Big push underway for pipeline capacity: MLA Hunter

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Sunny South News

By Trevor Busch
Sunny South News
editor@tabertimes.com

In early 2025, the province announced plans to double Alberta’s oil production and preserve and increase pipeline capacity.

With Alberta currently delivering more than 4.3 million barrels per day to the U.S. market, this trade relationship is under threat as President Donald Trump continues to mull over implementing harsh tariffs against Canadian imports. 

Undaunted by this prospect, the province plans to increase pipeline capacity to get more product to market while maximizing value.

“So right now, just depending upon a couple of things, the differential – the price difference between the Canadian – U.S. dollar, and then obviously the price of West Texas crude (is always a factor),” said Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter. “We make anywhere between $12 – $20 billion in royalties and we have a lot of oil here, with a lot of natural gas. There are technologies that are coming out that, at some point, I believe will catch up to the point where people will move off of fossil fuels. I don’t think we’re there yet, but we’ll innovate our way to that point. So it’s our belief that we’ve got this liquid gold under our feet. People want it everywhere in the world – they want it. And so we need to ramp this up as quickly as possible. So that’s what our goal is, to be able to ramp up the value to Albertans. Obviously, those royalties are used to build hospitals and roads and schools and all the things we do in Alberta for government services. So that’s kind of the value proposition. The reason why we’re going to do that is there’s already a need for it. People out there want it.”

A critical step towards achieving this goal includes working directly with industry. The government has signed a letter of intent with Enbridge, which will form a working group with the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission (APMC). The working group will evaluate future egress, transport, storage, terminalling and market access opportunities across the more than 29,000 kilometres of the Enbridge network in support of moving more Alberta oil and gas to Canadians and American partners.

The working group will focus on preserving and optimizing egress, developing opportunities to expand along Enbridge’s current footprint, and developing new solutions to improve global market access and maximize the value of Alberta’s commodity. Additionally, it will work with government to cut red tape and streamline regulations and permitting approvals. It will also assess opportunities for shared investment and benefit to both Albertans and Enbridge by leveraging BRIK (Bitumen-Royalty-In-Kind) barrels.

Years of poor federal policy and regulatory red tape, argues Hunter, managed to torpedo proposed pipeline projects like Energy East and Northern Gateway, and Albertans are now poised to pay the price for Ottawa’s short-sightedness as it grapples with a reactionary administration in Washington. 

“As you know, we are in real trouble with the United States right now in that they talk about a 25 per cent tariff. So that oil, leaving the province, going out to the States to be refined down there, they’re talking about a 10 per cent tariff on that. Now, if we didn’t send 90 per cent of everything that we produce down to the States, and we could send it out through an Energy East pipeline, or Northern Gateway, which were all kiboshed by the federal government and the East, we wouldn’t be in this pickle that we’re in right now. We would not be beholden to only one buyer. So this is the reason why we need to ramp up our pipelines, so that we can access other markets.”

Decades of integration into the North American market have led to complacency, says Hunter, and failure to diversify our trade relationships has proven to be a big mistake when the political winds shift toward protectionism south of the border.

“This was our policy prior to the Trump administration getting in. So I think that this just goes to show that when you only have one buyer, they can dictate terms.”