Canadian Media Resource Articles

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

No date set for Harper government’s long-promised curbs on oilsands

TTAWA—Canada’s ability to control pollution from the oilsands will sway U.S. President Barack Obama’s high-stakes decision on building the Keystone XL pipeline. But Ottawa’s new regulations — due July 1—have been delayed again and federal officials won’t say when they’re expected. Late this year, Obama will give a yes-or-no ruling on the proposed $7.6-billion project to carry oilsands derived crude from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The decision has huge political implications for Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The planned Keystone XL pipeline is the most prominent of a number of current proposals to give Canada’s oil and gas industry better access to export markets, which is crucial to the Harper government’s energy policies and the development of the oilsands in Alberta.

But Keystone has run into fierce opposition from environmentalists who say it will open the way for a vast expansion in oilsands production, which the greens say will increase the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

With Energy South and Energy West mired in delay, or even dead, Energy East has appeared as something of a last resort

While not wishing to rain on anybody’s “nation building” parade, last week’s announcement by TransCanada Corp. of its $12-billion Energy East project is hardly cause for wild celebration. While the proposal — to pipe 1.1 million barrels per day of Alberta oil to Eastern refineries and to the East Coast for export — may represent a marvel of technology, in a rational world it would be a non-starter (as opposed to a “no-brainer”).

What Energy East really reflects is the extraordinary success of radical environmentalists in blocking more economic export routes. It also appears to embed dodgy Suzukinomics, such as the notion that domestic upgrading is always a “good thing.” Apparently support from the NDP and labour unions is conditional on this autarchic canard.

It is astonishing that so many Canadians remain enamoured of Barack Obama, although he is perhaps more inimical to Canadian interests than any president in history. He holds the ultimate veto on TransCanada’s Keystone XL project, to take more than 800,000 barrels of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the refineries of the Gulf Coast.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

OTTAWA — As pipeline companies and railways race to add capacity for moving oil and natural gas around North America, two concepts are key: “plumbing” and “market options.”

Until about eight years ago, the North American industry faced a predictable, undramatic pathway, with steady declines in conventional oil and gas production and a measured growth in the oil sands that would require only incremental increases in pipeline capacity. But in a few short years, that picture changed dramatically, as drilling advances resulted in booming gas and tight oil production and triple-digit prices fuelled increasingly by ambitious expansion plans in the oil sands.

But the plumbers have struggled to keep up. Until recently, there was a blockage at Cushing, Okla., that resulted in deep discounts for North American crude compared to international sources. While new pipelines and rail capacity have cleared that logjam, producers fear others will develop if new pipelines cannot be approved and built quickly enough.

The support for TransCanada Corp.’s Energy East proposal shows how desperate producers and refiners are to expand their market choices – for sellers to find potential buyers and for the customers to have as many sources of supply as possible.

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The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Canada’s oldest incorporated city will likely emerge the big winner in the wake of TransCanada Corp.’s decision to build a $12-billion pipeline to transport crude oil from Alberta to refineries and export terminals in Quebec and New Brunswick.

The 228-year-old city of Saint John, nestled along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy, clings stubbornly to its historic Maritime past of shipbuilding. Home to North America’s first deep-water oil terminal, the city named after the Biblical figure John the Baptist, once boasted Canada’s largest shipyard and one of the biggest dry docks on the planet, but it has seen far more traffic from cruise ship visitors than the industrial kind in recent decades.

That moribund existence will get a much-needed jolt if TransCanada secures the necessary regulatory and environmental approvals to forge ahead with building its Energy East pipeline that would deliver 1.1-million barrels of crude a day from Western Canada to the East, passing through Montreal, Quebec City and Saint John.

Under the plan, TransCanada would convert about 3,000 kilometres of existing natural gas pipeline in Ontario and Quebec and construct an additional 1,400 kilometres extending to an ice-free, deep-water port in Saint John owned by Irving Oil Corp. Built in the 1950s, the TransCanada natural-gas pipeline is currently operating at only half capacity.

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