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Canada desperately needs additional pipeline capacity.
With the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers forecasting oilsands output to double to 3.2 million barrels a day by 2020, the issue couldn’t be more urgent. But that’s only part of the problem. What’s coming out of the oilsands region competes with oil—a lot of oil—from the Bakken play in North Dakota for limited space on already-congested pipelines, and that’s putting downward pressure on the price of Canadian crude.
Getting product to market, however, is proving to be far more difficult than getting product out of the ground. And a series of high-profile oil spills over the past two years hasn’t helped.
Oscar Wilde once said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” Had he been around for this summer’s report on the 2010 Enbridge Inc. pipeline spill in Michigan he probably would have kept his mouth shut. Having the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board say that Enbridge handled the spill like the Keystone Kops is hardly a ringing endorsement.
At this point the fate of Northern Gateway, which would carry Alberta bitumen through British Columbia to the West Coast, is bleak. That’s a shame because what we need most is access to Asian markets.
The fate of the Keystone XL project, which would carry product south to Cushing, Okla., is another matter, though one likely to be settled in the voting booth in November. Assuming the U.S. economy remains in the doldrums, Republicans are sure to continue the argument that the project will create thousands of construction jobs at a time when the U.S. needs new jobs.
Unfortunately, time isn’t on Canada’s side. According to a recent report by Wood Mackenzie Limited, ... >>> Click here to read the entire message
In 2010, then-Alberta energy minister Ron Liepert said the government wanted to keep 65 per cent of bitumen in the province for ...
