Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

A new report from the U of A’s Parkland Institute says that despite a provincial deficit, the Alberta government will forego some $55 billion in potential revenue over the next three years as a result of overly generous royalty cuts and the government’s failure to meet even the modest targets set by previous administrations. The report looks at the most recent data on profits in the oil and gas industry versus government share and determines that despite tremendous growth in the industry the share of profits to Albertans is shrinking. Alberta has gone from capturing close to 40% in 1979 to only 10% in 2009 and 13% in 2010.That is arguably all money that has gone directly from serving the public interest to serving the bottom lines of huge oil and gas corporations. Peter Lougheed set a target of capturing 35% of the revenue from oil and gas production, which his government met or exceeded. Ralph Klein lowered those targets significantly, yet in most years even failed to meet those. If Lougheed’s 35% target had