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A drone view of three berths able to load vessels with oil is seen after their construction at Westridge Marine Terminal, the terminus of the Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, April 26, 2024.
Alberta oil flowing, but that won’t help Trudeau
A pipeline that gave Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a huge headache is finally delivering benefits — to oil companies, at least — although Trudeau should not expect to get political rewards for his troubles.
Refineries in Washington state and Oregon are displacing Iraqi crude with cheaper oil from Alberta that is now available thanks to the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which moves bitumen-heavy Alberta crude from the oil sands in the north to the British Columbia coast.
Trudeau’s government has endured withering criticism from Western Canadians for failing to back the aggressive expansion of the emissions-intensive Alberta oil production. On the other hand, British Columbians opposed a potentially dangerous pipeline running to their beautiful coastal waters. Still, Trudeau brokered an uneasy compromise with Albertans, who couldn’t believe they had to sell their oil at a discount because of transport bottlenecks. To try to please both sides, in 2018, Trudeau bought the pipeline from Kinder Morgan for CDN $4.5 billion, which pleased nobody.
That decision is now looking like a win for the Canadian economy. There were huge cost overruns, but it will earn an estimated CA$26 to $38 billion over the next 20 years — and oil exporters don’t have to ship their product by railcar, which should get them higher prices, since they can reach new markets. The new oil in US refineries may give Americans slightly cheaper gas and, but the big winners are Canadian taxpayers, who are likely to benefit thanks to royalties and tax revenue for decades to come. Still, while it’s a big win for Alberta, Trudeau is unlikely to win any votes in the staunchly conservative oil patch, where his name is mud.
A firefighter conducts a controlled ignition on the Sturgeon Lake Wildfire Complex GCX001 near Valleyview, Alberta.
Alberta wildfires send smoke far and wide – and south
Canada’s wildfire season is already in full swing, with a series of intense blazes in Alberta that have sent toxic smoke across the country and into the US Midwest. A wet and cold weekend followed by cooler temperatures this week helped firefighters from Canada and the US battle the 100+ fires, but dozens of blazes remain out of control. Fires are also burning in the provinces of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, where thousands have been forced to evacuate. And it’s only May – wildfire season goes through September.
Last week, the fires jammed up natural gas exports from Canada to the US, leading to price hikes, and the blazes have also led to reduced oil and gas production. Earlier this month, wildfires shut down oil and gas production in Alberta, reportedly curtailing at least 145,000 barrels of oil per day. A new study links the growth in extreme wildfires to the oil and gas industry as well as cement makers – in case irony is your thing.
Meanwhile, Alberta is in the midst of an acrimonious and tight provincial election in which discussions of climate change are constrained by the province’s reliance on the oil and gas industry – even for the ostensibly left-wing New Democratic Party. Politicians are unwilling to take aim at the province’s main source of wealth. There’s a push in Canada to set an emissions cap and get oil and gas companies to net-zero emissions, but Corporate Knights reports that the industry is lobbying against necessary steps to get there while claiming to support it. Meanwhile, a recent report by the Public Policy Forum claims a full phase-out of oil and gas production by 2050 would cost the province CAD$60 billion. A full wind-down of the industry is not on the table.
Ending the oil and gas industry (which no one is proposing) would be extraordinarily costly, but wildfires in western Canada are expensive themselves – the 2016 fires alone cost CAD$9 billion. They are costing the province plenty in terms of health, domestic and international trade, and destruction, yet politicians shy away from the issue. A federal report cites a series of measures required, and in various stages of adoption, to tackle present and future wildfires, including more money, training more firefighters, purchasing more equipment, and developing a satellite system to track wildfires. Without a significant effort and more aggressive climate action, these blazes will only get worse in the coming years – and their smoke and destruction have no respect for national borders.Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.
Alberta heads to the polls
Oil executives will be keeping an eye on the too-close-to-call Alberta election campaign that kicked off this week. The race pits incumbent Danielle Smith, a fiery libertarian, against former Premier Rachel Notley, leader of the leftist New Democrats.
A Smith government would be expected to continue backing the oil industry and picking fights with Trudeau, while Notley would be more likely to lean into reducing emissions. The polls are razor close, with the result hinging on Calgary, capital of the oil patch in the petroleum-rich province.
Oil watchers want to know if the election will change Canada’s federal carbon price law, and the answer is simple: no. Alberta has tried to challenge the federal government’s jurisdiction to impose a carbon tax in court and lost. So, whoever wins, the folks in Alberta are still gonna pay the Canadian price on carbon.