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The industry outlook for LNG in Canada has received a sharp boost from the International Energy Agency after several years of wallowing in misery. In a new report published in early October the IEA said global LNG supply is expected to race ahead by 2026, good news for the many LNG projects that are sitting on the shelf awaiting a construction green light in British Columbia. The report says that although markets such as Europe and North America are expected to see gas consumption fall over the medium term, higher demand is anticipated in...
One of Canada's most influential energy industry leaders has given the strongest push yet to years of campaigning for federal government backing of loan guarantees to help First Nations communities acquire equity stakes in major resource and infrastructure projects. Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel, who leads North America's largest natural gas distribution company, told reporters at a Toronto Board of Trade symposium the time has come for the Canadian government to extend its federal loan guarantee program to First Nations and provide the assistance...
Enbridge, Canada's leading carrier of natural gas, has pulled off a multi-billion dollar blockbuster deal by scooping up three U.S.-based utilities to create the largest gas utility franchise in North America in what its newly installed chief executive officer rates as a "generational opportunity." The deal with Dominion Energy includes the purchase for US$9.4 billion of East Ohio Gas, Questar Gas and its related Wexpro companies, and Public Service Co. of North Carolina for US$4.6 billion of assumed debt for a platform delivering 9.3 billion...
The Trans Mountain pipeline, Canada's only direct crude oil export link to Asian markets, has been tripped up again, raising questions about whether anything will ever flow through the pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to the tanker terminal in Vancouver. The projected completion has now been hiked from the first quarter of 2025 to the end of 2025 at the soonest. As things stand, work is well advanced on the 200,000 barrel per day expansion of the 70-year-old pipeline from Alberta through the Rockies to the Burnaby terminal in Vancouver...
Caught in a squeeze between global climate warnings and economic pressures, the Canadian government finds itself on the brink of a tough decision on the future of large oil projects off the Newfoundland coast. At immediate stake is the future of a proposal by Norway’s Equinor to invest $12 billion developing its Bay du Nord holding about 300 miles off the shore of St. John’s Newfoundland into a deepwater venture yielding 200,000 barrels per day later this decade. Earlier in April, the CTV news network reported that federal approval of the pro...
Oil sands giant Cenovus Energy has abandoned its practice of securing protection against any sudden drop in crude prices by taking an estimated C$1.38 billion hit in price hedges. The Calgary-based company announced plans to suspend hedging strategies that locked in future prices for a portion of its production. “Given the strength of Cenovus’s balance sheet and liquidity position, the company has determined these programs are no longer required to support financial resilience,” the company said. Cenovus put what it describes as a “risk...
Canada’s Big Oil - specifically the Alberta oil sands - is about to learn what shape its future will take under the national government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. A long-promised federal tax credit for investments in carbon capture, utilization and storage, CCUS, is likely to be included in the next budget, along with the details of a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40%-45% below 2005 levels, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told reporters. Oil sands producers have estimated that eliminating emissions from their o...
Having seen two of their hoped-for outlets to Asian markets scuttled by the Canadian and U.S. governments, Alberta oil sands producers have seized an overlooked alternative route. They have quietly and suddenly taken advantage of Ohio-based Marathon Pipe Line’s reversal of its Capline system that previously was the largest south-to-north pipeline from Louisiana to the Midwest, with capacity of 1.3 million barrels per day. Faced with declining imports from Mexico and Venezuela, Marathon has been working since 2017 to open a connection for h...
Alberta is immersed in an energy transition contest that the economic development organizations of Calgary and Edmonton estimate could create 170,000 jobs and pump C$61 billion into the two cities by 2050. But, according to the authorities, that windfall will only be available if the business-as-usual approach to energy development is abandoned, otherwise job creation and economic activity will be limited to 20,000 new jobs and a C$4 billion infusion. “A low-carbon transformation of Alberta’s industries and economy will not be without its cha...
Amid the fading fortunes of more than 20 proposed LNG projects, the smallest and largest of the pack keep plodding on, with the privately owned Woodfibre LNG insisting it is now on track to start construction this year. The Vancouver-based subsidiary of Singapore’s Pacific Energy Corp. ended 2021 by signing an engineering, procurement and construction contract with Houston-based McDermott International to build liquefaction and export facility near Squamish, British Columbia, just north of Vancouver. That followed the mid-year announcement o...
Alberta’s oil and natural gas producers are starting to feel the screws tighten as the provincial government and its energy regulator get serious about addressing the growing problem of inactive and abandoned wells at the same time landowners, taxpayers and environmentalists demand even tougher measures. In the latest set of new rules, which have already taken effect and mark the first significant overhaul of the well liability framework, the Alberta Energy Regulator said the changes represent a “major milestone.” “With these new require...
The revolving door out of Alberta’s oil sands is expected to spin even faster in 2022 as foreign-based operators pack their bags. A report by analysts at RBC Capital Markets said that given the pressures being applied to international oil companies to quit the tarnished oil sands “a further exodus from Canada is conceivable.” They suggest the results of such a move would be welcomed by those investors who see a future in fossil fuels, given the chance for Canadian-controlled companies to seize multibillion-dollar acquisitions that carry “no i...
Regardless of the surge in oil and natural gas prices through 2021, Canada’s upstream producers are in an unsettled state - gun shy about embarking on a drilling bonanza, while unable to win back skilled rig hands who have been laid off over the past five years, many of whom have opted for jobs in the renewable energy sector. In its 2022 state-of-the-industry report the Canadian Association of Energy Contractors reflects the mixed view of where the industry is headed. It points to a cautiously optimistic outlook in which it expects drilling a...
Four Canadian provinces are poised to release a strategic plan to exploit the technology for small modular nuclear reactors, SMRs, which are widely viewed as the answer to cleaning up the conventional oil and gas industry. A spokeswoman for Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick will issue their joint plan in early 2022, 16 months after announcing a memorandum of understanding to explore and eventually develop the SMRs. The cooperative released a feasibility study last April which found SMRs...
Cenovus Energy, one of Alberta’s oil sands powerhouses, is in hot pursuit of climate reduction targets, rolling out plans for three new carbon-capture projects over the next five years that it estimates will lower its greenhouse gas emissions by 35%. Chief Executive Officer Alex Pourbaix said that shrinking emissions by that amount for each barrel of crude it produces “could very easily be the next boom in the Alberta oil sector,” creating employment and drawing investment in technology and research dollars. “We no longer see the need for major...
Canada’s top energy regulator has tossed a curve ball at Enbridge’s proposal to keep its huge Mainline oil pipeline network operating at capacity, forcing the company to start exploring options for a network that carries more than 3 million barrels per day of crude from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast as well as Ontario and Quebec and also includes the controversial Line 3 and Line 5. The dispute over the future of a 70-year system has amounted to an epic showdown between North America’s largest crude carrier and Alberta crude produ...
Alberta is long-accustomed to sudden lurches in its oil and natural gas-based revenues, but nothing close to what it’s now going through. Just nine months after the government forecast a deficit of C$18.2 billion for the 2021-22 fiscal year that ends next March 31, it slashed that projection to a stunning C$5.8 billion and targeted a revenue infusion of C$28 billion more than expected over the three years to March 2024. That triggered instant speculation of an early return to surplus budgets, with Finance Minister Travis Toews stepping outside...
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has abruptly abandoned her federal lawsuit aimed at shutting down Enbridge’s Line 5 that runs through part of the Great Lakes, but her state hasn’t given up pursuing a separate route to achieve the same objective. Attorney General Dana Nessel said Michigan’s campaign will now concentrate on a state court action filed in 2019 believing that offers the “quickest and most viable path” towards getting Line 5 permanently decommissioned. The state’s efforts were dealt a blow in November when a U.S. District Court judge...
Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson ventured into “enemy” territory in mid-November and left confident he had sold the draft of a peace treaty with industry leaders and the Alberta government. But only a week later he seemed to have forgotten his hope of embarking on a “new era” of collaboration. On the upside, Wilkinson conceded that if Canada was to achieve its ambitious targets to lower greenhouse gas emissions the government must find ways for the industry to attract capital if the industry was to invest in decarbonizatio...
Exhausted by repeated delays and deferrals, Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline has shelved plans for the first LNG export terminal on the U.S. West Coast. Starting 14 years ago, the project was planned by Verasen as an LNG import venture. Then, after being acquired by Pembina in 2017, the plan was switched to a US$8 billion LNG export terminal, with hopes of enabling Canadian gas producers to find new markets beyond Alberta. But, regardless of the objective, the plan to use Jordan Cove as an entry or exit point for LNG has been buffeted by U.S....
Pipeline giant TC Energy has formally launched a bid to recover US$15 billion from the U.S. government following President Joe Biden’s decision to shred a permit for the Keystone XL project. The Calgary-based company said it has filed paperwork under a part of the North American Free Trade Agreement rules that allows companies to seek compensation for lost investment. The case is proceeding under the rules of NAFTA which existed at the time approvals were granted for the pipeline to carry 830,000 barrels per day of bitumen from the Alberta o...
Calgary-based Northern Petrochemical Corp., NPC, has rolled out plans to buy a 295-acre site near Grande Prairie in northwestern Alberta to build a C$2.5 billion carbon-neutral facility. The plant is expected to create about 4,000 construction jobs starting in spring 2023 and 400 permanent jobs once it comes online in fall 2026. NPC is targeting production of 200 million metric tons per year of blue methanol and blue hydrogen that will be converted to ammonia and methanol and shipped to markets in China, South Korea and Japan. The company said...
Faced with losing her legal fight to effectively drive Calgary-based Enbridge out of Michigan, state Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is turning her efforts to crippling the pipeline company by seeking alternative domestic propane supplies to serve a large portion of her state, Whitmer’s spearheading of a battle to end the 68-year life of Line 5, which delivers 90% of the propane consumed in a wide region of Michigan, as well as providing vital feedstock to refineries in Ontario and Quebec, was dealt another setback in mid-November when a U.S. District C...
The economic outlook for Calgary, the city that for decades reveled in its role as the home base for Canada’s petroleum industry, along with far-flung global operations, has been dominated in the last six years by a ballooning vacancy rate in its forest of downtown skyscrapers. By the latest count, the empty space totals 15 million square feet or 34%. That has been accompanied by signs of an exodus by those under the age of 30, disillusioned with their job prospects in the oil and gas sector, which has shrunk the industry’s Canadian pay...
Determined to change its national and global image as producer of the world’s dirtiest crude, the Alberta government has unveiled its plan to become a hydrogen front-runner at the same time it announced a raft of emissions-reduction projects. The hydrogen strategy aims to attract investment of C$30 billion by 2030, create 5,600 jobs and lower Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions over the next nine years by 5% or 7 million metric tons annually. Driving the province’s hopes is an estimate that hydrogen could account for 24% of global energy deman...
