Rempel calls for better market access

Newly appointed cabinet minister Michelle Rempel pressed the case Wednesday for improving market access for Canadian energy resources, while warning the debate over new pipelines shouldn’t devolve into one of “good versus evil.”

Elevated last week to the post of Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, Rempel spoke about energy development to several hundred people attending an oilsands technology conference in Calgary on Wednesday.

The Conservative MP for Calgary Centre-North stressed that oilsands projects and pipelines to move crude to new markets can be built in an environmentally responsible way, but worries the discussion threatens to become fractured.

“We need to make sure that ... the debate around energy infrastructure doesn’t devolve into a good-versus-evil debate, but it’s one that is pragmatic,” she told the audience.

All sides — including the public, industry and government — need to “come together and have this policy debate in such a way that we recognize economic growth is at hand in the natural resources sector,” she said.

Market access has become a pressing issue for both the federal and provincial governments, as Canada’s oil exporting capacity hasn’t kept pace with increasing output from the Athabasca oilsands.

Last year, companies produced about 1.9 million barrels of bitumen a day in Alberta — up 10 per cent from the previous year — and that figure is expected to double within a decade, according to provincial figures.

However, several big-ticket projects to boost oil transportation — including the Keystone XL pipeline to move bitumen to the U.S. Gulf Coast and the proposed Northern Gateway line to ship crude to Canada’s West Coast for eventual export to Asia — face fierce environmental opposition.

Northern Gateway is in the midst of regulatory proceedings, while Keystone awaits a decision by the Obama administration.

Rempel noted all of Canada’s natural gas exports and 99 per cent of crude leaving the country heads to the United States.

Natural Resources Canada estimates the losses due to market access constraints — triggering lower prices for Canadian oil — topped $13 billion last year, while the Alberta government maintains depressed bitumen prices have cut deeply into provincial revenues.

“This is not just a problem for industry, it’s a problem for Western Canada, it’s a problem for all of Canada,” Rempel said. “To say that we’re at a pivotal moment in the growth of this industry is probably a bit of an understatement.”

The minister said the government is still working with industry to develop greenhouse gas regulations for the oil and gas sector, but didn’t set a timeline on when it would conclude.

While Ottawa and the Alberta government fret the pipeline debate is becoming polarized, they should examine their own environmental policies as a source of the conflict, said Simon Dyer, policy director at the Pembina Institute think-tank.

Some opposition to pipelines is rooted in concerns about the projects, but other criticism ties back to a lack of greenhouse gas regulations and weak enforcement in the oilsands, he said.

“It’s the failure to address those (issues) that you’re seeing things becoming more polarized, so it comes from both sides,” Dyer said.

“The government themselves have to bear some of the responsibility for not getting the job done on the environmental front.”

This is not

just a problem

for industry,

it’s a problem for Western Canada, it’s a problem for all of Canada MICHELLE REMPEL