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Dispatch from Prince George - The Oil Economy

By crooky | June 9, 2008

I’m sitting in hotel room in Prince George, BC and I’m bone tired from having driven 8 hours to get here. I was planning on writing about an interesting article I saw in the New York times on the wide-ranging impacts of oil price increases on consumer goods. However, my fatique levels will only allow a stream of consciousness post at this time. Here goes:


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On the way up to Prince George, I averaged 7.8L/100km (or 30 MPG for you Americans). I burnt through a tank and a half of gas but saved myself a plane ticket and the accompanying GHG emissions. My car - a 2008 Volkswagen City Golf - was one of the smaller cars I saw on the highway coming up here.

Most of the people sharing the highway with me were driving large touring sedans, SUVs or pickup trucks. Their gas mileage had to be as much as 50% less than my car. I know because I also own a Dodge Magnum with a V6 that gets 19 MPG. The further North I got, the more pickup trucks I saw.

Prince George has a lot of pickup trucks. Mining is a big employer in Prince George and the timber industry used to be. Many locals are hoping to replace dwindling employment in the forestry sector with new jobs in the oil and gas sector.

My concern is that high oil prices are changing consumer and end user behavior to the point where demand is starting to slacken. To me, this seems like a bad time to be hanging the hopes of a regional economy on the oil and gas market. I’ve always been a big advocate of regions like Prince George trying to move away from a resource-based economy but at the same time their geographic isolation up here makes it difficult to do anything else. At any rate, it will be an interesting time to watch what happens to the oil and gas market.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Cars, Policy, Technology |

3 Responses to “Dispatch from Prince George - The Oil Economy”

  1. crooky Says:
    June 10th, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    Highlight of the day in Prince George - in between meetings I try to find a Prince George-themed snow globe for my daughter. I try four different shops before one store-owner offers to call another shop to see if they have “globes”.

    Their response: “Why would we have that? This is a CHRISTIAN store.” and they hung up.

    What the fuck is that all about? Admittedly, it was weird that the clerk I was dealing with asked about “globes”, not “snow globes” but let’s break this down a bit…

    If they thought it was a snow globe, why would a Christian store not carry them? Are they, unbenowst to me, assosciated with the Devil? I didn’t get the memo.

    If they thought she meant the kind of globe that you spin, close your eyes and point out a random country you’re going to visit when you’re 12 and you’re planning where you’ll run away to… why wouldn’t a Christian store carry those?

    Am I missing something?

    On a related note, it’s pretty funny when you go around asking about snow globes in June. Some people said “they’re not in season”. I kept wanting to say “it’s not real snow in them, you know”. Another store owner said “we haven’t carried those since 1932. Can I interest you in a fridge magnet?” WTF?

  2. Trevor Says:
    June 12th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    I would assume that a “Christian” store is one which specializes in religeous paraphenalia. I can understand why they wouldn’t sell globes (same reason Office Depot doesn’t sell spark plugs) but I am kind of surprised that they didn’t have a snow globe with those disturbing Precious Moments children on it.

  3. Aaron Says:
    June 12th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    That was the really weird part - not a Christian paraphanalia store - just a souvenir shop owned by a Christian family.

    I haven’t seen those precious moments children before. I’m now frightened to google them. I already looked at meat puppets this morning and am not likely to be able to sleep tonight.

    BTW, the car averaged got 39 MPG coming back from Quesnel. Not bad for a new car that isn’t broken in yet, eh?

    My friend John in Merritt told me “it’s all downhill from PG” and to a certain extent, he was right. All of that hill climbing on the Coquihala was doing my mileage in.

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