Because the city centre on the coronary heart of Canada’s oilsands trade, Fort McMurray has seen greater than its share of ups and downs.
A decade and a half in the past, the northern Alberta group was this nation’s most well-known increase city. Excessive oil costs helped to drive unprecedented demand for the thick, viscous bitumen that lies beneath the earth’s floor right here, and employees flocked from all over the world to money in on the bonanza.
Then crude costs crashed, layoffs started, and the frenzy of oilsands-related development dried up. The social gathering, it appeared, was over.
Now, with the official opening of the long-awaited Trans Mountain pipeline growth simply days away, those that dwell and work on this area hope their fortunes are as soon as once more headed for an upswing.
‘What helps them, helps us’ — a group tied to at least one trade
Fort McMurray, inhabitants 68,000, is located in northern Alberta within the coronary heart of the Athabasca oilsands, the world’s third-largest confirmed crude oil reserve.
The oil trade permeates each side of life right here. Each morning, oil employees clad in blue-and-yellow coveralls line up on the native Tim Hortons for double-doubles, and diesel vans and massive rigs churn up mud on their manner out to industrial work websites. The airport reward store sells “Canada’s Oilsands” sweatshirts and native rec centres and academic services are emblazoned with the names of their oil firm sponsors.
With so many livelihoods depending on oil, all eyes listed below are on the anticipated opening this week of the Trans Mountain pipeline growth, a years-in-the-making megaproject which can quickly begin delivery Canadian crude to export markets.
“It is onerous to quantify the worth of the … pipeline to a area like ours,” stated Dennis Vroom, senior strategic adviser for the regional municipality of Wooden Buffalo, which encompasses Fort McMurray and the encompassing rural space.
“We’re so closely supported by oilsands operators within the area, that when issues which are essential to them — just like the Trans Mountain pipeline — occur, there are direct advantages to us. What helps them, helps us.”‘
The Trans Mountain pipeline, which was purchased six years in the past by the federal authorities, is Canada’s solely oil pipeline to the West Coast. The growth will improve its capability from roughly 300,000 barrels per day at the moment to 890,000 barrels per day, enhancing entry to export markets for Canadian oil corporations.
The trail to get right here hasn’t been rosy. The pipeline challenge, which took greater than 4 years and a minimum of $34 billion to assemble, has been marred by environmental protests, delays and funds overruns.
The odyssey of growing and constructing the Trans Mountain growth challenge in Western Canada is lastly nearing the ending line as sections of the pipeline start filling with oil. The challenge will transport oil from Alberta to the West Coast and triple the quantity of crude that’s shipped on an present pipeline, from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 bpd.
The federal authorities, which paid $4.5 billion for the challenge in 2018, is more likely to take a big writedown when it tries to promote the finished challenge, specialists say. And Trans Mountain itself stays locked in a dispute with its oil firm prospects in regards to the rising charges it needs to cost them to ship their product.
Nonetheless, oilsands producers have been ready for this pipeline for a very long time. Export points have been a thorn within the aspect of Canadian vitality corporations for years, as a result of a scarcity of pipeline capability from Alberta’s oilsands area to coastal tanker loading services.
That scarcity of pipeline area, mixed with refinery and transportation prices, is the explanation Canadian oil producers usually take a worth low cost on their product in contrast with their U.S. rivals.
It has additionally inhibited oil corporations’ capability to develop, so the anticipation in terms of Trans Mountain is actual.
Oil output climbing to new heights
“It is an thrilling time. It has been a very long time since we have had some new incremental egress for Canadian merchandise,” stated Drew Zieglgansberger, govt vice-president and chief industrial officer for Cenovus Power Inc., a significant contracted shipper on Trans Mountain.
“We had some development and effectivity initiatives on the books already, however (the pipeline growth) does allow some stability available in the market within the close to and medium-term that actually does give us some confidence so as to add extra development to the corporate.”
The extra export capability that Trans Mountain will present implies that 2024 is anticipated to be a increase yr for oil output.
A current TD Economics report advised Canadian oil manufacturing this yr may develop by between six and 10 per cent year-over-year, the equal of between 300,000 and 500,000 barrels per day.
Even on the low finish of the forecast, this development price would match the typical annual oil output development price Canada noticed within the booming years between 2010 and 2015, when commodity costs had been excessive and Alberta’s oilsands area was present process unprecedented ranges of development and exercise.
However at the moment, the oil worth downturn of the final decade pressured corporations to tighten their belts. Somewhat than spending on main capital initiatives, oil corporations have spent the final couple of years of sturdy commodity costs paying down debt and rewarding shareholders with wholesome dividend funds.
Technological developments have additionally meant that corporations now know the way to improve their oil output with out huge will increase in capital spending.
Cenovus, for instance, plans to develop its manufacturing by 150,000 barrels a day over the following 5 years.
However the firm — which as soon as thought it might construct a completely new processing facility at its Narrows Lake oilsands asset, now below improvement — has determined as a substitute to make use of new expertise and engineering strategies to attach that web site with the central processing facility at its at the moment working Christina Lake challenge, situated about 150 km southeast of Fort McMurray.
Like Cenovus’s different oilsands initiatives, the Narrows Lake improvement will use a drilling methodology known as steam-assisted gravity drainage to extract the thick, heavy oilsands bitumen. However due to these modifications, it’ll value a lot much less and require far much less development than initially deliberate.
‘Issues have modified’
Many individuals’s psychological picture of Fort McMurray is synonymous with the interval when the group was a bustling increase city outlined by heavy site visitors, excessive housing prices and cash that appeared to develop on bushes.
Sarah Thapa, the proprietor of Avenue Eatery & Cafe, which opened in 2021, remembers these days. She moved to Fort McMurray in 2012, through the peak of the oilsands increase.
“I received a job as a server at one of many native eating places, they usually made seven to 10 grand simply by promoting breakfasts,” she stated.
“It was packed daily, it did not matter if it was Monday, Tuesday, 6 a.m. within the morning — each desk was taken,” Thapa stated. “Each restaurant, each small enterprise on the town, was doing so properly.”
However after a decade of layoffs and oil firm consolidation, the ambiance on the town is just not the identical, she stated. The group has additionally needed to deal with the 2016 wildfire that destroyed roughly 2,400 houses and buildings in Fort McMurray, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a 2020 flood that pressured 1000’s of residents from their houses and triggered greater than $520 million in insured damages.
“COVID occurred, the flood occurred, the hearth occurred — and we have not seen the city the identical manner,” Thapa stated. “So many small companies have already closed and left city … so many issues have modified since I moved right here.”
The local weather change drawback
One other issue that makes at the moment’s oilsands totally different is ever-growing environmental scrutiny. Because the final trade increase, Canada has signed the Paris Settlement, a global treaty on local weather change that commits signatories to greenhouse gasoline emissions discount targets.
The world has confronted a rising variety of climate-related excessive climate disasters, and calls to scale back society’s reliance on fossil fuels are intensifying.
The method of extracting oilsands bitumen is a relatively emissions-heavy manner of manufacturing oil. And whereas corporations have been capable of scale back the greenhouse gasoline depth per barrel, the trade’s general emissions footprint is rising as a result of elevated manufacturing. In 2021, the oil and gasoline sector was answerable for 28 per cent of Canada’s general emissions.
The trade believes it may proceed to develop whereas decreasing its environmental influence. Six of the most important oilsands corporations have banded collectively to type what they name the Pathways Alliance, by means of which they’re proposing to construct what can be one of many largest carbon seize and storage initiatives on the earth.
That challenge would contain constructing a 400-kilometre pipeline to move carbon dioxide emissions from 20 totally different oilsands manufacturing services in northern Alberta and embed them safely in an underground storage hub. If it goes forward, it may imply a brand new period of development within the oilsands.
“That is a $16-billion challenge proper there that is seeking to begin development,” stated Lisa Candy, director of enterprise and funding attraction for Fort McMurray-Wooden Buffalo Financial Growth.
“There are funding alternatives which are coming, and we’re on the market to advertise that.”
However the Pathways Alliance corporations have not but made a last funding resolution, and there are a variety of uncertainties hanging over their challenge. Certainly one of these is the federal authorities’s proposed emissions cap, which is meant to be finalized someday this yr.
The federal government has stated the cap is supposed to cap air pollution, not manufacturing, however the trade has warned the cap could have “unintended penalties” — scaring away funding and doubtlessly inflicting corporations to curtail their output and spending.
A brand new period
The Trans Mountain challenge has taken so lengthy to construct, and the oilsands trade has had a lot time to arrange, that it’s anticipated to be crammed quickly after coming on-line. Many within the trade consider Canadian oil output will exceed pipeline capability once more inside a couple of years, maybe as early as 2026.
However in the interim, the Trans Mountain pipeline growth represents a brand new period — for each the trade and the group most carefully linked to it. The subsequent few years will not be a repeat of the heyday of Fort McMurray, however they do characterize a revival of alternative.
“Individuals come right here for financial alternative, and that hasn’t modified and that will not change,” Candy stated.
“The Trans Mountain pipeline simply reiterates that message.”
Again at Avenue Eatery & Cafe. Thapa echoed that sentiment. “I am optimistic in regards to the city selecting up once more,” she stated.
“We could not see the companies doing in addition to they had been 10 to fifteen years in the past, however general I believe we’ll come again. I believe we’ll see some optimistic modifications, I actually do.”
