Canada’s biggest pipeline company says Alberta is losing billions of dollars on its daily production of bitumen.
TransCanada claims it’s due to stalled projects and denial of access to world markets, where Alberta oil could be sold for a higher price.
“I don’t have a calculator handy, but you have three-and-a-half million barrels a day, times $10 a barrel, times the number of years of delay is a pretty significant hit to the economy. It’s billions and billions of dollars,” TransCanada CEO Russ Girling said at a news conference Friday.
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His comments came after the National Energy Board (NEB) said hearings on the Energy East pipeline won’t wrap until the spring of 2018 with a final report from the NEB.
More than 1,000 participants will be making presentations to the regulatory agency starting with oral submissions starting in August, to be followed by detailed written submissions.
TransCanada is proposing the 4,500-kilometre pipeline be built as soon as possible.
Energy East is designed to move 1.1 million barrels of Alberta bitumen across Canada to the east coast for shipping to overseas markets, where the product would fetch much higher world oil prices.
Another TransCanada project, the Keystone XL pipeline, has already been stalled by U.S. President Barack Obama.
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