CALGARY- Many Albertans are keeping an eye on the results of B.C.’s provincial election, which could have a major impact on the future of the oil patch.
Voters in that province headed to the polls on Tuesday, for what was expected to be showdown between the NDP and the incumbent Liberal party. Early polls had the NDP in the lead, but Christy Clark’s Liberals have made it close in the last couple of weeks.
Alberta’s oil industry has much riding on the results, with the province hoping to send its bitumen through the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline to the west coast, to sell to Asian markets.
The controversial project is opposed by environmentalists as well as Clark, who wants B.C. to make more royalties off the pipeline.
“The NDP itself is a fringe environmentalist group, so pipelines are bad according to them,” says economics professor Frank Atkins. “If the Liberals get in, it will be a different kind of a fight. The Liberals have got their environmentalists, but they understand how the economy works.”
He adds that Clark wants a ‘piece of the action’ by standing strong on royalty demands.
“I don’t know how she’s going to do this, but this is what she’s fighting for.”
Meantime, a group of politicians from the Maritimes were in Calgary on Tuesday, lobbying for a pipeline that heads to the east coast. Trans-Canada is currently looking at converting a natural gas pipeline to carry bitumen to Atlantic Canada.
“We want to see a west-east pipeline constructed and have it come to Saint John,” explains New Brunswick Energy Minister Craig Leonard. “We want to see it filled with Alberta oil and refined at Canada’s largest oil refinery and shipped to world markets from our deep water port.”
Industry leaders are also awaiting a decision on the Keystone Pipeline which would send more than 800,000 barrels of oil from Canada through the United States. A decision on that is expected later this summer.
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