[lbo-talk] No Asian rescue for dying Alberts oil industry

Marv Gandall marvgand2 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 8 10:35:07 PDT 2019


Today’s Financial Post offers further confirmation that Alberta crude can’t compete in Asian markets and that the federal government’s bailout of Kinder Morgan's TransMountain pipeline to ship it there is a colossal boondoggle.

“Chinese demand for Canadian crude oil shipped through the Port of Vancouver has dried up in 2019”, the FP reports. “This followed a record year for China, where it bought 6.56 million barrels of crude (12 tanker loads), or almost one-third of all the crude shipped out of B.C. in 2018.”

The decline is attributable to a return of Alberta's oil price to normal levels. Chinese refineries bought a record amount of Alberta crude when it sold at $10.29 a barrel last year - a very deep (and unprofitable) discount to world market prices - but they have completely shunned it since its price rise to $53.75/barrel this year.

While the Trudeau government proposes to double the capacity of the pipeline, the amount of uncompetitive Alberta diluted bitumen being exported to Asia from its BC terminal has been falling since its peak in 2010, according to the FP.

https://business.financialpost.com/news/local-news/china-has-stopped-buying-crude-oil-from-western-canada-after-record-purchase-in-2018/wcm/3ed0a97e-c97e-4f8b-ada3-abaddacee432#comments-area



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