Oil and Gas

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

June 9, 2023 at 11:14 am

Vienna Ikea Big box stores are designed for cars. I was going to say “for people with cars” but more and more I’m coming to the conclusion that our world is designed more for the vehicles themselves (and the companies that produce them, and the companies that provide their fuel)Read...

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

June 2, 2023 at 11:28 am

Wildfires Working on CBRM council stories for the Wednesday edition as wildfires raged on the mainland—and not just on the mainland but in the provincial capital—was a strange experience. I knew I had nothing to add to the coverage of the fires, that’s not the kind of coverage I doRead...

Anatomy of a Tank Car

Anatomy of a Tank Car

February 22, 2023 at 11:51 am

Editor’s Note: I have discovered a Spotify playlist called “Songs About Trains” which I recommend you listen to while reading this article. Also, Part I of this series is here.   In the second part of this brief series on rail safety, we’re going to talk about rail tank cars,Read More

Train Safety, Then and Now

Train Safety, Then and Now

February 15, 2023 at 2:35 pm

The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio had me pulling on so many different threads this week, there’s no way I can weave them all back into a coherent whole, so I’m going to divide the resulting article into two parts to give me more time to track down someRead More

North End Residents Get Some Answers

North End Residents Get Some Answers

November 30, 2022 at 11:50 am

On Monday night, I attended the information session for residents of Sydney’s North End still waiting for answers about the leak at the Imperial Oil tank farm at 1 George Street on July 8. The leak occurred when a front-end loader rolled down a containment wall and punctured a largeRead More

Victor Dubreuil, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Poor Imperial?

November 30, 2022 at 11:48 am

In the wake of an accident that saw 600,000 liters of gasoline leak from a storage tank in Imperial Oil’s North End Sydney tank farm, the oil giant has been rather stingy with its compensation to residents, tossing nickels around like the proverbial manhole covers. It doesn’t require a veryRead More

Darryl McDonald, Paqtnkek director of administration; Membertou First Nation Chief Terry Paul; EverWind CEO Trent Vichie; CEO of Bayside Development Rose Paul and Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston.

Big Wind

September 21, 2022 at 12:26 pm

If you haven’t read Joan Baxter’s two-parter (Part II is here) on EverWind, the US-based company planning to turn Nova Scotia into a regional green hydrogen hub, you really must. Brief commercial break: the Halifax Examiner, like the Cape Breton Spectator, is reader supported and you can purchase a jointRead...

CBRM Council Report

CBRM Council Report

July 13, 2022 at 11:36 am

On the same day last week—July 8—600,000 liters of gasoline spilled out of a storage tank in Sydney’s North End and Rogers Communications showed us why Canada needs not more “competition” in the telecoms sector but a publicly owned internet provider (yes, I went there). I say this off theRead More

Loose Ends: Green Hydrogen, Handwavium & More

Loose Ends: Green Hydrogen, Handwavium & More

June 1, 2022 at 11:49 am

SaltWire’s Aaron Beswick wrote recently about the plan to turn Point Tupper into a green hydrogen hub without raising any questions about the viability of the scheme from a scientific perspective, and I suspect that’s how the coverage of this latest Strait Area mega-project is going to go. Beswick spokeRead More

EverWind: Powered by ‘Hopium?’

EverWind: Powered by ‘Hopium?’

May 18, 2022 at 2:04 pm

Having tried to understand the financing of the EverWind green hydrogen project in Point Tupper it’s now time to consider the science—or lack thereof—behind it. First, you need to understand that hydrogen does not come in a variety of colors. The color coding is used to denote how the hydrogenRead More