Canada advances energy strategy with new oil pipeline step

Prime Minister Mark Carney and the leader of Canada’s oil-rich Alberta province took a major step on Friday toward building an oil pipeline that could substantially increase crude exports to Asia.

Expanding overseas energy exports has emerged as a key part of Carney’s strategy to reduce Canada’s economic reliance on the United States, but plans for a new pipeline are facing stiff resistance over environmental concerns.

Alberta’s conservative Premier, Danielle Smith, was a relentless critic of Carney’s climate policies. Danielle Smith, Alberta’s conservative Premier, was a relentless critic of Carney’s climate policies, accusing his predecessor Justin Trudeau of suffocating the province’s oil industry, but she has sought to work with Carney.

Carney and Smith cleared a key hurdle toward a new pipeline on Friday by signing a deal on industrial carbon pricing, a system that extracts a fee from large industries. scale CO₂ emitters.

Oil companies have been critical of the system, but Smith said on Friday that the prohibitive rates set under Trudeau’s government had rolled back.

Ottawa and the provincial government agreed that the rate would gradually rise to a fee of CAD $130 ($96) per tonne of CO₂ emitted by 2040. Trudeau had called for a rate of CAN$170 by 2030.

At the announcement in Calgary, Carney said, "a final proposal for a pipeline that will serve Asian markets should be submitted to his major projects office by 1 July."

He said, "Canada had earned the trust of Asian countries that want our energy because they know that we are a safe, stable, reliable partner in a world that is anything but."

Carney has repeatedly warned that the trade hostility ushered in by President Donald Trump is not a passing phase, and Canada needs to plan for a fundamentally different economic relationship with the US, including by broadening ties with Asia.

Pipeline approval is also contingent on developing what Carney called the largest global initiative for carbon capture and storage.

Some Indigenous groups and First Nations have said that they will oppose any pipeline that runs from Alberta to Canada’s Pacific Coast.

The leader of the left-wing New Democratic Party, Avi Lewis, charged that Friday’s announcement marks the Carney government’s official surrender to the oil and gas lobby.

"The announcement also comes at a fraught political moment," he added.

Alberta separatists have built a record-high support of roughly 30 per cent for independence by railing against Ottawa’s control over the provincial oil industry.

Carney, who was raised in Alberta, insists the province can thrive within a united Canada.