Zero Degrees of Separation: Alberta & Nigeria
In a post on the social media platform he owns, Elon Musk recently lamented, “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they are talking about.”
- Elon Musk Is World’s First Trillionaire After SpaceX IPO, Bloomberg
By Gregg Wall (6-13-2026)
Just as white America has more in common with wage slavery and indentured servitude in Africa today, than U.S. domiciled billionaires, Canada has far more in common with Nigeria, in terms of resource exploitation and environmental degradation, than it does the United States (which has largely become a holding company for extreme wealth). That is to say, our leaders have failed the public, while serving and enriching a predatory few.
I’m not sure exactly when Nigeria came to mind, except that I’ve been focused on Alberta separation, the glorification of oil & gas by separatist traitors, and the cold hard reality that the wealth of Alberta & Nigerian oil and gas has been transferred to the United States & the West (while Canadians and Nigerians are left holding the bag on known costs, externalities, environmental degradation, and massive subsidies). Some academics call this the “resource curse.” Nigeria, of course, is often the primary producer of oil and gas in Africa… Its gas reserves are enormous. Starting there, the parallels with Alberta begin to snowball. Both Nigeria and Alberta’s governments own their resources but have leased those resources out to the private sector, U.S. and multinational Oil & Gas majors… and the all too familiar pattern plays out. The oil majors syphon off the lion’s share of the profits, the governments collect a pittance in royalties and taxation (relative to Norway), slash their respective labour costs, trash the environment, and then flee their obligations and responsibilities, after selling off their leases to smaller bit and regional players (in Alberta we see this with abandoned wells and 1.5 trillion liters of tailings). Corrupt Alberta and Nigerian governments fail to collect adequate bonds, collateral, and security for clean-up efforts.
There are zero degrees of separation between Alberta and Nigeria.
Per my recent write up, Alberta separatist leaders (seppies) push energy as the provincial savior, push a product that is drowning Alberta in cleanup costs and hundreds of billions in liabilities. The separatist leaders have ties to the Americans and have conveniently adopted the talking points of oil industry CEOs. It’s all a pack of lies. What seppies conveniently leave out:
Alberta O&G, via leases & licenses, is essentially American owned;
US O&G is laying off the Alberta workforce;
US O&G is sending massive profits to America;
US O&G is leaving Canada with hundreds and billions in liabilities;
US O&G treats Alberta like Nigeria… exploits and dumps contaminated air, water, and land on Canada… leaving Alberta far, far poorer than ignorant seppies will admit or acknowledge;
The industry is lethal and murders one in five;
The O&G industry, in part, is responsible for endless middle east wars, as wars taking supplies offline is a sure-fire way to increase prices and profits.
So, the rational response? Why can’t governments, Alberta and Nigeria, work together with the private sector oil utilities to produce oil and gas responsibly, pay for cleanup, healthcare costs for the citizen injured by cancer alleys and contaminated air, land, and water, damages to the environment, burning towns and cities like Jasper, Alberta and Los Angeles??? Or the Niger Delta which has been destroyed by oil & gas?
Answer: If the oil and gas majors were properly assessed for their damages… bodily injury, economic damages, misallocation of taxpayer funded subsidies, and property damages in real time… gas & derivative products prices would soar. Renewable energy, the competitor, is increasingly producing both free and reliable energy. Oil and gas simply cannot compete. Here lies an O&G industry on its death bed that is entirely dependent upon a lie, systemic government corruption, and politicians that refuse to assess this industry for its damages, past, current, and future. Because the politicians are simply corrupt. Alberta seppies believe they pay extraordinary taxes to the FEDs… but they pay at the same federal tax rate as every other province. (Alberta seppies feel like they are being shortchanged on so-called equalization payments/wealth-sharing arrangements. But when we consider that both Alberta and Canada are accruing hundreds of billions in liabilities on behalf of the private sector, American owned oil and gas utilities, and Alberta will need a bailout from the Canadian federal government when the bill comes due… the equalization/wealth-sharing myth simply evaporates… becomes an even greater fairy tale.)
The bottom line: The O&G industry receives trillions in subsidies and cover for wars & environmental violence… paid for by the Canadian, Nigerian, and Western taxpayer (and less directly by the accumulation of nation-state debts to prop up this repugnant and disgusting industry). This industry is only viable by perpetuation of a lie and a swindle: Privatized profits and socialized corruption, externalities, liabilities, and subsidies. Oil royalty and oligarchs grow richer, while the Canadian, Nigerian, and Western taxpayer gets nailed to a cross made of debt, gas, oil, and tar.
Meanwhile, Norway did it correctly. Norway placed its citizens first. Norway owns its oil and gas fields and uses state owned production companies to harvest the oil and gas. Profits and taxes accrue to a sovereign wealth fund, so that Norway holds $2 trillion in assets for the people, while Alberta and Nigeria hold $32 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively. The difference, Norway used the state and integrity to accumulate assets on behalf of its citizens… while corrupt Alberta and Nigerian governments allowed the private sector to loot natural resources on behalf of shareholders and oligarchs, exacerbating boom & bust cycles. Canada and Nigeria are swimming in natural resources, rely heavily on the private sector for extraction, and yet, both countries have poverty problems, food insecurity, and failed neoliberal economic policies… the U.S. is facing similar problems. Reliance on greed-first policies, growth, market based solutions, and shareholders before all have trashed all three economies. For Norway’s citizens, on the other hand, resources are extracted by the state, wealth is extracted for The People, and poverty is virtually nonexistent (at 10%). Essentially, the private sector FAILS the 99% in Alberta, Nigeria, and the U.S., while a well-managed Norway government and sovereign wealth fund WINS… in a pattern that plays out throughout the world.
The Norway economic model, indisputably, is a world leader. The United States and rabid greed should be ignored at all costs. It’s time to give billionaires the boot and give state intervention, management, planning… the Norway model… first priority.
Presently, there are zero degrees of separation for humanity, from Alberta to Nigeria and back again, to the United States. Humanity and labour are being massively exploited, and given the shaft, by a global oligarchy.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2026
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