back, I think I worked out that getting the product home from the shops was something like 50 times more expensive than getting it from the Far East to Folkstone. I’ll try and track it down.
TD. You are clearly demonstrating the racism and fascist oppression inherent in the white patriarchal education system, which has, inter alia, and not exhaustively confined to, condemned a generation (cont.P94).