Canada Is Missing Out on the Global Oil Recovery
A shortage of pipelines is weighing on prices for the country’s crude.
Heavy haulers parked at the Suncor Energy Inc. Millennium mine in the Athabasca oil sands near Fort McMurray, Alta., on Sept. 10, 2018.
Photographer: Ben Nelms/Bloomberg
Cenovus Energy Inc. Chief Executive Officer Alex Pourbaix was in his office in downtown Calgary in late August when he checked his phone and noticed his company’s shares were plunging for no apparent reason.
That’s when he learned that a federal appeals court in Ottawa had overturned the government’s approval of an expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, potentially stalling for another year a key project that would help energy companies in western Canada ship oil to new customers in Asia. For Pourbaix’s company, one of the country’s largest oil sands producers, the ruling threatened to prolong a shortage of pipeline capacity that has weighed on prices for Canadian crude and kept Cenovus and its peers dependent on U.S. refineries.