Alberta risks becoming a “discount supplier” of oil to an already oversupplied United States energy market if pipelines to the east, west and south don’t get built, said Alberta Premier Jim Prentice in Vancouver on December 1.
Prentice kicked off a cross-Canada speaking tour with an address to the Vancouver Board of Trade. It was the first speech he had made outside of Alberta since becoming premier in October.
Prentice will also touch down in Quebec and Ontario this week. Those provinces have laid out seven principles around environmental impacts and revenue sharing they would like to be considered in the Energy East pipeline decision.
Northern Gateway, which would run from Alberta through northern British Columbia to terminate on the coast, and Keystone XL, a pipeline that would bring oil from Alberta throughout the United States to Texas, have both been heavily opposed by environmental groups and residents.
“If we fail, sometime around 2018 or as late as 2020, but no later, the capacity of the existing pipeline infrastructure in this country will be exceeded and we will be in a world where we will not be able to transport new increments of energy elsewhere,” Prentice said.
Prentice called those pipeline projects “nation-building” projects for the 21st century. He warned that failing to get the pipelines built would threaten Canada’s social safety net, especially as baby boomers hit their golden years and threaten to overwhelm the country’s health care system.
He calculates the oil sands’ economic impact at 5% of Canada’s GDP, when indirect jobs and other benefits are included.
“The logic of the numbers is undeniable,” Prentice said.
“Alberta’s oil sands are responsible for 3% of employment for the entire country.
Rising production will lift oil sands employment by nearly 300,000 jobs over the course of next 15 years.”
Prentice admitted that his province needs to do more to address the oil industry’s role in increasing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Alberta currently imposes a carbon levy on large industrial producers, but has been considering raising that levy from $15 a tonne to $40 a tonne.
Prentice said that his government is currently working on new environmental regulations that will revealed in 2015.
Alberta’s emissions have been growing at a rapid rate compared to most other Canadian provinces, where emissions have been falling. Increased oil sands production is responsible for those rising emissions.
Alberta’s carbon levy has yet to lower emissions because activity in the oils sands continues to increase, Prentice said.
“Despite the ups and downs we’re currently seeing in commodities, these production levels will be sustained for the next 50 to 100 years,” he said.
@jenstden
