The time to build new pipelines has passed, even if it would be impolitic for the Premier of Alberta to admit it, a retired fossil executive argues this week in a post on iPolitics.
“The problem a pipeline to tidewater was intended to address,” Ross Belot writes, “doesn’t exist anymore.” That problem was the limited American market where Alberta’s diluted tar sands/oil sands bitumen can be delivered. Locked out of world trade, where crude was soaring, Canadian producers were reduced to being price “takers”.
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While that’s still the case, Belot argues, the moment of triple-digit crude prices has passed (they now hover in the mid-US$30 range), and it’s unlikely to return.
“Alberta’s problem is twofold: Its oilsands have been buried by fracked American oil that is both higher-value and cheaper to produce, while longer-term they face marginalization in a world committed to weaning itself off carbon.
“So another pipeline isn’t needed,” he concludes. “Oilsands production won’t be expanding much in the foreseeable future, if it all. Money spent on a pipeline right now would be money wasted. But Notley can’t say that aloud.”
