Wanted: A Pipeline for Unloved Oil
With the Keystone XL pipeline cancelled, Alberta doesn't have any promising avenues for exporting more oil. Time to trace a post-oil future.
Getting it to market just got harder
Photographer: Ben Nelms/BloombergIf Canadians were hoping for better times with a new man in charge to their south, they were quickly disappointed in at least one respect. One of President Joe Biden’s first acts after taking office was to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
The move wasn’t a surprise, but it dismayed national and provincial leaders north of the border nonetheless. It thrusts squarely back on their shoulders a problem that has dogged the province of Alberta’s oil and gas industries for decades — how to get what they produce to international markets. Alberta dominates Canada’s oil production and if it can’t develop its own export system, those riches risk being left in the ground.