So many self-inflicted wounds, so few allies. Alberta's energy war room was long doomed

It was never really the war room that former Alberta premier Jason Kenney dreamed of.

And even if it had turned out that way, it's not clear it would have worked any better than the pro-oil entity his UCP government actually wound up creating.

Either way, the Canadian Energy Centre never seemed to reach its promised potential. And this week Premier Danielle Smith abandoned the idea, dissolving the organization into her own government, making it a lesser tool in her own fight on behalf of the oil and gas sector.

Kenney, at a 2018 gathering of his United Conservative Party, pledged a "fully staffed rapid-response war room in government to quickly and effectively rebut every lie told by the green left about our world-class energy industry."

That line worked well in a room full of pro-oil partisans who felt their province's main industry under siege. And it surely felt familiar to Kenney himself, who'd spend so many federal elections in the Conservative Party war room, pumping out attack after counter-attack against the Liberals, NDP or any other would-be threat to his own faction.

After Kenney was elected premier in 2019, his team quickly realized that electoral skirmishes and industry advocacy didn't quite work the same way.

The "war room" title would have to go, in favour of the more genial-sounding Canadian Energy Centre, even if detractors never abandoned the combative term which Kenney used at its conception. 

The "rapid response" element remained the provocative part of its initial mission, but only part, along with teams focused on research and "energy literacy." And while Kenney pitched it as a $30-million-a-year operation that would outduel the climate-activist PR machine, it instead became notorious for an  abortive social-media tirade against the New York Times and going after a Netflix cartoon film for its anti-development themes.

It tried to take down Big Green. It instead picked fights with Bigfoot Family.

Other early controversies dogged the outfit, led by Tom Olsen, a former UCP candidate and press secretary to former premier Ed Stelmach. It was set up as a provincial corporation, avoiding the reaches of Freedom of Information requests. It had to scrap logos that were too similar to those of existing companies. Its taxpayer-funded research staffers were criticized for calling themselves "reporters" for pro-industry articles on its website.

And in time, its bid to become to pugnacious attacker of oil and gas detractors faded. It instead became a content factory of stories that promoted the sector, and a prolific advertiser — where most of its budget went over the years. It spent $26 million overall in 2022-2023, the last year for which figures are publicly available.

And what did it get to show for that government spending, if not a chastened anti-oil side? Fewer than half a million website visits a year, according to its own annual report.

Of those, more than one-quarter were Alberta clicks, meaning that its biggest single audience was actually in its home base — much publicly funded preaching to the converted.

"If all you're doing is targeting the people that already agree with you, you're not able to get to the rest of them," said Ryan Williams, the president of Drake Oilfield Supply, in 2020, one year into the energy centre's life.