{"id":39739,"date":"2018-10-26T08:09:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T13:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39739"},"modified":"2018-10-26T08:09:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T13:09:59","slug":"why-canadian-tar-sands-oil-may-be-doomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39739","title":{"rendered":"Why Canadian Tar Sands Oil May Be Doomed"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/10\/25\/canadian-tar-sands-oil-financial-losses\">Why Canadian Tar Sands Oil May Be Doomed<\/a><\/h3>\n<article class=\"node-13262 node node-blog node-promoted view-mode-full clearfix\">\n<div class=\"field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/fort%20mcmurray.jpg?itok=wnSBVLiK\" alt=\"Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, tar sands oil operations\" width=\"826\" height=\"551\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-social-bar clearfix\">\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-share-wrapper new-horizontal-fb-wrapper clearfix\">At current prices, Canadian tar sands oil\u00a0producers are<a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitaljournal.com\/business\/oilsands-bitumen-producers-losing-money-on-every-barrel-sold\/article\/534594\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> losing money <\/a>on every barrel of oil they dig out. Despite <a href=\"https:\/\/oilprice.com\/Energy\/Crude-Oil\/Canadas-Oil-Patch-To-Turn-Profitable-In-2018.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">signs earlier this year<\/a> the industry would \u201cturn profitable in 2018,\u201d a much more likely scenario at this point is a fourth straight year of\u00a0losses.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>Producers are forced to keep cranking out\u00a0product and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bnnbloomberg.ca\/oil-sands-bitumen-prices-are-actually-in-negative-territory-analyst-1.1151813\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">selling it at a loss<\/a>\u00a0to cover the massive costs required to start one of these sprawling unconventional oil\u00a0operations, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/report-on-business\/industry-news\/energy-and-resources\/no-end-in-sight-to-oil-sands-shutdown-amid-fort-mcmurray-fire\/article29934120\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">point made painfully clear<\/a> when Alberta wildfires in 2016 forced some tar sands operators to shut\u00a0down.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do think they&#8217;ll start up quickly once the danger from the fire is gone because there is a lot of motivation to do that,\u201d Jackie Forrest, an energy economist for Arc Financial Corp, told The Globe and Mail. \u201cThey have a lot of fixed costs so they&#8217;re going to be motivated to get some revenue to pay for those costs that aren&#8217;t going\u00a0away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the face of such challenging economics, what are Canadian tar sands producers doing? Tapping more oil than\u00a0ever.<\/p>\n<p>In June\u00a02018 Canada set <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/dnav\/pet\/hist\/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&amp;s=W_EPC0_IM0_NUS-NCA_MBBLD&amp;f=W\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a new record <\/a>for exporting\u00a0oil to the U.S., hitting well over three million barrels per day. This record coincided with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/calgary\/crude-by-rail-exports-up-1.4795429\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">another one<\/a>\u00a0for oil exported by rail from Canada to the <span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span> The <span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span> is currently the only major\u00a0market for Canadian crude, with<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nrcan.gc.ca\/energy\/facts\/crude-oil\/20064\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> 99 percent\u00a0of its exports<\/a> going to either <span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span> refineries or\u00a0ports\u00a0for\u00a0export.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/us%20imports%20of%20canadian%20crude.png\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Source:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/dnav\/pet\/hist\/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&amp;s=W_EPC0_IM0_NUS-NCA_MBBLD&amp;f=W\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span> Energy Information\u00a0Administration<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>America Is Maxing out on Canadian\u00a0Crude<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>American refineries certainly enjoy buying Canadian crude at such low prices. How low are the prices? As the <a href=\"https:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/commodities\/energy\/oilands-bitumen-prices-are-actually-in-negative-territory-analyst-calculates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Financial Post reported i<\/a>n mid-October, Western Canadian Select (<span class=\"caps\">WCS<\/span>) was $19 a barrel \u2014 approximately $50 a barrel cheaper than a barrel of the\u00a0American oil standard known as Western Texas Intermediate (<span class=\"caps\">WTI<\/span>).<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why Canadian Tar Sands Oil May Be Doomed At current prices, Canadian tar sands oil\u00a0producers are losing money on every barrel of oil they dig out. Despite signs earlier this year the industry would \u201cturn profitable in 2018,\u201d a much more likely scenario at this point is a fourth straight year of\u00a0losses. Producers are forced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[22615,103,1894,5317,22614,11782,781,22613,827],"class_list":["post-39739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-arc-financial-corp","tag-canada","tag-canadian-tar-sands","tag-desmog-blog","tag-jackie-forrest","tag-justin-mikulka","tag-tar-sands","tag-the-globe-and-mail","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39740,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39739\/revisions\/39740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}