Trans Mountain deal won’t change oilsands giant’s spending freeze

CALGARY — The CEO of Suncor Energy Inc. said it will continue to avoid spending on large growth projects in Canada despite the federal government’s move last week to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline system and its stalled expansion from Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd.

The $4.5-billion sale to ensure the project is built doesn’t change his view that Canada is falling behind other nations, notably the United States, in terms of competitiveness, Suncor CEO Steve Williams said Wednesday.

“What I said was, ‘If you look at the competitiveness of Canada, we’re not in great shape,”’ Williams said after taking part in a panel discussion on how the country can balance economic and environmental issues.

“And competitiveness for me is the sum of all those things, so royalties, taxation, regulatory certainty, confidence in regulators today and in the future. And we need to make some progress.”

He said Ottawa’s support of Trans Mountain is encouraging, but its decision is “twoedged,” considering that the $7.4-billion pipeline expansion had received regulatory approval and a private company was willing but unable to build it.

“On the one hand, it’s a clear, unambiguous commitment that it’s a piece of infrastructure which is in the national interest and needs to be built. On the other hand, it’s also recognizing that the normal processes didn’t work very well,” he said.

Suncor is ramping up production of its recently completed $17-billion, 194,000-barrel-per-day Fort Hills oilsands mine north of Fort McMurray, but has approved no other major growth projects for its northern Alberta oilsands leases.

The Trans Mountain expansion, designed to increase pipeline capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day, still faces vocal and legal opposition from the provincial and municipal governments in B.C., as well as environmentalists and Indigenous people.

Williams said he’s confident it will be built. He said it could eventually have some Indigenous ownership as the federal government has vowed to return it to private hands as soon as practical.

Former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge, now an adviser with law firm Bennett Jones LLP, said environmental activists who want all oil and gas production and pipelines stopped would make Canada unable to afford its own environmental policies, while ardent developers who want zero limits on production are ignoring the longterm threat posed by climate change.