The Trans Mountain oil pipeline is costing a Canadian Crown corporation some staggering interest expenses that cast doubt on strong revenues from the infrastructure touted in the federal government's recent economic update.
The interest expenses were $20 million over a single month in September, right after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government purchased the pipeline and related assets from Texas energy company Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has announced her government is imposing cuts to oil production in the province.
The premier announced the news in a live address to the province on Sunday evening. It was a widely expected move to address what the government and its official Opposition say is costing the province hundreds of millions of dollars in losses due to global market prices.
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is aggressively advancing a false narrative about heavy oil’s deep discount. She presents the problem in two parts, neither of which stand up to scrutiny.
First, Notley purports that the abnormally wide price spread affects every barrel of heavy oil leading to millions of dollars a day in losses to the Canadian economy. And second, that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is crucial. Neither of these claims are supported by the facts.
The toxic waste of the Canadian oilpatch has been quietly spreading in the boreal forest since bitumen mining began near Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta in the 1960s.
The mix of clay, water, toxic acids, metals and leftover bitumen has sprawled in artificial ponds to cover an area twice the size of the city of Vancouver.
OTTAWA/VANCOUVER — Canada’s federal government is considering a proposal from its main oil producing province of Alberta to share the cost of buying rail cars to move oil stuck in the region because of a lack of pipeline capacity, said two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
