Review panel actually plans sharp drop in royalties. Time to 'think like an owner'.

The Parkland Institute has published an Op-Ed on the Royalty Review:

Review panel actually plans sharp drop in royalties

To get its fair share, Alberta must heed Lougheed's advice: 'Think like an owner'

Gordon Laxer for The Edmonton Journal
Published October 22, 2007

Albertans have been led astray by the heated rhetoric around the recommendations of the royalty review panel's Our Fair Share. Rather than increasing royalties by 20 per cent as headlines tell the public, the panel's recommendations would, if fully implemented, reduce them by 20 per cent by 2016.

That's right. According to the review panel, its proposals would have Alberta collect $2 billion less per year nine years from now, even though oilsands production is projected to more than double.

Alberta would collect only $7.6 billion in 2016, compared to $9.5 billion in royalties in 2006. And that doesn't seem to take inflation into account, meaning that in real dollars the province's royalty revenues would fall more...

Read the whole Op-Ed at the Parkland Institute's website.